“Like you hurt me by yelling.”
Ow. “Yeah, like that.”
“But I’m not staying away from you because you hurt me. Not for long. I just needed to be by myself for a little while. I know you love me, and I love you.” She hunched her shoulders and made herself smaller. “I only said you couldn’t come into my room to hurt you back. You can come in.”
Reaching across the sagging cushions, Siena set her hand lightly on her sister’s. “I know, and that’s fair. I do love you, more than anything ever, and I always will.”
After a few seconds, Geneva slid her hand away. “Can I ask something else?”
“Sure.”
“Is it lonely? Protecting your heart, I mean.”
If Geneva had reached between the cushions, yanked out a butcher knife and plunged it into her chest, Siena’s heart wouldn’t have hurt more. The pain was so sudden and sharp, tears surged up and filled her eyes. She took a moment to collect herself before those tears could fall.
“Yeah, it’s lonely.” She stopped herself from saying that the ache of the loneliness was easier to live with than the agony of heartbreak; it seemed like the wrong lesson for a young girl to get.
If it was a wrong lesson to give Geneva, though, didn’t that make it a wrong way to live for herself? She wanted Geneva to find love, not to be afraid of it. She wanted her sister to be happy. Even if she had BRCA1, even if she chose to have the same preventative surgeries, she wanted her beautiful, brilliant, wonder of a sister to find someone who would love her, not despite the things she wasn’t but for all the things shewas.
Siena would have wanted that for herself, too. Shedidwant that.
I want these beautiful soft lips.
I want your soft, soft skin that smells like flowers.
I want the feel of your body under me.
I want you, Siena.
I want you, Siena.
You’re safe with me, baby.
What if Cooper hadn’t been acting? What if it hadn’t been a pity fuck?
That was far too much to think about right now, so she shut all those thoughts away and manufactured a smile for her sister. “But I have you, and you’re all the love I need.”
Geneva returned her smile with a more genuine version.
“Any more questions?”
“I want to talk about the other kinds of self-defense, the guns and stuff, but I’m hungry.”
“Okay, let’s get dinner started up again, and we’ll talk while we cook.”
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~oOo~
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Exhausted as she was, Siena couldn’t sleep. She could barely even keep her eyes closed. Her brain was packed solid with questions, regrets, self-recriminations, worries, ideas, and on and on and on. She gave her bed up before midnight and headed to the living room, where her laptop was. Might as well work on homeschooling stuff and get something productive done.
As she passed the door of their third bedroom, she opened it and peered around the dark space. Nothing but junk—stuff of their mom’s they’d moved but had never unpacked, a dining room chair that had broken and needed repair, a small pile of trash bags full of clothes and shoes Geneva had outgrown, and just random junk.
It was in this room because Siena had intentions for it. Repair the chair, maybe someday use Mom’s things, take Geneva’s too-small clothes to the consignment shop, something.
She didn’t think she was a hoarder, but she’d always been poor. Her mother had been poor, and her grandmother, and so on. Keeping hold of things that might be fixed, that might still have some use, or that could be sold for a few pennies was baked into the family DNA by now. A more benign mutation than the other one.