“I like you,” I inform her. “Don’t be stupid. Of course I like you.” It only eats away at me every second of every day, twisting and turning under my skin, sinking into my bones until it becomes a very part of the blood that’s made there.
She scoffs. “Within just the past three days you’ve made it clear that I amnotpart of your family and that you donotlike playing with me. What part of that screams, ‘I really like this person! So happy they’re in my life!’?”
“The whole part,” I insist. “My parents want you to be some sort of sister to me, but you’re not, and I am not going to pretend like you are.” I grimace at the thought. “You’re Poem, my kit, not Poem, my sister, and I don’t like that they continuously try to push you into that box, deciding how our relationship works for us. We’re…” I search for a word that feels even moderately correct. When one does not readily supply itself, I shrug. “We’re Fox and Poem, and I wish they’d leave it at that. I don’t like everything you do, and I’m not always in the mood to play with you, but that doesn’t mean Ihateyou, and it definitely doesn’t mean I want to watch you deal with a bad situation while compounding stress about how you’re going to pay for it. I care about you, Poem. I don’t want to see bad things happen to you.”
“Fox and Poem,” she repeats, unbelieving. “Yourkit? I’m not ababy, Fox, and you’re not myparent.”
“I’m not calling you a baby.” Because I’m calling hermybaby. Much different.
“Right,” she mutters. “Well, I can see that you’ve so nicely decided for us how this relationship works. No consultation needed! Did you ever think that maybe Iwanteda brother?”
I scowl. “Wolfe can be your brother.” And will be, if I have anything to say about it.
She squeezes the tip jar hard enough for the plastic to creak angrily. “I make a good sister, you know,” she grumbles. “You’ve seen how annoying I can be, so clearly I have that down, but I’m also good at the other stuff. The being-there-for-you stuff. All my siblings say so.”
I… stare.
Is she…
Is she trying to sell me on siblinghood with her? After spending most of the day talking about how attractive she finds my body?
“Sonnet and Muse love me,” she continues. “Almond will vouch for me, too. And if you want a brother’s perspective, Wolfe can tell you. I’m a good sister.”
I frown. “I know that you’re a good sister.”
Her big, gray eyes turn stormy with emotions I never thought I’d see on her—emotions I’ve only ever really seen when I look in the mirror every morning. Raw. Desperate.
Pleading.
My heart trips over itself, and my hands lift, reaching for her before I can stop them.
Her attention drops to them, and she stiffens.
My arms drop.
“You know, but you don’t want me to be yours,” she says stiffly, reining her emotions in so that when her eyes meet mine, all I see is the cool, determined gaze of a woman who’s just been told she can’t have something.
I curse.
“Poem, this isn’t a challenge. I don’twantyou to be my sister.”
Cogs turn behind her irises. “You like our relationship the way it is?” she asks. “You want us to continue on in this animosity forever?”
Well… no. Ideally, the animosity would turn to something just as passionate but a whole lot more enjoyable once I’ve proven that I deserve even a speck of the goodness of her. I can’tsaythat, though.
My hesitation lasts long enough for Poem to make her own conclusions about what it means and decide a course of action, apparently. “I’ll show you, then,” she declares.
Apprehension buzzing beneath my skin, I dare to ask, “Show me… what?”
Brows low and determined, she studies me.
Unnerving. And terrifying. “Stop that,” I order.
“You’ll see, Foxy,” she mutters, rising from the couch. She steps around my kidney-bean shaped coffee table to stop in front of my chair, towering over me.
I lean back, far, far away from the strip of bare stomach her move puts me eye level with. “No seeing,” I protest. “Consider me blind. Go away.”
Her hands land on her hips, change rattling as surely as my nerves as the tip jar dangles from her fingers. “Tomorrow,” she warns me. “If you think I’m annoying now, just you wait, Fox Blackwood. I’m going toannoyyou out of your stupid idiot hang-ups surrounding me, just like a real sister would. And then, finally, you’ll let me live peacefully within the family I’ve found—ourfamily. This town is plenty big enough for both of us to be loved. And if you don’thateme… then that means there’s hope yet for you to see it.”
