The Sister I Raised Took My Bed And My Man Chapter 03

The Sister I Raised Took My Bed And My Man Chapter 03

Julian showed up right then and found Ivy collapsed on the floor, sobbing so hard her whole body was shaking.

His expression darkened. He crossed the shop in three strides and hauled her up behind him.

“I told you, if you’ve got a problem, you come at me.”

He glanced back at Ivy, who was still trembling behind him, then swung his glare back toward me. The fury in his eyes was barely contained.

“She has a heart condition. You know that. Is there a reason you can’t say what you need to say without tearing her apart?”

I stared at him and let out a cold laugh.

“You’ve gotten pretty good at playing her human shield, Julian. When she first moved in, you wouldn’t even say her name. Now you’re her knight in shining armor?”

Julian straightened, full of righteous indignation. “You wanna dig up the past? Fine. All those years you raised her, how much money, how many favors, just name a number.”

“I’ll pay back every last cent. With interest. That what you want to hear?”

I looked at this man I no longer recognized, and I remembered him three years ago, when he was trying to win me over.

Dead of winter. He stood outside my office building waiting for me, holding hot roasted chestnuts against his chest so they wouldn’t get cold.

He never told me he was there because he didn’t want to interrupt my work. He just waited until his face was red from the wind.

I remembered thinking: This one. This one is good.

So good that I convinced myself every awful thing I’d ever survived had just been the universe saving up my luck so I could meet him.

And now here he was, ready to take everything between us, three years, a thousand late-night phone calls, too many embraces and kisses to count, all the things I thought were carved into my bones and reduce it all to a single cold number.

A one-time payout.

“Enough!” Ivy’s voice cut through.

She stepped out from behind him, her face soaked in tears, her chest heaving.

Julian reached for her on reflex, but she shoved his hand away.

She lifted her chin and fixed me with a look that was almost defiant.

“Elena, I know I did you wrong. I’ll owe you for the rest of my life and it still won’t be enough. But don’t just stand there acting so holier-than-thou.”

“You raised me for sixteen years. Every meal. Every piece of clothing. Every single dollar. I remember all of it. But you know what else I remember? That my whole life, the person I hated most… was you.”

“You had everything under control. Every last detail. And it just made me feel like I was nothing, like I couldn’t even get through one day without you holding me up.”

“I could never lift my head around you, so I fought like hell to get away. You wanna know why I married Travis? Because he said he’d take me somewhere else. Another city, far away.”

“Yeah, he screwed me over too. But this time? I’m not listening to you anymore.”

She reached over and laced her fingers through Julian’s. Ten fingers, locked tight.

“I’ve found my person. Hate me forever if you want, I’m never letting him go.”

“You’ve already got so much. Why can’t you just give him to me?”

Her words hit me like a physical blow. I stepped back. Then I stepped back again. I watched Julian’s hand tighten around hers, and I let out a soft, hollow laugh.

“Okay.”

“Ivy, from today on, you don’t owe me anything.”

“From now on, you could be thriving or barely scraping by. Alive or dead. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

I turned, pushed through the glass door of the shop, and didn’t look back.

I was fifteen when Dad died. I kept myself and my sister alive by going to class during the day and waiting tables at night.

That winter, I worked myself into the ground and came down with a high fever.

Ivy piled every blanket in the house on top of me and went out alone to get medicine.

She was so afraid the snow would ruin it that she tucked it inside her coat against her chest. She slipped and fell on the ice more times than I can count.

The cuts on her knees got frostbitten and infected. The fever wouldn’t break. It turned into rheumatic fever and damaged her heart.

The doctors said she couldn’t do strenuous activity. Couldn’t handle extreme stress.

So I always felt like I owed her. I was willing to give her everything I had for the rest of my life.

And now she was holding my boyfriend’s hand, telling me she’d hated me since we were kids.

One was the sister I raised with my own two hands. The other was the man I planned to spend the rest of my life with.

The two people I loved most had teamed up to gut me.

What gave them the right?

I squeezed my eyes shut. I took out my phone and found a number.