“Tomorrow. I promise, tomorrow.”
Elise sighs, and then, in her Yoda voice says, “Best friend Elise has now. Stuck with her Blesk is.”
“Glad Blesk is.” I hang up. I set the phone down on the step beside me and hug my knees to my chest, my eyes growing heavy from lack of sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
erik
Seventeen-Years-Old
Her scream cuts through the wall.
The controller in my hand hits the floor. I'm already up. In the hallway. At her door. My shoulder catches the frame as I push through into her room.
She's on her side, whimpering, her cheeks creased and flushed against the pillow. My cock stirs. It’s fucking annoying how easily she makes me hard.
Blood pumps through my body.
I get dizzy from it.
I sit on the edge of the mattress. She is wearing a tight white camisole. I can see her bare thigh poking out from under the sheets, but I know she’ll have knickers on, and I bet they’re white…
They’re always white.
They should be white.
I should wake her up. My hand moves to the sheet instead, and Idraw it down slowly, carefully, watching inch by inch, exposing...
Her tits.
Her bellybutton.
I exhale hard as I stare at her slender figure. She is beautiful. Goddammit, if she isn't the most beautiful goddamn girl in this goddamn world, and I have to watch my friends leering at her and telling me what they'd like to do to her, but they don't know her. They don't know what I know. They haven't earned her trust.
They haven’t held her while she cries, don’t listen to her secrets, don’t watch her play guitar for hours. I do that! They don’t watch her walk around their house in her underwear and eat all their cereal—I can be trusted. She chose me.
She came to us in October, when I was twelve. I remember her flinching when the front door closed behind her for the first time.Good,I’d thought. I knew her story. Knew she’d been hurt by her dad. Then she looked up at me on the stairs, and I stared. Wide-eyed. At this little girl with her blonde hair. I gripped the banister. I never, ever, in my life felt anything so powerful as my desire to be the one she trusts.
The only one.
I don’t have to share.
To betheone.
I wanted to hate her once, just once, for taking over my family, stealing their attention and love. I wanted to resent her, because she ruins so much. My sleep. My plans for college. My relationships with girls, with friends who look at her like I look at her. I haven't slept well since I was twelve—she took my sleep as well.
That's okay, Bebe.
Because I have you.
She was like a broken kitten, so quiet, so timid. So adorable. Those traits never actually shifted into anything else, but physically she has changed,ischanging. Every year she becomes more beautiful and smiles only for me, tucks herself behind me, choosing me over and over—relies on me.
It's me and her.
So now as I look down at her, my fingers twitch with the need to touch her. That is how she heals, and she's crying. She needs my touch. The touch game. It was my idea. My touch heals her. Every time. My parents wanted to take her to a psychologist, but I knew better.
We practiced the touch game over and over. It was my touch that saved our family. It wasmytouch that she trusts. Without me, no one can get close to her.
