A sensation down south pulls me out of my last few moments of sleep, and I push my groin against the smooth, plush curves I know to be pressed against me. My favorite curves. That belongs to my favorite person. My arms are wrapped around her, holding her against me while my nose is still pressed against the back of her neck, smelling her scent that’s damn near ingrained in my DNA at this point. I run my hand down her arm, relishing the softness of her brown skin from the shea butter lotion she applies every night.
Fuck. Please don’t let it be morning already. The morning of October eighth meant arguing. Tension. Tears. Questions as to how long we can keep doing this. Even more questions, likewhywe keep doing this.
Professions of “I love you” followed by anger and confusion as to why we can’t make this work and why we’ve let things go on for this long.
My eyes lazily flutter open, praying for a still dark sky illuminated by the New York skyline outside her window. Instead, I’m met with bright sunny skies. I internally groan and close my eyes again, willing time to slow down or move backward to two days ago when I first got here. I needed more time with her. I always needed more time with her. But then again, it never mattered how much time we got because it was never enough.
It was the same every year. We spend the entirety of every October seventh fucking over every inch of whoever’s house we’re at that year, and then on the eighth, when we have to go back to reality, we fight so we don’t have to be upset over the fact that our realities no longer include each other.
I open my eyes again and move my hand that’s resting protectively across her stomach up her body to cup her breast, rolling the nipple gently between my fingers before moving it back down her body between her legs. Her legs part like her body knows what to do for me, even in her sleep, and I stroke two fingers through her slit, rubbing her clit in the process, and she shudders against me.
“Wild,” she murmurs, using my nickname, and before I can respond, she’s spinning slowly in my arms and wrapping a leg over my hip to open herself up to me. She snuggles against my chest and tucks her head under my chin. “What time is it?” she asks, and I can hear the trepidation in her voice.
I’m not sure, but I think it’s near the time I need to leave to catch my flight back home. “Not sure,” I murmur into her hair, not wanting to pull away from her for anything.
She nods slowly, then pulls back and smiles at me before she’s entirely out of my grasp and sitting on the edge of the bed. Her naked back is to me, and then she’s standing, sliding that silky black thong up over her hips. I’d pulled that off with my teeth last night in my haste to put my mouth on her cunt for probably the hundredth time in two days. She moves across the room, wordlessly pulling on a silky white tank top and a pair of black sweatpants from her drawer before leaning against it. “Let’s just get it over with.” I can see the tears building in her eyes at the thought of me leaving. I stand instantly and make my way over to her, but she puts her hands up and shakes her head. “No.”
There have only been a handful of times over the course of ten years that she hasn’t wanted my hands on her in some way, so I wince at the implication of what this means. “Baby.”
She shakes her head. “No. I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.” Anxiety slithers up my spine at the thought of her being done with this.With me.“We do this every year, and it’s not enough. I want more.” She shrugs defeatedly, and I hate that I don’t have the answers for her. I hate that I don’t have them for myself either.
I drop back to her bed and prop my feet up on the suede ottoman at the end of her bed so I can rest my elbows on my knees. “We can’t. We’ve been over and over this. Foryears. Saint, no one will understand.” Halle St. John is her full name, but I’ve called her “Saint” ever since we were kids. I was the only one who ever did so, just like she was the only one who called me Wild after my last name. It was just one of the many things only between us.
“We’re adults now, though. Like actual adults. I’m twenty-three. You’re twenty-four. Who cares? We don’t have to go into the nitty-gritty details of when this started. And it doesn’t even have to be a whole-ass statement. We could just be us…” She points toward her window. “Out there.” Her eyes well up with tears, highlighting her gorgeous brown eyes, and I hate that I can’t comfort her right now because I know if I touch her, we’ll never get through this conversation. “I want to be with you, Sebastian, and I know you feel the same. We can figure it out. Is this about your mom? What’s she going to do? Ground us? Sit outside your bedroom so neither one of us sneaks out in the middle of the night like she used to? Sleep in my room for the same reason?”
I sigh, remembering those moments vividly. “It’s not just Mom, baby. We’ve been over this. It’s our whole family and the people we’ve known for years.”
“You meanyourfamily.”
“They’re your family too, Halle. I know you think you’re alone, but you’re not. And you have more than just me.”
She scrunches her nose. “Do you really care what anyone has to say? Even now?”
“We’ve just been through so much. We aren’t just stepsiblings. We are so much more than that, and you know it. People will have a lot to say, and I can’t protect you from all of that.”
News reports have come out about our family, specifically about me, when I opened my architecture firm. I’d given countless interviews about my past and what witnessing such hatred so early in life did to me. I’ve also talked extensively about her, and anyone who ran any search on me would come across Halle St. John, who I explicitly refer to as my stepsister.More than a stepsister.Those same interviews also discussed how close we’ve been throughout our lives since we met. I don’t have news reporting on my daily life, but I’m arguably one of the most eligible bachelors in Seattle. If I were to settle down withmy stepsister,who I’ve known since I was four, people would definitely have some opinions.
She pulls her hair out of the low bun she slept in, letting her jet-black hair spill around her in tangled waves. Her tresses graze her covered breasts, and I look away, not wanting to focus on her hard nipples pebbling through the thin silk. “You’ve protected me from everything my entire life. You don’t have to all the time, you know.”
“Yeah, I do,” I tell her because even though we couldn’t be together in the traditional sense, Halle was mine, and I loved her more than anything in the world. “I love you more than I love me.”I’ve said those words to her countless times. After what we went through as kids, I vowed to always protect her with my life if we were ever in the same situation again. So yeah, I’d protecther from the vicious public that had the potential to rip her apart over her relationship with me. And the only way I knew how to protect her from that was not to put her in that situation in the first place.
No one speaks for a few moments, and when I look up, I see the guard sliding back over her gorgeous features. Her lips form a straight line, her soft eyes harden, and her eyebrows furrow slowly, and I just know this is the beginning of the end.
Until next year.
“Fine, then I guess you should just go,” she says, lifting one shoulder nonchalantly as if she’s over the conversation.Because she knows that shit pisses me off.I give her a look, hoping she takes it as a warning to fix her attitude because I wasn’t going to leave while we are like this. She crosses the room and picks up her phone from the nightstand. “It’s ten. Your plane leaves in two hours. You should go so you don’t miss your flight.” She doesn’t look at me when she says this, then she heads to the bathroom attached to her room as if we are done talking.
Fuck that.
I follow her and put my hand against the door before she can fully close it. “Don’t do this,” I tell her with a bit of bite in my tone. I know she’s coming from a place of hurt, so I’m trying not to let the same hurt I’m feeling spiral into anger.
“Sebastian…” My heart begins to crack at her use of my full name, which sherarelyuses. “I love you. But… it’s not enough, right?”
“Of course, it’s enough. It’s everything. You and us…thisis everything.” It has been since the day we first kissed.Probably even before that.
“But…” she says woefully, and the word hangs in the air almost like a complete sentence.
“We always knew this couldn’t be more. We said that from the beginning. We’ve kept this from everyone for years.” And it’strue. With the exception of my mother, no one knew how deep our relationship went. We both kept everyone at arm’s length for years, never letting anyone in but each other, which my mother used to say was the problem. She used to tell us that if our worlds continued to revolve around each other, we’d never be able to have meaningful relationships. That we acted as if it was us against the world when it didn’t have to be.
