Page 170 of Suite 7

“You’re not an idiot. We didn’t know it ourselves.”

“Don’t do that,” she says, with sharpness in her tone. “Don’t make it sound inevitable. Like it was obvious and I missed it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.” Her jaw tightens. “It doesn’t make it easier.”

I let the silence hold.

The clock ticks. Traffic filters up from the street below.

“It was never hate,” I say. “I think it was always this. But neither of us knew how to handle what we felt, so we fought instead.”

I watch her face. The way she’s holding herself together by increments, jaw tight, hands wrapped around her cup, and I know that look — I’ve known it since she was twelve and trying not to cry in front of people. She always thinks it’s weakness. It never is.

Then, smaller than I’ve ever heard her: “Where do I fit?”

“What?”

She sets her cup down. Carefully. Like the small act of precision is the only thing keeping the rest of her in place.

“If you’re with Vera, what happens to us?” Her voice fractures on the last word, and then the dam breaks — full sobs, her voice coming apart at the seams. “I’m not just losing my best friend to my brother. I’m losing my brother to my best friend. Where do I go? Who do I have? What happens to me?”

I can’t stay across the room for this. I move to her and crouch in front of her chair until we’re eye level. Her face is wet, eyes red and swollen, and she looks exactly the way she looked at sixteen when everything felt unsurvivable and I was the one she called.

I was always the one she called.

“Look at me.”

She does.

“You’re my sister.” I keep my voice steady, because one of us has to be. “She’s my love. Both of those things are permanent. Neither one cancels the other out.”

“Kane—”

“Listen to me.” I take her hands. They’re cold and shaking in mine and I hold them tighter. “I’m not choosing. You don’t have to choose. There is no choice to make.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can. I am.” I wait until she’s looking at me again, really looking. “Our monthly dinners? Still happen. Morning coffee? Still happens. Your birthday at that restaurant with the terrible service that you refuse to stop going to? Still happens.” I hold her gaze. “Nothing about us changes except our family gets bigger.”

“You can’t know⁠—“

“I know this.” My voice is steady, more certain than I’ve been about anything. “What Vera and I have isn’t temporary, Sloane. It isn’t something that burns out in three months and leaves us all standing in the wreckage. I’m in this completely. She is it for me.”

She stares at me, reading me the way she’s read me her whole life, checking for the tells she’s always been able to find.

She won’t find any. Because it’s the truth.

“No more lying.” Her voice is firm despite the tears still falling. “Ever. About anything. I don’t care how small or how complicated. No. More. Lies.”

“Never again. I promise.”

“If you hurt her—” Her eyes flash with protective fury.

“You’ll break my face. I know.”

A small pause. Then: “And if she hurts you, I’ll break hers.”