Page 26 of Fracture

“This isn’t normal, is it?” I ask once I’ve calmed down a little. “I mean, there’s something wrong with me.”

Dr Varden shakes her head, her blunt bob brushing against the shoulders of her artfully draped navy silk blouse. “Not at all. These feelings you describe are completely normal.”

“Normal?”

Dr Varden nods, her face maintaining that neutral demeanor. “Familial attraction after an extended time apart is quite common in siblings, even biological ones. That’s not to say that such relationships are advisable, much less appropriate, but it does happen.”

“Is it different because Levi’s my step-brother? Like, does that make it… OK?”

Dr Varden folds her hands in her lap, a picture of composure. “Doyouthink it’s OK?”

I try to swallow down the lump in my throat. “No.”

“And why is that?”

“Because… Because he’s my brother. At least, that’s how people see him, that’s how people have always seen him.”

Dr Varden mulls over my words for a few seconds, before raising her eyes to the ceiling for a moment. “Stella, when you say you want to have sex with your step-brother, what do you mean by that?”

“I-I mean, I want to… I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”

She clasps her hands on her knee. “Is it possible you’re simply looking for closeness, and it’s manifesting as a desire for sexual interactions?”

I stare at her for a moment, trying to find a way of telling this demure professional that I had a screaming orgasm while I imagined Levi spanking me and tying me to the bed so he could fuck me and punish me for being a brat. That I’d taunted my stepbrother and pushed his buttons until I could see the thread of self-control come completely undone. That I’d spent an entire night with a vibrator buried inside me to try and alleviate the desire to have Levi and Dylan in my bed, to imagine all the ways they could both fuck me.

How do you tell someone all of that without sounding like a complete freak?

“I don’t know.” I finally reply, and shrug weakly. “It’s all so twisted, and having them both so close, it makes me miss all that time we lost, and I want that back, if that makes sense?”

Dr Varden smiles warmly. “Of course it does. It’s perfectly normal to have trouble compartmentalizing feelings of intimacy with your history.”

Her words aren’t meant to hurt me, but they may as well be a slap.

“Because I’m broken, you mean?” I swallow hard, that damn lump just growing and growing with every word. “I can’t have a normal relationship with my own step-brother because I’ve never known what a normal, healthy, platonic relationship looks like?”

“You’re not broken, Stella. We’ve gone over this.” Dr Varden nudges the box of tissues closer to me, even though I’m not crying. “What happened to you hasn’t broken you, it shifted how you view the world. Trauma does that. It just requires a little shift in your behavior so you don’t engage in anything that could cause you harm.” The wordagainhangs on the end of thatsentence like a wailing ghost. She doesn’t say it, but she doesn’t have to.

“I don’t do that anymore,” I say, fighting the wavering in my voice. “I haven’t done that in a really long time.”

“I know, and you’ve done so well, Stella. And I don’t want you to feel shame over what happened. Engaging in risky sexual behaviours is very normal for victims of sexual assault, you know that.”

Risky sexual behavior. It’s such a sterile way to put it. It sounds almost harmless when she says it like that. It doesn’t even begin to describe what I did to myself. What I allowed men to do to me, all in the name of wanting to feel something, anything, other than the shame and sorrow that threatened to pull me down into a black hole and snuff out any light that existed within me.

“I don’t think this is like that,” I say slowly. “I’m not trying to hurt myself. I don’t want to hurt them either.”

“Did you have thoughts like this of your step-brother while you were growing up?”

Another question I have no idea how to answer. Because I didn’t. Not at first. He was just a stupid teenage boy whose mom happened to marry my dad. We fought and teased and stuck together, like friends do. I had no other siblings to compare the relationship to, so I didn’t know what that felt like.

It wasn’t until my 17th birthday, when he bought me a gold necklace, with a gold S charm, that something changed. His fingertips as they brushed against my collarbone, they didn’t feel like a brother’s hands. But I’d been involved with Dylan, and Levi was my brother, at least that’s how our parents sold it to the world. And my father hated them both equally, which made everything complicated anyway.

“I-I masturbated to the thought of him the other night,” I finally admit, expecting to feel sick but finding that theadmission makes my shoulders feel a little lighter. “That’s gross, right?”

“Stella, human emotions are complicated, and trauma makes them even more so.” She moves the tissue box closer again, even though I’m still not crying. “Have you talked to your stepbrother about these feelings?”

“Oh my god, no.” The thought has my cheeks burning.

“Is there any indication that he feels the same way?”

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