Page 44 of You Were Always Mine
Minutes stretch. The party thunders beneath us, muffled through the floor, but in here it’s only us. Her and me. The only thing I can hear is her ragged breaths; the only thing I can feel is the fragile weight of her curled against me.
Then she shifts, just enough to lift her head. Her eyes are red, rimmed with shadows, her lips trembling as she looks up at me.
‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ she whispers, broken.
The words gut me.
I shake my head, but she presses on, her voice cracking. ‘I’m not your problem, Kai. You were right… we need to just be brother and sister.’
Her throat works like the words hurt, like they’re poison in her mouth, but she still says them.
Brother and sister.
The words rip through me, crueller than any blade. I can’t breathe for a second, can’t speak, can only stare at her face—wet, bruised by tears, the soft line of her mouth twisting as if she’s breaking in half just to give me the absolution she thinks I want.
And all I want to do is scream she’s wrong.
Her words are still echoing in my skull when I force myself to speak, low, rough, my thumb still stroking her damp cheek.
‘Scar,’ I whisper, ‘who touched you?’
Her eyes flicker, glassy, broken, and she shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me.’ My chest tightens, my voice harsher than I mean, but she only curls closer, like she can hide inside me.
I pull her tighter anyway, arms caging her, holding her against me as if keeping her here will fix it, will erase it. But when her wet eyes lift to mine again, the words that spill from her mouth make my blood run cold.
‘I can’t stop seeing it,’ she chokes, her lips trembling. ‘Feeling it. Kai… will you take it away?’
The world tilts. My body goes still, my breath frozen, because I don’t trust what she’s asking me. I don’t trust myself.
Tears slide down her cheeks, spilling into the hollow of my throat. Her hands fist my shirt like she’s drowning, like I’m her last air.
Then she whispers the words that shatter me clean in half.
‘Kai… please don’t be my brother right now.’ Her voice cracks, splinters. ‘Will you replace where he touched me? Take it away… burn it from my memory.’
My chest caves. My heart stops. And for the first time in my life, I don’t know if I’m strong enough to save her—or if she’s asking me to destroy us both.
The words hang between us, jagged and impossible, and my body goes rigid. Every muscle locks, my breath caught somewhere deep in my chest.
Please don’t be my brother right now.
It shreds through me, cuts deeper than anything she’s ever said.
Her eyes are wide, wet, pleading, searching my face like I’m the only answer that exists. Her fingers twist in my shirt, desperate, her whole body trembling against me.
And I can’t move.
‘Scar…’ My voice is raw, unsteady, my forehead pressing hard to hers as if the closeness will steady me. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’
Her breath hitches, a sob tearing out of her, shaking through both of us. ‘I do,’ she whispers. ‘I do know. I can’t carry it, Kai. I can’t. Please.’
My jaw clenches until it aches. My hands tremble where they hold her, one buried in her hair, the other pressed to the curve of her back.
Everything in me screams to give her what she wants, to take it away, to burn out every trace of whoever hurt her. But I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
Once I say yes, I’ll never come back.
