My Sister's Innocence - 2

Chapter 7



“We’ll go away,” Darian said after pacing the length of our dining room for the hundredth time. “We’ll spend so much time far away you will forget this ever happened.”



If I was a good brother I would be happy that Darian was not packing his bags and leaving Kayla after such debauchery, instead he was trying to fix it. To pretend it never happened. Well, he was not pretending it did not happen, he was pretending that all of the blame laid squarely on my shoulders, and perhaps, this time, it did. I do not know, I just know I was sitting as far as my family could place me from my sister while my sister huddled in a corner; her robe wrapped tightly around her suddenly frail looking figure, and was now deemed and object, not a real person. Her opinion was of no consequence though the entire situation actually revolved on her feelings.



“Who will forget?” I asked of Darian, though I had been told by Tristan I should not speak if I wanted to calm my family down. Who was he to play hero. He was nothing but a devil’s advocate and I wanted to pound his face in, but sadly he would probably win. Fucking older brothers.



“Kayla will,” Darian snapped at me with all the hatred he should be feeling right now. That I did not blame him, though I still wanted to pound him like I wanted to pound Tristan. I just generally felt like a primal Neanderthal at that moment and did not care who I hurt as long as at the end I could club my girl over the head and drag her into the cave where I would make her mine forever. That, of course, was the wrong feeling, or so I was told.



All this time my mother sat with her eyes glued to the table. I knew the look. It was her most disappointed look. The look of a woman on the edge. She had the same look when Blaine had been arrested for drunken driving, for the fifth time, locked up in jail for running a woman off the road, who was on her bike, and reminded that he was sleeping with every woman that walked on the planet. She thought nothing could be worse than him sleeping with the fourteen-year-old girl next door, the little goth girl who ended up being a lot more shy about her sexuality than people thought of those types of girls. She had nearly claimed rape, except she was absolutely in love with Blaine and was allowing him to get away with murder, until he was caught; now people treated him like a murderer.



Now my mother looked at me and realized it could get a lot worse.



Fuck.



My mother stood up, her rigid backbone showing not just in her perfect stance, but in her resolve to solve this ‘problem’. She turned to Kayla and Darian, pointedly ignoring me as best she could. “Darian, it is commendable that you are still willing to take my daughter away from all of this, and I think it best. You are both to go to Paris for the week, anyway, so go, and do not return. Ever.”



“Mom…” Kayla’s voice was finally squeaking out, quietly, but albeit there.



“What is it, Kayla?” our mother asked of her daughter. Her voice was cold, filled with the ice of disgust and hatred. Still, there was more to it than the ice. Her eyes looked to her daughter with warmth, understanding, that only a mother could truly have after such a debacle. Our mother was offering Kayla the out, perhaps unconsciously. She knew that if Kayla walked out that door that she would never return to this house again, most likely never to see her mother again. It would be too hard to repress the memories.

No matter Kayla’s choice tonight, she would never return to this house again.

I had every intention of making myself her choice.



“You would throw me away?” Kayla asked, her back now just as rigid. “You would leave me to the world for my mistakes?”



Our mother scoffed, a snort arising from her lips. Perhaps I had mistaken the warmth for something else. “That was more than a mistake. You either leave with Darian, as he is offering, or leave without Darian. Either way you will leave. You are no longer a part of this household.”



Kayla looked as if she had been struck. She reared back from her sudden standing position. She looked around from face to face and saw blankness, even on my own. I could not believe our mother disowned Kayla and not me, I was the one who had pushed her into the earth, I was the one who had initiated it many times. Why was Kayla the evil that our mother was purging from this household?



“After everything I’ve done for you this is how I’m repaid,” our mother continued to squawk. “I knew I should never have taken a girl into my household.”



Everyone blinked collectively, even Darian. “What?” I do not know who asked the question, whether it was me or everyone or just Blaine. I saw lips move but sound was being blocked out by the roaring of my own blood pounding through my eardrums.



“Mom…” Tristan was now the only one with a level head. “This is not how you want to tell them.”



“What, that all of you but Grant are adopted?” my mother asked, her arms crossed against her chest. “I think now is as good a time as any.”



Kayla swayed and Darian had to catch her. I stood up and glared around the table. It was not possible. Kayla and I had the same coloring… no, we did not. And Blaine and Bryce were too red in the hair, Tristan was light, I was the only one who looked like mother and how was I…



My mother shrugged, she shrugged after such a confession, and sat down at the table. “Working at the hospital you see a lot of young mothers that do not want their children. My husband and I decided to take a few of them in. We adopted Kayla while I was in the hospital for giving birth to my only natural-born son. Grant was an accident, we thought we could not have children, but here he is. My little miracle.”



Tristan was the only one who’s face did not drop with the utter shock of the revelation. Even Darian appeared disturbed by the words that fell from my mother’s mouth. It changed the entire situation. Now Kayla was not sleeping with a blood-related brother, she was sleeping with a man she had been raised with. Still wrong, but not quite as wrong.



I have always underestimated my sister’s anger. “Wait, so you can easily give me up, just because I’m not your blood-related daughter, after twenty-five years. Yet, Grant is the one who forced himself on me, twice in this life, and he’s an angel. That’s fucked up.”



Kayla did not wait for our mother, or her fiancé, to react. She sauntered over to me and grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me up from my chair and to her. Her lips found mine like they were meant to be glued together. I did the only logical thing my brain could think of, I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her back.



“Kayla, Grant, stop that right this moment!” our mother screamed across the table, pushing herself away from the dinner table.



Kayla pulled away from my lips and glared across the table at my mother, her eyes ferocious, the fire inside of her burning, and I had to admit there was a fire inside of me that was excited and flaming. Perhaps it was finally winning, or perhaps it was having her this close to me, readily admitting finally that I was the one she wanted. It did not matter; all that mattered now was the next couple of minutes.



“I just want you to be happy,” our mother said, and I was sad to hear she was only speaking to Kayla. Her voice shivered as she spoke, her own tears clogged in her throat. “How can you be happy with someone you have thought of as your brother?”



“I’ll risk it,” Kayla interrupted before our mother could continue. “If you still wish to throw me away, that is fine, but it is Grant I have always wanted to be with, and your news gives me even more reason to want him now. He’s the one I love, Mom, not Darian, not anyone else.”



Darian was sputtering in the corner and remained ignored. “Is this what you really want?” our mother asked sadly.



My head was dizzy, my thoughts were jumbled, and all I could think was what a mistake we were making, but I was the one to speak out loud, I was the one to say the words. “This is what we really want.”



To tell the rest of our story would be to ruin a happy ending. Hardships happen to everyone and we had twenty-five years of being brother and sister to shake off if we wanted to start a real life, not just some occasional lust that had us on our knees quite often. Well, that was the happy part, it did not change, but Kayla threw away a future of riches and I threw away normality. The two of us moved out, and away from our family. Life was not perfect, it never is, but it was happy enough.



For now.