The Sister I Raised Took My Bed And My Man Chapter 02

The Sister I Raised Took My Bed And My Man Chapter 02

Julian shoved the cigarettes back into his pocket. His voice was heavy. “I did you wrong. Every dollar you wired Ivy, I’ll pay back, every cent. The house is in your name. I won’t set foot in it again.”

He paused.

“I’m only asking one thing. Ivy really does love you. Don’t let what I did wreck things between you two.”

I wanted to laugh. I was so far past angry I couldn’t even find the energy for it.

“You knew being with my sister was wrong. So why the hell did you do it?”

His jaw tightened. It took him a long time to answer.

“Elena, there are things I couldn’t control. What’s done is done, and I will make this right however I can.”

“If this gets out, Ivy will be the one who gets shredded. You don’t want to see your sister turned into gossip, do you?”

“I’ll take her and leave tomorrow. Stay at the Marriott off the highway tonight. I already booked a room. Just give them your name at the front desk.”

He turned and stepped into the elevator, leaving me standing there alone.

My phone buzzed. A text from him with the hotel address, followed by one word: I’m sorry.

I stared at that word for a long time.

Right then, above me, there was a light still burning in my apartment.

I was the one who’d changed that lightbulb with Julian before I left. Now it was shining on someone else.

This city had millions of lights. 　　Not one of them was on for me.

I crouched down at last, buried my face in my knees, and let my shoulders shake.

I didn’t go to his hotel. I drove the beltway all night instead, circling the city until the sun came up.

The next morning, I went to the old part of town.

There was a flower shop on the corner. Chloe Dawson’s Floral Shop. My college roommate, Chloe Dawson, owned it.

After Ivy’s ex-husband threw her out, I’d hired a lawyer for her fight and asked Chloe to give Ivy a low-stress job at the shop. I paid her wages myself and told Chloe to keep quiet about it.

Chloe had laughed at me over the phone. “Elena. Why do you go harder for that sister of yours than you ever do for yourself?”

Ivy was standing outside the shop in her apron, crouched on the ground repotting a plant.

She spotted me, and the garden trowel clattered to the sidewalk. 　　“Elena? How did you know I was here…”

I didn’t answer. I pushed through the door.

Ivy scrambled after me, dragging over a chair and wiping it down with her sleeve over and over. “Here, sit. Let me get you some water…”

She spun around too fast and knocked into a display rack. The watering can tipped and flooded the floor, soaking her shoes.

She glanced down at her wet feet, then back up at me. She stood there frozen, utterly lost, like a kid who’d been sent to the principal’s office.

And suddenly I was back in the past.

She was eight when Mom died. She couldn’t sleep alone at night. She had to wrap herself around my arm just to close her eyes.

Even when she got older, she wouldn’t let go. She followed me everywhere. My little shadow I could never shake.

“Elena.” Her voice pulled me back. “I know you hate me.”

“But I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen. I don’t even know how it got to this point…”

She lifted her head, her eyes red-raw.

“I know you’ve been good to me my whole life. I know that. But you’re always so busy. You’re always fixing my problems, but you never stop long enough to just… hear me. Julian’s different.”

“He asks me what I had for lunch. He remembers every little thing I say. He actually picks up the phone when I wake up from a nightmare at two in the morning.”

“You always said you wanted someone to be good to me. Well, now I have that. So why aren’t you happy for me?”

I listened to her, self-pitying and self-righteous all at once and I nearly laughed.

I spent sixteen years raising her, and she turned out to be this ungrateful. 　　“Ivy, name one thing you ever asked for that I didn’t give you.”

“Your tuition. Your rent. Your living expenses. The lawyer fees for your divorce. The credit cards you maxed out. The money that man stole from you. Have you ever sat down and added up how much I’ve spent on you over the years?”

“But the one thing I never saw coming? I raised my own sister, and she took my boyfriend.”

She dropped her head. Her lips trembled. Tears hit the wooden floor of the shop.

“I was twelve years old doing other kids’ homework for cash. Fifteen, waiting tables at some diner with hot grease splattered all up my arm, the scars are still there.”

“Twenty, working overtime at the office until I puked blood. I rode to the hospital in an ambulance, and there was nobody sitting next to me.”

I shoved my sleeve up and showed her the faded white marks on my forearm. 　　“You don’t know any of this, because I never told you.”

She stared at the scars. The color drained from her face.

“Ivy, I gave you half my life, sixteen years. And this is how you pay me back?”

“You put on my silk slip. You got into my bed. You curled up in my boyfriend’s arms.”

She slid down onto the floor crying, her apron smeared with dirt.

I crouched in front of her, looking at her with something cold and final.

Everything I remembered about us had turned ugly.

“Ivy. Whatever you wanted, if I could give it, I already did.”

“But the things I won’t give, you don’t get to take. You don’t have the right.”