We aren’t picking up Marie today because she had an early morning dentist appointment. So it’s just Harper and me.
Harper stares out the window at the manicured hedges and perfectly trimmed lawns of our neighborhood. But I can tell she’s not seeing any of it. She’s somewhere else. Somewhere I don’t get to go.
Ever since Z walked through our door, something’s shifted. The whole dynamic—Harper, me, the house. All of it. It’s like someone rearranged the furniture in the dark, and now I keep stubbing my toe on things I thoughtI understood.
And it’s not just jealousy.
Okay. Maybe it is.
But there’s also this sick, sinking feeling that I’m losing something I never had the right to want in the first place.
Mom’s always talking abouthealthy communication. About how assumptions destroy relationships.
So I try. Itryto be better. To sound casual, even though I’m slowly imploding from the inside out.
“How are you feeling now that Z’s here?”
Harper jumps, like I startled her awake. Or like she forgot I was in the car.
“Oh.” Her voice is rough. She glances at me—just for a second—and then looks away so fast it feels like a door slammed shut.
And my chest goes cold.
Because something’soff. Did something happen?
What happened?
She was downstairs with him for over an hour last night. I tried not to think about it. Tried to focus on calculus homework at the kitchen table at two in the morning for the thinnest of excuses to be nearby, like that equation was more important than the sound of Harper’s laugh bleeding through the floorboards.
But now? The way she won’t meet my eyes, the way she curls inward like she’s hiding something?—
I can’tnotspiral about it.
“It’s fine,” she says flatly. “I’m… fine. You know.”
Idon’tknow! That’s the entireproblem.
“No, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.” I pause, then add, “You two are clearly… close.”
The word feels wrong in my mouth.Close.Like I didn’t spend the entire breakfast watching their unspoken language and wondering if I was the only one who didn’t understand it.
“Yeah.” She still won’t look at me. “He’s like my only family.”
Family.
It should make me feel better and kill my doubts.
But the way she says it—soft and sad andfinal—makes me feel like I just got kicked out of a room I thought I had the key to.
Because technically, I’m family too. Her stepbrother. But that hasn’t stopped us from… everything we’ve done.
And suddenly I can’t breathe around the question rising in my throat.
I don’t want to ask it. IknowI shouldn’t. Iknowhow it’ll make me sound. Jealous. Controlling. Insecure.
It pops out anyway: “Have you ever slept with him?”
The second the words are out and hanging in the air, I want to drag them back down and swallow them whole.