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A growl of anger rips from me. “Fuck no,” I snarl. “You’re not disgusting. Our situation fucking sucks. The universe is a sick, sadistic pervert. But you? You’re everything right and beautiful in the world. That’s why I can’t be around you. You are that sweet glimmer of light I want so badly. It’s a temptation and a gift I’ll never have. It’s cruel to tease either one of us with it.”
“I can’t lose you,” she whispers. “I can’t.”
“You won’t,” I vow, feeling my promise down to my marrow.
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either.”
“By phone? Just Sage and Mars by phone?”
I let out a heavy sigh of relief. “Yeah. It’ll have to be enough. At this point, I’ll take what I can get. Talking to you makes this pain in my chest lessen. But seeing you? It’d rip back open and I can’t promise what that’d do to either one of us.”
“It’s enough,” she says in a fierce, teary voice. “It’s enough.”
I spend the next hour listening to her sniffle and breathe. As I memorize every single thing about her, I curse my very existence.
If there’s a master of this universe, one day I will find him and cut his fucking throat for this.
I so fucking will.
Sage
The colors on my canvas don’t look right. The greens are too dark and the blues are too muddy. Maybe it’s just the way I see things now.
Nothing is bright.
Instead of painting a lush lakeside, I end up throwing navy and plum on my palette. Soon, my brush is streaking through the muddled blue and dull green until it’s all covered. It looks like a night sky with all the deep swirls of color.
It looks like the night sky above the field Mars loves to go to when he needs to clear his mind. I wonder how many times he’s found himself there since finding out I’m his sister.
Tears prick my eyes and I set my brush down. Dark paint splashes across my knuckles. I don’t mind the splatter. It matches the way I feel on the inside.
How did I not see that we had the same unruly hair? How did I miss those gray flecks in his eyes? Why was I so quick to write off how we were the only two people in the world who clicked the way we did?
Well…maybe we weren’t the only people in the world who clicked, but it sure as hell felt that way. Whenever I was beside him, whenever my hand was tucked away in his, or his lips were on mine, it felt like we were the only people in the world.
My lips tremble every time I think about him. Every time I picture those denim blue eyes, my stomach turns into knots. Nausea smacks against me and I wrap my arms around myself.
I’m disgusting.
I know Mars is my brother. We share DNA and I still can’t stop myself from thinking about him in ways sisters should never think about their brothers. I can’t stop imagining the way his mouth felt on my neck or the way his fingers felt inside of me.
I need to focus on something else.
Anything else.
I throw my things in my black messenger bag and head downstairs. Dad walks through the front door. He’s wearing khakis and a polo shirt. He must have just come from the golf course.
He pauses when he sees me. Concern weighs the corners of his mouth down. “Hey, kiddo,” he greets and rubs my back a little as he walks past me. “Where you headed?” His brown eyes glance at my bag then back up at me.
“To study,” I tell him. I really just need to get out of my room. It doesn’t feel like my refuge anymore. It feels like a prison full of sour memories. I keep replaying the day Mom caught Mars and I right before we had sex.
The thought makes me burn with shame and I hold my head down. Dad has no idea what thoughts I’m torturing myself with, but he sighs as if he’s in my head. “I hate seeing you like this, Sage. You wanna talk about it?”
I think about Mom telling me not to talk about it. To just let it blow over. I shake my head and try to give him a small smile, but it falls flat on my lips.
“I’m fine, Dad. Just got a lot on my mind. That’s why I’m going to study. The best thing to do when my mind is foggy is study, right?” It sounds like some regurgitated bullshit my mother would say, but her bullshit is getting me through the toughest time of my life.
Maybe Mom wears that painted on smile for a reason?
I wonder if she’s in as much pain as I am right now. How is she even functioning?
