1
Present
The house was too quiet after their parents left for the weekend, the kind of quiet that made every creak of the floorboards sound like a confession.
Elias stood in the hallway outside her door, palm pressed flat against the wood as if he could absorb her through it. Inside, Mara was humming along to something soft and distant, probably folding laundry the way she always did, methodically, sleeves first, then the collar smoothed down like she was apologizing to the fabric. He knew every small ritual of hers the way astronomers know constellations.
He had loved her since he was seven and she was ten, when she carried him home after he fell off his bike and split his knee open. She’d pressed her forehead to his and whispered, “Don’t cry, Eli. I’ve got you.” The blood had soaked into her yellow sundress and she never once complained. That was the moment the world narrowed to the shape of her face.
Now they were nineteen and twenty-two, and the feeling had grown teeth.
He knocked once, soft.
“Come in,” she called, distracted.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in an oversized hoodie ...his hoodie, actually, stolen months ago and never returned. Her black hair was twisted up in a knot, loose strands brushing her neck. Elias felt the air leave his lungs the way it always did when she looked at him without knowing what she did to him.
“I made tea,” he lied. He hadn’t. He just needed a reason to be in her presence.
Mara smiled the easy, careless smile she gave everyone who wasn’t a threat. “You’re sweet. I’m okay.”
He lingered in the doorway. “You sure?”
“Eli.” She laughed, gentle. “Go read or something. You hover when you’re bored.”
If only she knew it wasn’t boredom.
Night fell. He lay awake listening to the house settle, counting the steps between their rooms...twelve, always twelve. He’d paced it enough times to have the number carved into his ribs.
At 2:13 a.m. he gave up and went to her.
She was asleep on her stomach, one arm dangling off the edge of the bed, mouth slightly open. Moonlight cut across her shoulder blades like a blade. Elias knelt beside her the way pilgrims kneel. He didn’t touch her...he never did, not anymore, but he let himself look until his chest ached hard enough to bruise.
He whispered the things he could never say when she was awake.
“I would burn the whole world down if it made you look at me the way I look at you.”
“I know it’s wrong. I knew the first time I dreamed about kissing you and woke up crying because you’re my sister.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t stop. I tried.”
Mara stirred. For one heart-stopping second he thought she’d heard, but she only sighed and rolled over, pulling the blanket higher.
He stayed until dawn crept in, pale and accusing.
Morning came with the smell of coffee. Mara was in the kitchen, barefoot, hair wild, singing off-key to the radio. She grinned when she saw him.
“Morning, creep. You look like you saw a ghost.”
If only you knew.
She handed him a mug without asking how he took it, two sugars, no milk, exactly right. Their fingers brushed; static shot up his arm. She didn’t notice.
He watched her move around the kitchen, sunlight catching on the fine hairs at her temple, and felt the familiar helpless rage: at himself, at biology, at the universe that made her his sister and then made him love her like this.
Later, when she hugged him goodbye...quick, platonic, the way she’d hugged him a thousand times, he held on half a second too long. She patted his back like he was a nervous dog.
“Text me when you get bored,” she said, already turning away.
He stood in the doorway long after she disappeared, fingers pressed to the place on his ribs where her head had rested for three merciful seconds.
In his room he opened the drawer where he kept the things he couldn’t throw away: the yellow sundress with the faded bloodstain, a movie ticket from when she took him to see a film he hated just because he’d asked, the stupid plastic ring she won at an arcade when they were kids and slipped onto his finger laughing, “Now you’re stuck with me forever.”
He held the ring until the edges cut into his palm.
Forever, she’d said.
She hadn’t meant it the way he did.
He never cried...not anymore, but that night he pressed his face into the sundress that still, impossibly, smelled like her, and shook so hard the bed frame rattled.
He would love her until it killed him.
And she would never, ever know.
