Then I thought I was losing her, and every excuse I’d been hiding behind fell apart.
On the other side of the wall, she shifts. Then the sound fades back into quiet.
I picture her the way she looked earlier, sitting by the fire as I poured warm water through her hair. Her curls clung damp to her shoulders, the towel hanging loosely around her body.
I press my eyes closed and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Fuck.”
The memory is right there, too close.
I can still feel her weight against me when I caught her, the warmth of her body against mine. The way she tilted her head back when I rinsed her hair, trusting me with it.
This didn’t start with the snake.
Almost losing her makes these feelings impossible to ignore, but they’ve been there all along. I just never let myself see them.
I don’t know when it changed. That’s what gets me. There’s no moment I can point to. It happened quietly, in ways I could brush off if I didn’t look too closely—keeping track of where she was without thinking about it, noticing when she was hurt or tired or off in some way I couldn’t explain, the way her silence got under my skin when she was angry with me, the way the thought of anything happening to her sat wrong in my chest.
It built slowly. Now it’s obvious.
I lie there in the dark, her breathing only a few feet away, and I stop pretending.
I love her.
I. Fucking. Love. Her.
But worse than that—Iwanther.
My throat tightens. I wish it would close altogether and put me out of my misery.
A brother doesn’t think like this. He doesn’t lie awake remembering the feel of his sister in his arms or the scent of her hair.
It’s so fucking wrong. Sickening. The disgust is sharp enough to turn my stomach. And the worst part is, I can’t shut it off. Knowing it’s wrong doesn’t change anything.
I wish Ryan had never told me.
The memory comes back sharp, like he’s right there instead of gone.
I overheard Tara and Dad talking.
Charlotte is Dad’s daughter.
They were going to tell her after the trip.
I can still hear Ryan’s voice saying the words.
Back then, I hated it for a different reason. It meant Dad had one more thing tying him to her, making her matter more.
Now I hate it for what it actually means.
Because if Ryan hadn’t said anything, I could’ve gone on believing what everyone else did—that she was just the daughter of the woman Dad married. Someone I wasn’t related to.
Maybe I could have lived with this.
Maybe I could have loved her without knowing exactly how wrong it was.
The shelter feels too close. Too warm. Too full of her.
Her breathing stays steady on the other side of the divider. Good. The last thing I want is to face her with all of this still tearing through me.
