“I’ve missed you so much, and I’m so sorry,” she whispers against my chest. “The things I said…” Her words remind me of the last time we were together and of the same back-and-forth we’ve been having for years, both with ourselves and each other.

  Why can’t we just be together?

  “Shhh.” I brush her dark hair back gently out of her face and brush my lips against her forehead. I resist the urge to drag my lips down the slope of her nose, kissing her for every cute freckle against her warm brown skin. “I know.”

  “I thought you were mad at me.” She slowly pulls away, and only then do I really drink her in. It’s one of those days in October that makes you think it may still be summer and not slowly trickling into fall. She’s wearing a short black dress that clings to her curves. Curves I’ve explored with my hands and mouth so many times, I know them by heart. Her hair barely brushes her shoulders after a recent chop that I learned from my weekly—read, daily—stalk of her Instagram, falls around her in waves more likely brought on by the humidity than a curling iron. The fire-engine-red lipstick she always wears paints her lips, and I run my fingers over my neck, wondering if she marked me when she ran them over the skin like she’s been known to do.

  She sits down, and I follow suit, pulling my sunglasses off and setting them next to the glasses of water I’d ordered us even though I know in a few moments she’ll order a dirty martini and I’ll order bourbon.

  “When am I ever mad at you?” I ask because it is rare for me to be. I can recall a handful of times, and they all involve her being reckless. A few times, she tried to entertain another guy when we were younger to make me jealous.

  She fusses with her hair, pushing it behind one of her ears, and my eyes flit to the movement, wanting to see the tattoo behind her ear. It’s small, but my eyes could see it from a mile away due to how many times I’ve touched, kissed, and licked it. A small “W” meant for Wild that I’d taken her to get on her eighteenth birthday to match the half a dozen tattoos I had for her at the time. In the year we've been apart, I’ve gotten three more that reminded me of her. I can already picture the look on her face when and if she ever discovers them. I rub the S on the inside of my wrist for Saint, and I watch her eyes drop to the movement.

  “I hate it when we don’t talk.” Her eyes are watery again, and she shakes her head.

  We didn’t talk much this past year. Growing up, we talked all the time, every day, all day. Throughout high school and college, there was never more than a few hours between messages, phone calls, or FaceTimes. But over the past few years, communication has dwindled to spans of weeks or even months without speaking. It crushed me just as much as it did her. But it’s like I told her before: sometimes it’s just too hard to talk to her and know that it can never be more than this.

  But even when we weren’t talking, we’ve spent every October seventh together since that initial day, and this year marks the twentieth anniversary. Tomorrow, it will be twenty years since Halle’s father was killed while we hid between the aisles in a convenience store. Twenty years since I held my screaming stepsister in my arms, trying to shield her innocent eyes away from her father on the ground, dead from a gunshot wound, all while trying to dial 911 on the convenience store phone. I’d only been five years old when I became Halle’s protector and safe space and the only person she talked to for months while she tried to deal with the trauma of becoming an orphan at the age of four.

  I’d probably taken those jobs a little too seriously, and our trauma bond transitioned into a codependency that, years later, we still haven’t been able to shake.

  “You know you can always call me when you need me,” I tell her.

  “I always need you. That’s the problem.” She wipes at the tear threatening to move down her cheek. “According to you,” she adds, and I remember how shitty I felt saying that to her once during an argument. I told her she needed to learn to stand on her own and that I couldn’t always fix everything for her. I couldn’t be everything for her all the time. The problem is, I want to be everything for her.

  The bigger problem that I have trouble admitting out loud is that I barely know how to stand on my own without her.

  “I’ve apologized for that. You know I didn’t mean it, but I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, Saint.” I reach across the table and place my hand over hers before running my thumb gently over her knuckles. “I was just…frustrated.” I am always fucking frustrated when it comes to her. That was also the problem with getting into a fight with someone who was embedded in your bones. You know what to say to destroy them, and sometimes you do just that. Halle and I are so intertwined that I wouldn’t be surprised if, with enough effort, we could read each other’s minds. I know the depths of her heart and her soul and the darkest parts of her mind because we grew together, and those dark parts matched the same ones in me.

  The ones we shared when she crawled into my bed every night until my mother told us that it wasn’t appropriate. That we were too old to share a bed or for her to sit on my lap or cuddle with me on the couch.

  It didn’t stop us from doing that and a whole lot more.

  The server comes to our table to take our drink order, and to no surprise, she orders a dirty martini. “So tomorrow…” she starts once he departs the table. Before I can respond, she continues, “Are you staying over tonight?”

  “Is that a good idea?” I ask her even though I already know the answer.

  “Are you seeing someone?” Her brows furrow, and I can see the jealousy and hurt unraveling all over her gorgeous face.

  “No,” I say. I’ve yet to tell her that I’ve never really been able to entertain anyone because of how much she still consumes my thoughts. What’s the point? Everyone who knows us considers us siblings, and neither of us knows how to tell people that we are probably the only two individuals in the world who don’t consider us that way.

  “Then…why?” She bites down on her bottom lip. “It’s what we do, and it’s the only thing that gets me through the day.”

  My heart squeezes painfully in my chest, thinking about how hard tomorrow is for us both, and the coping mechanism we’d discovered when we were teenagers that bloomed out of feelings we shouldn’t have had for each other in the first place. “Remember what you said last year?”

  “Well, yeah… but I was just upset that you were leaving. I didn’t mean that I don’t still need you… or this.”

  “You said we couldn’t keep doing this, Halle.” I give her a look that I know she can read, and it more than likely pisses her off.

  Her chocolate eyes widen in annoyance, most likely at my use of her full name. “You promised.”

  “I promised I’d always be there with you on October seventh,” I tell her even though I’m sure I promised her more than that in the moments just after coming inside her, but I’m trying to do the right thing. “You’re right, we can’t keep doing this. It’s just… impossible, Halle.”

  “Stop with the Halle,” she grits out, and I can see the fire in her eyes that has the power to make my dick hard if I focus too much on it. I look away from her, trying to disassociate from the tingling feeling shooting through me brought on by her irritation, and I let out a breath through my nose.

  “It’s not healthy for either one of us.”

  Those sexy red lips form a straight line, and she raises her eyebrows. I can already tell I’m not going to like what’s about to come out of her mouth. “Funny, neither was becoming an orphan at age four, but you roll with the punches.” She purses her lips, and it’s the first glimpse of her dark sarcasm that I’m very accustomed to.

  “That’s not fair, Saint. I was there too.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t, but you still have a parent. Two, in fact.” She holds up her index and middle fingers.

  “You still have a mother,” I argue, because my mother loves her unconditionally. Halle took a step back as she got older because she resented my mother for not supporting our feelings for each other.

  “Not biologically.”

  “So what?” I snap, annoyed at her usual argument. “You’re angry with her? I get it. I’m not happy about how she handled things either, but give her a break. Most parents worry about their kids going outside and getting into trouble. She couldn’t even relax when we were both home because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”

  I try not to dwell on the fact that my mother caught us in bed together more than once. She’d witnessed our looks and innocent touches that turned not-so-innocent overnight. She’d confiscated my phone once for breaking curfew and found a slew of texts no mother should ever see her son sending or receiving, let alone to and from the girl she was raising as her daughter. She’d had a front-row seat to us discovering our feelings for each other, and then our hormones, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  We started therapy very early, but once she learned what was going on, she forced us to talk to our respective therapists about our growing feelings toward each other. Both suggested needing space from each other, but Halle had no one. She had relatives who lived in different states, but I’d been adamant that she wasn’t leaving our house before she turned eighteen, and if she did, I was going with her.

  Almost a decade later, I get why my mother acted the way she did. We were from a smaller town in North Carolina, and what kind of mother would she look like if it got out that her kids, bloodlines be damned, were sleeping together?

  “You’re really defending her to me? After everything she said to us over the years? After making us feel like we were dirty or sick…or wrong?”

  “I think she was dealing with things the best she could…all by herself. She lost someone, too, Saint.” Even though I was there when it happened, I always felt like my feelings came third to both hers and Saint’s. He was my stepfather, but he was also Halle’s father and my mother’s husband, and I still had a dad who was present sometimes. So even though I lived with my mom and stepfather, it felt like I had to be the least affected.

  Neither Halle nor my mother did anything to make me feel that way, but I just thought I had to be strong for them both, especially since I was the only man left in the house. Even at the age of five, I was the one who made sure my mom was eating in those following weeks and that she woke up every morning, because what would happen to Halle and me if she didn’t?

  “I know, Sebastian,” she snaps, and I glare at her because her using my first name does the same thing to me that it does to her.

  I narrow my eyes at her. “Don’t use my name like it’s a swear word.”

  The server returns with our drinks, and she glares at me from across the table, her arms crossed over her chest and the sexiest fucking scowl on her face like she thinks it will move me. I know when she’s pissed about something, and more importantly, when she’s pissed at me, and neither is the cause for the look she’s giving me.

  “Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” the server asks.

  “Are you hungry?” I ask her, and she shakes her head as she takes a healthy sip of her martini. “When’s the last time you ate anything?” I know her schedule as well as I know my own, so I know she met me right after her last class of the day. She’s in her final year of graduate school and has days when she barely has time to eat anything but a protein bar or a bagel. “Not a snack, Saint,” I say before she has a chance to respond.

  She closes her mouth quickly and rolls her eyes at me before looking up at the server. “Can you give us just a few more minutes, please?” He disappears from the table with a nod, and she lifts the menu. “What looks good?” she asks, like we hadn’t just been having a back-and-forth about how we’ll be spending the anniversary of the worst day of our lives.

  “You want the crab dip?” I ask even though I already know the answer. If there’s crab dip on the menu, she’s ordering it.

  She nods. “And I’ll just get a salad.”

  “And then half of whatever I order?”

  She smiles that smile that used to have the power to make me do whatever she wanted.

  Hell, it still does.

  “I got a room while I’m in town,” I tell her, and I watch as the smile fades from her face. “I was thinking we could have lunch tomorrow, though? And maybe we could see a movie? Go to Central Park? What do you want to do?” She goes to respond, and I put up a hand. “Besides that.”

  “That’s all I want to do, and you’re annoying the shit out of me by acting like you don’t.”

  “Don’t swear at me,” I snap, and she glares back.

  “Don’t pull that bossy shit unless you’re planning to back it up with your dick,” she says with a saccharine smile and a flutter of her eyelashes. I can almost hear what she wants to say, which definitely involves that fucking D word that makes me want to fuck those perfect lips. The ones on her face, and then immediately the ones between her legs.

  “Saint…” I groan and drag a hand over my face, trying to will my dick down after Halle addressed it.

  She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why you’re being such a prude about it. Like we haven’t had sex a million times before. It’s just sex, Sebastian.”

  I frown as anger flashes through me because she knows how I feel about her, and I know how she feels about me. “Don’t reduce us to that. It’s never been just sex with us.” Not the first time or the four hundredth. It’s always meant something, and I’m pissed that she thinks she can say it doesn’t.

  She lets out a sigh, and she looks contrite, probably knowing she plucked a nerve. “I know, but…you’re freaking out.”

  “Because I’m worried we are screwing us both up for life.”

  “Did we ever have a shot at not being screwed up for life?” she responds instantly.

  “In some ways, I suppose no, but what if you meet someone?” I ask, referring to what she said last year. Even though the thought of her with someone else makes me sick, it’s something I may have to accept.

  “Where is this coming from? You’ve spent the past decade daring any guy to look my way.”

  “And I’m sorry for that.” Sort of.

  “I’m not. They were never going to give me what I needed anyway. You saved them from wasting their time and mine.” She shrugs and lets out what sounds like a sigh of defeat. “I know what I said last year. But, the reality of it is, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to give you up.”

  “So the alternative is what…we do this forever?”

  “At least until we fall out of love with each other.” I watch the goose bumps appear all over her arms despite the warm temperatures, and I can see the discomfort on her face, probably brought on by those words. “Unless that’s already happened for you.”

  “It hasn’t,” I tell her honestly. “I’m not sure I ever will. Our feelings developed in response to trauma, and unless that trauma somehow disappears from our memory, I don’t think our feelings ever will.”

  A ghost of a smile pulls at her lips, but it disappears as quickly as it comes because she realizes I’m still not agreeing to what she wants. It’s what I want too if I’m being honest, but I know we can’t keep going down this road.

  “Can’t we just have dinner?” I ask her as I lean back in my chair. I watch as her eyes follow the movement and her front teeth sink into her bottom lip. We were so in tune with each other's every move when we were together and knew exactly which moves turned the other on. So when her eyes lift to meet mine, and she raises an eyebrow, I can’t stop the chuckle that leaves my lips at her unspoken words. “Tell me about school.”

  “You mean you don’t already know?” She mirrors my movements, leaning back in her chair, and my eyes immediately go to her tits that are on display. I bite my bottom lip thinking about all the times I’ve had my teeth scraping across her nipples, licking down the valley of her breasts to that delicious space between her legs that I spent years being obsessed with. Still am. “Stop looking at my tits, Sebastian.”

  I snort before taking a sip of my drink, trying not to fixate on what her nipples feel like between my lips. “You wore that dress on purpose.”

  “Obviously.” She smirks, and my dick throbs painfully.

  “You wore that to class? Seems you’re a bit overdressed.” I’d been obsessed with Saint’s body since I was fifteen, and suddenly, she had these curves I hadn’t seen before. I’ll never forget the gasp that left her lips when she felt me rising beneath her when she’d perched herself in my lap in nothing more than one of her little flimsy tennis dresses. I’d sputtered nervously, gotten up, and locked myself in the bathroom for almost an hour before avoiding her for the next week.

  “Nope,” she says, popping the p. “I changed in the bathroom on campus.”

  “So just to torture me.”

  “And what, you wore a backward hat…because why? Bad hair day?” She snorts. “You haven’t had a bad hair day in your life. Bastard,” she grumbles, and I grin at her, having known the hat would affect her.

  “Your hair looks great, Saint. I love the cut.” She tucks some hair behind her ear flirtily and smiles like she always does when I compliment her. Like I’ve just given her the answers to all life’s questions.

  “Thank you.” I cross my arms over my chest, letting the white T-shirt I'm wearing pull against my arms. I watch as she drags her eyes over my tattoos. More importantly, all the tattoos I have for her. “You know, for someone who said we couldn’t fool around tonight, you’re surely pulling out all of your usual moves to seduce me.”

  I chuckle and drag a hand across my jaw, feeling more stubble than usual because I know Saint loves it when I have a little more facial hair. “My breathing seduces you, Saint.” This is true, but I also know it turns Halle on when I’m wearing a backwards hat, a white T-shirt, and jeans, and even more when I have more facial hair than usual.

  Her mouth falls open, and she slaps the table while the most genuine smile she’s had since we sat down crosses her face. “It does not!”

  I laugh again because I love this version of Saint most of all: carefree and funny and happy. “It’s okay. Everything you do seduces me.” I bite my bottom lip, slowly dragging my eyes down her face to settle on her mouth. “I’m just trying to resist.”