No. Shit. Please don’t let her do this.
“Tria, it’s you. I swear to you, I never wanted Rain the way I want you.”
She laughs humorlessly, and her hand caresses my cheek in a way that almost tells me she’s saying goodbye.
She stands, and I stand, too, circling the chair and blocking her path. She looks up at me, and that’s when I see the tears glistening in her eyes.
“Give me your phone,” she says softly, and I quickly oblige, not giving a damn why she needs it.
She takes it and scrolls through something before handing it to me. “I’m your sexy girl. The one with a nude photo
and a good time attached to her name. I realize it turned into a little more, but that was the foundation of us. Relationships like that don’t last. You never even had sex with Rain, but yet this is what you have for her.”
She takes the phone and scrolls through it again. My heart starts thudding in my ears, and my air becomes heavier. When she hands the phone back to me, I curse myself for my stupid fucking system.
“Your perfect girl. The picture says it all, right alongside her cherished name. She’s your dream girl, and I’m the substitute—a poor man’s Rain.”
She starts to move, but I drop my phone and pull her to me, crushing my lips to hers in a desperate attempt to keep her. She kisses me back, but whimpers against my lips. When she pushes me away, I don’t resist.
“Tria, I realize that’s how it looks. In the beginning, I was still sprung on Rain. I never changed her name. And yeah, you were initially my sexy girl. But things change. You’re everything to me,” I promise her.
Her lip trembles, and the first tear falls from her eyes as she reaches up and touches my lips with her fingers.
“Then why did you decide to keep this a secret from me?”
That’s the final nail in my coffin. I can tell it.
“Because I didn’t want to lose you.”
She shakes her head. “No. You wanted to tell me. Dane didn’t want Rain hurt. Which means you also didn’t want to hurt Rain. I heard what Dane said. Was he lying?”
The hopeful look in her eyes has my heart breaking more. “No,” I say in a reluctant whisper. “I didn’t want to hurt her, but I also didn’t want to lose you.”
She smiles, but it’s such a sad, resigned, defeated smile that tears find my eyes for the first time since I was a kid. “I wish I knew that was true. But how can I? One thing I always loved about you was your honesty. It might be brutal at times, but it was reliable. Now… I feel like I don’t know what to believe, Kode. There’s nothing but lies and secrets and lies to keep those secrets.”
I start to object, to tell her I’ll never lie to her again, but she adds, “And I can’t be the girl that keeps getting looked over. I thought… I really thought what we had was too good to be true. Now I know why. For what it’s worth, Rain missed out. I would have loved to have been loved by you.”
If she ripped my heart out with her bare hands, it would hurt less.
***
TRIA
“Tria, I do—”
“Don’t, Kode. Don’t finish that sentence. Not now. You don’t want to lose me, and that means so much. But it’s not enough. I can’t compete with my sister, and you’ve been in love with her for eleven years.”
I just want out of here before I drop to the ground and cry myself into dust. If I had realized it would hurt this much to fall in love, I never would have risked it. It’s too much.
The knot in my chest makes it hard to breathe. The lump in my throat has me barely able to swallow. And the tears in my eyes are slowly starting to drip out despite my attempts to restrain them.
When Kode admitted that it was him, I realized he was trying to let Rain go. But only because he couldn’t ever have her. It’s agonizing, but it’s understandable. And I saw it coming. I really did, but I fooled myself into believing that I could one day be the only one he saw.
The second choice sister. That’s me. And I’m so sick of it.
Now I’m hurting him by forcing him to see this as it is. I know he hasn’t been doing this to me on purpose. Not even he is an asshole like that. And if it wasn’t for Rain, I’d be enough for him. But I’m not. He just can’t see that, and I’m not willing to try outshining eleven years’ worth of devotion.
“Kode, if you care about me at all, please let me walk away right now. Don’t make me fall apart in front of you.”