AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I never wanted a sibling.
Never asked my father why it was just him and me, no maternal figure outside of the countless nannies and tutors that came and went on a near-constant rotation, parading around the house like wicked women more intent on winning the affections of my wealthy father than caring for the child left on his doorstep without so much as a note on my mother’s whereabouts.
Throughout my childhood, I remember my friends, who were only children like myself, ranting and raving, talking about how much they wanted a little brother or sister to be a part of their families. Someone to play with and confide in, to have a lifelong friend who would always be by their side. They celebrated alongside their families when new babies were announced, bragged to me about the newest member of their families upon the birth of their new siblings, and became annoying little shits who always had their kid brothers and sisters trailing behind them as we grew up with a bustling New York City as our backdrop.
If anything, it all seemed like a huge pain in the ass to me—having to share the small amount of attention my father showed me with another person, someone else to cater to and prance around all while plastering a fake-as-shit smile on my face for my father like I often did with our household staff, all while I silently tormented them when he wasn’t paying attention.
Maybe it’s because while my name is Saint, I’ve never felt holy a day in my damn life.
No, instead, I’ve felt more and more like the dammed devil with each and every passing year.
And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, it’s all because ofher.
Noel Belle came into my life when she was eight years old, nearly half my own age of fourteen.
While I was already a freshman in high school, she was only in third grade when she moved into the Upper East Side brownstone I shared with my father. She was nothing more than a tiny, scrawny little thing with a head full of wild, chestnut curls, and green eyes that took up half her face. We came together unexpectedly when my father—one of the richest businessmen in the US—married her mother—a European actress, who had been filming on location in the city.
Almost immediately, I resented both mother and child—mother for waltzing into my home and rearranging every aspect of my perfectly tailored life after a two-month-long whirlwind romance with my father, and child for putting me in a position where I had to share the small amount of attention I managed to get from the only family I had ever known. We entered into a constant push and pull against one another, almost as if we needed to clash with each other in order to survive.
Through forced family dinners and summer vacations, winter ski trips and milestone celebrations, she tried to become my friend, to get close to me. In return, I tried to push her away by breaking her toys—decapitating her Barbies like they had personally wronged me and smashing every lightbulb for her little Easy Bake Oven she received on our first Christmas as a family before moving to chase away any stupid, little school boy that dared to even look at Noel as she grew from child to teen. I wasn’t exactly cruel to her, but I sure as hell wasn’t nice either. Using the guise as her hellacious older brother to keep boys as far away from her as possible was fun—almost a sport I succeeded in time and time again.
Deep down inside, though, I knew—even then—that there was something more than just a deep-rooted hatred for her. I just didn’t know what the words were for it at the time.
Shortly after Noel turned twelve, I left Manhattan, traveling to California to complete my undergrad degree in finance, hell-bent on making a name for myself without the financial support or clout of my family’s last name. The Klaus name had been synonymous with Christmas and toys for generations—hell, it still is. And I was determined to end that streak, wanting nothing to do with the family business that delivered toys directly to Santa’s doorstep each year.
Yet time and time again—without fail–the moment I came home for break, we would fall back into our usual pattern of Noel trying to get close while I continued to push her away.
Hastily, I throw shit into my suitcase now as my mind drifts back to the past, and I once again find myself immediately riled up. I think back to the last family holiday we had–a Fourth of July celebration the year she turned sixteen. I came home to visit for the summer after putting in a few final grueling semesters at college, only to find a wide-eyed Noel had transformed. When I left home two years prior, she was my gangly little stepsister, the girl I loved to torment who had a mouth full of metal and thick glasses that were her only defense against her terrible vision. She was always a tad on the nerdy side, but she was still kinda adorable in the way girls are in late nineties teen romances—though I wouldneveradmit that to another soul. You know the type I’m talking about: the nerdy-yet-kinda-cute heroine that turns into a perfect ten when she removes her glasses and takes her hair out of the ponytail she’s been wearing for years on end after some pathetic jock makes an ill-advised bet with his little fuck-boy friends and takes her to the prom.
Only when I came back, she hadn’t just transformed from adorably dorky to hot like some little weird, teenaged movie star.
Oh no, she had turned into a Goddamned knockout.
Gone were the braces and glasses, the acne and awkward leg-to-torso ratio that always made her look like she was a second away from tripping over something invisible. Instead, a near-woman stood in front of me with curves and breasts and long lashes that she batted in my direction while wearing the tiniest fucking bikini she could find.
I knew it was wrong to look at her the way I was; I swear I did.
Still, my body betrayed me.
It was a Thursday evening during the summer, the type of evening where the clothes on my body hung heavy against the humidity in the air. Our doting parents were out celebrating their anniversary over a romantic dinner me and Noel were definitely not invited to. Deciding on a late-night swim to ease the tension in my muscles caused by hours of cross-country travel in tiny airline seats, I stopped short when I noticed the light on in the pool house that sat proudly off the back of our Hamptons summer home. Changing my course, I crossed the pool deck to the door, already annoyed that my stepsister’s carelessness had caused me to go out of my way when all I wanted to do was dive into the water warmed by the earlier summer sun and work the kinks from my stiff muscles.
Pushing open the door and expecting to simply flip a switch, I paused when I realized that she hadn’t just left the light on. Instead, I found Noel lying on the pull-out couch left for the most hated of overnight guests, the stupid metal bar digging into the back of anyone who dared lay on it for more than a minute. It just went to show you that even with all the money in the world, a pull-out bed is one thing that willneverbe comfortable, no matter the cost.
Her head was lying in the lap of some little jock fuck face no bigger than a toothpick, his hands running through her tangled, wild curls as he locked eyes with me in a move that was a clear challenge. She wore nothing but a damp two-piece, the fabric so scant that she may well have been wearing nothing at all. Her nipples were hard little points beneath the flimsy fabric, her pert little breasts almost on full display. Beer cans littered the table in front of them, and a glassy look in Noel’s eyes that I was more than familiar seeing from nights at frat parties had me springing into fast action despite the hatred I always outwardly portrayed toward her.
Yes, she was my annoying little sister that I told myself I couldn’t fucking stand. Sure, she made my traitorous body light up brighter than the iconic Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Still, I wasn’t about to turn my back knowing she was about to be taken advantage of while possibly under the influence at the age of sixteen.
I might have been an unscrupulous bastard ninety percent of the time. But even I wasn’t a total fucking monster.
With thundering steps, I crossed to where they had been lying, pulled my sister off the clueless boy’s lap, and threw an expensive woven blanket at her in one move, watching as she stumbled while trying to catch her footing on the pristine rug that covered much of the pool house’s tile floor.
“Wrap yourself in that.”
She hesitated, glancing at me with a familiar heat in her eyes that told me a challenge was about to happen. She had given me the look more times than I could count over the years—almost anytime I tried to genuinely do something nice, she acted like it was the strangest thing in the world. And to her benefit, it wasn’t often that I actually did do something to truly benefit her. After a while, I mostly stopped trying, fully leaning into the villainous Scrooge she believed me to be. “Or what? You going to run to Daddy on me, Saint?”
I snapped, everything around me going red as I zoned in on Noel, her chest heaving with anger. Before I could make heads or tails of what I was doing, I had her pressed against the shiplap wall—my body flush against hers, the bare skin of my torso pressed against the almost bare skin of her bikini-clad body. Her sweet, peppermint aroma mixed into the air around us along with the scent of the warm beer she had been drinking. To this day, I can still remember how fucking right it felt to have her curves against the hard planes of my hard chest and toned despite the fact that I knew it was wrong.
So fucking wrong.
