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“A girl?” I blink. “Okay, that repeat, it was for an explanation. Not processing. So tell me this girl’s story. It’s obviously yours to tell.”
“Fuck.” He takes a deep breath through his nostrils. “Miranda.” He blows out. “Her name is Miranda, and she was my foster sister.”
“Foster sister?” I lift my hand. “Just assume any repeats from here on out during this conversation are for explanations, not processing.”
He chuckles. “Okay.” He folds his hands into his lap. “After our first foster home, when my brothers and I were all together, fell through, we all got separated, and I went to stay with the Westons.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve. Calvin and Lindsey Weston had a foster child already, Miranda. She was a year older than me. And most of the time, she was rude and nasty. She rarely paid me any attention. I didn’t think she liked me. I never had a sister before, so I thought maybe that was the way teenage girls acted.So I learned to live with it.”
“I can understand that, but it sounds like she was just a bitch. I’m sorry, go on,” I encourage, not trying to dissuade the conversation. I need to hear his story. This story.
“One night, when I was fifteen, Miranda came into my room naked. She crawled into bed with me—”
“Naked?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what to do. So I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling. An hour later, she left. The next day, she was back to ignoring me.”
“You didn’t ask her about it?”
“No. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”
“I would’ve said something.”
“I’m sure you would’ve,” he says with a low rumbling chuckle.
“You didn’t say anything to your foster parents.”
“No.” His voice sobers.
“Well, what happened?”
“Well.” He scratches his eyebrow. “About a month went by, and she did it again, but this time, she touched me. Now, I was a fifteen-year-old kid full of hormones and all kinds of sexual thoughts, yet when she touched me, I knew it was wrong. I knew I should’ve stopped her, but I didn’t.”
“Wow.” I gawk at him, trying to imagine a younger Cole being seduced by a girl no more than a year older than him. Shit. They were both kids. “That must’ve been difficult.”
“It was at first.” He folds his hands together in his lap. “But she kept coming for the nighttime visits.” His eyes move to his hands. “She’d touch me and showed me how to touch her until we finally had sex.”
“Oh my God!”
“Yeah.” He peers up at me through hooded eyes. “It was fucked up. We never talked about it. She remained her bitchy self by day, and well, you get it.”
“Yeah,” I breathe out the word, sucking the air along with what he’s telling me back inside.
“This went on for about a year. Then I learned how to control my hormones better. I began to think straight, with my head and not my dick, andI realized what we were doing wasn’t right. She was my foster sister. I had to end it. Besides, after she graduated from high school, I knew she’d be going away to college. I didn’t want things complicated or confusing for either one of us.”
“What she did to you. She was the older one. She shouldn’t have done that. You were just a kid.”
“We both were kids,” he points out what I understand, but it still angers me.
She manipulated him. Used him.
I take a deep breath, wanting to say more but restrain myself. Cole dealt with this part of life the way he knew how. I can’t change his past. “What happened when you told her?”
“Well.” He blows out hard. “The next day, after I told her, I got up, got ready for school, and went down to the kitchen. Like every other school day, Lindsey, my foster mom, had breakfast on the table. She asked me to make sure Miranda was up and ready for school. I went upstairs and knocked on her door. After a few tries, I decided to go in.” He pauses, his eyes averting back to his clenched hands in his lap. “She was in bed. I walked up to her and—” He clears his throat. “She was staring at me, but it was weird like she couldn’t see me. The closer I got, the colder I became. I’d seen the way she was looking at me before when my father was shot. I knew, right then, that she was dead. I pulled back her sheet. I don’t even really remember doing it,” he hesitates, giving his throat another strong and deep clearing. “She’d slit her wrists.”
“Oh.” I touch my fingers to my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I say between my trembling lips. “That must’ve been hard for you.”
