I want to kill her parents.
As a lawyer, I know exactly the kind of time I’d be looking at, but I can’t find the sense in my head to give a fuck.
It also dawns on me that I need to have a long talk with Isla about leaving her damn phone unlocked. With just a sweep of my fingers, I managed to step straight into every aspect of her life from her period tracker to her bank account because she has no protection on the thing.
But I’m also damn glad she didn’t because otherwise, I never would have seen the rows upon rows of messages pouring in. Full novels of deception, degradation, and manipulation from Macie. Underhand, disgusting insults from her dad. There were nearly a hundred missed texts from the two combined and not a single one was to apologize for the way they talked to her. I scrolled for days, weeks, going back nearly a month and — if I didn’t know who Isla was — I’d think she personally wronged the two by murdering the person they loved most in the world.
And Isla…
Apologizing. Promising to be better. To try harder. Doing everything short of offering her soul to placate them, and them reminding her how worthless she was. How she owed them. That she was nothing.
Macie was smarter about her words. Underhanded and manipulative. Careful with her cutting jabs, disguising them aswords of encouragement. If I were stupid, I would almost believe she was actively trying to help.
But in no reality is a mother calling her daughter an unfortunate side effect of a mistake acceptable, and that was the kinder of the rants. Isla being here with me and Dom has brought out a side of my stepmother I never would have believed if I didn’t read it for myself. Every word was unhinged. Creepy. Possessive in a way that made my skin itch.
I saved them all. I sent myself dozens of screenshots. I stowed them in a private folder to show Dom.
That was the plan. To wait until he returned from the grocery run, pull him aside and talk to him, see if he knew anything about this. But of course, it took one look at my and Isla’s faces and that plan had gone down the drain.
And part of me is glad. Seeing those messages unlocked something in my chest. The door isn’t exactly flung open, but there’s a crack. A tentative acceptance that Isla deserves to be shown what real love is. She deserves safety and a home. She deserves people who will burn the world for her. Looking back and deciphering everything I thought I knew about her, she hasn’t had a single person in her corner her entire life, and that shit is going to end now. Whether she likes it or not, I’ll fight for her. I’ll take down mountains for her. I will make sure that if she runs, it’s straight into our arms and not away.
Then there’s the fact that watching her cry had carved something inside me, leaving a hollow pit that physically aches in my chest.
I don’t ever want to see her cry again. Not even with happiness. Tears in her eyes fill me with an anxious desperation I don’t know how to regulate, except to do everything short of tearing out my soul to fix it.
Across the room, standing beneath the glowing lights looped around the Christmas tree, Isla laughs at something Domtells her. Her face is tipped to his as she holds out glass bulbs for him to dangle from the upper parts.
It’s the last box. All the others have already been emptied, their items placed with precision around the room. Isla and Dom did all the work while I made myself busy lighting the fire, sweeping the floors, arranging the groceries in the pantry. I brought the mattress back into the cabin, trying my damn best not to think Isla will be sharing it with us later that evening and what that means.
I don’t think sex.
Yes, I want it... badly but touching her feels... delicate. A soap bubble I’m too afraid might pop if I get too close. Would that stop me if she initiates it? No. If she touches me, I’ll respond in whatever way she wants, but after what happened earlier, her mental security means more than my dick.
“That’s the last of it,” Dom announces, hooking the final ornament on the highest branch. “What do you think?”
He turns his head over his shoulder to ask me, but all I see is how much I like the sight of them washed in the shimmering lights. How much I want this to be our norm. I want it so badly, my stomach hurts with it.
But I nod for them. “Looks good.”
Isla beams and I want to taste it off her mouth. I want to lick the soft, full curve, lift her up into my arms and take her to the bedroom I set up for us. I want Dom to taste his way down every perfect line of her while I take his tight ass from behind. I want us tangled and sweaty, muscles sore, sheets torn from the mattress.
I want us twisted and coiled around each other in the midst of sleep. So tight, none of us can move without the others noticing.
“You know what we need?”
Isla laughs as Dom fills the cabin with the soft croon of I’ll be home for Christmas from his phone.
“No, please, God. No Christmas music. I’ve worked retail during the holidays way too many times to stand it.”
Unfazed, Dom switches to jazz. Still Christmas, but the sultry purr of sax that hits just right with the leaping fire in the hearth and all the decorations fixed in place. It’s such a perfect fit as he sets his phone on the coffee table and reaches for her hand. Her thick, shiny strands billow around her shoulders with the spin of her under Dom’s arm. In the same motion, he loops her into his arms and they sway with the gentle hum.
It’s so normal.
Sitting on the sofa, watching my boyfriend pull my stepsister into his arms and capture her lips still damp from mine, I know this won’t be easy. She’s spent her entire life running because no one ever bothered to teach her otherwise. She was alone. A baby surrounded by adults beating her down. Of course she’d run from that.
And I hate myself for not seeing it.
I’ve had eighteen years to open my fucking eyes and see what was right in front of me. I had seven years where all I cared about was having her and yet, not once did I stop to understand her. I was so blind by what others would think if they got even a hint that I had feelings for my stepsister that I blocked her out and made Dom do the same, leaving her completely alone. I’m as bad as Macie. Her dad. All the people who saw what was happening and turned a blind eye.
