Page 3 of ’Til You Break

“Instead, I’ll offer you a place to stay while you job hunt and find your feet again,” he adds, before I can fall too deeply into despair.

“Are you sure?”

“A couple of bucks will buy you another month, maybe two. We’d end up in the same place, at a worse time,” he says, and shifts in his seat as if he’s going to stand up.

“You’re leaving already?” I ask. I’m sort of glad, knowing we won’t have to sit in the awkwardness of what has just happened. But I’m also somewhat devastated, and feel like I owe him a cup of coffee at the very least. “I thought we’d… I don’t know, catch up or something.”

“I have business elsewhere.” He gets up and leaves with the same swagger in his step as he had on his arrival.

I watch him go, unable to turn away. I stare after the man who single-handedly saved me, and changed my life all in a single sentence.

I finally let out a much-awaited sigh of relief, but part of me cuts it short midway. Sure, I’ve gotten the help I need, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s a mistake somehow. Apart from our history, we’re almost strangers. He doesn’t know me, and my failed attempts to stay in touch aside, I don’t know him.

A text message on my phone cuts my deliberation short. It’s the first I’ve received in months and, no matter how our estranged relationship may impact the situation, it’s the only message that matters.

Vik has sent me his address and a very simple message.

See you soon, Hannah.

Chapter Two

Vik

Fuck.

Hannah hasn’t even made it through the door, and she’s already driving me crazy.

After she gets out of her Uber, she stares up in wide-eyed disbelief at my house. Her tits jiggle as soon as her feet land on solid ground. I grit my teeth tightly at the sight.

Even if I didn’t want to look, her tank top doesn’t give me a choice. She’s wearing a spaghetti-strap crop top that barely covers her stomach. And don’t get me started on the way it clings to her. The damn thing looks a size too small, given how it squeezes every curve into the perfect place.

It’s almost as if she chose it on purpose to get a reaction out of me. She definitely shouldn’t taunt me.

God, I should be ashamed of myself. Frothing at the mouth for my little stepsister who’s down on her luck. But she isn’t so little anymore, is she? Long gone are the braces and pigtails from our youth, replaced by a woman’s curves.

A slow breath catches in my throat as she reaches the top of the staircase.

This was a terrible idea. Necessary, maybe. But terrible all the same.

I’d have extended the same offer to her, had she not tickled the devil inside me. The history we share, however brief it may have been in our short years together, proved to me that Hannah was one of the good ones. Kindness spilled out of her in ways that left me jealous and, no matter how hard I tried to push her away, she’d shrug it off. Offer me a warm smile and a cup of tea to soothe my troubles when I slipped into one of my… episodes.

I open the door, deciding that reliving the sting of the past is for another day.

“This place is incredible,” Hannah says. It almost makes me smile.

“Good. Maybe you’ll get more use out of it than I do,” I say, ushering her inside.

She steps past me and her warm brown eyes light up to the point of twinkling as she inspects my home. Its open-plan design doesn’t leave much to the imagination. A furnished living room I never use adjoins a dining room that shares a similar fate. A counter separates us from the kitchen, and a door leads out one side of that to the laundry room and eventually, the backyard.

On the other side, there’s even less to see. Bookshelves are stocked with novels I’ve never read. There’s a fireplace I’ve never lit and a bar that has bottles of liquor older than the house and still sealed. A few pillars run across the floor in a line, holding up the ceiling above our heads and, behind the bar, a glass double door leads to the back patio.

Everything you could ever need, all in one place.

“Goodness.” Hannah drops her bags and drifts through my home. I get a whiff of her sweet, strawberry-scented shampoo as she passes.

Goodness indeed.

I can’t pull myself away from her, as she inspects the art hanging on the walls and the accessories decorating the shelves. She studies them, the way an archeologist would study rare antiquities from some long-dead civilization. Every glance, every gentle touch bring a smile to her plump, luscious lips. She is intrigued, perhaps even perplexed, by how I live now, given we once shared the same three-bedroom suburban house a long time ago.