Page 28 of Demons & Damnation

Dylan narrowed his eyes at her and folded his arms over his chest. “What’s your point?”

“Did locking you in a room with a flock of pigeons or a bunch of clowns help?”

“No...”

“What happened? How did you get over it?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “As I grew older, I understood things more and I learned they weren’t a threat.”

Sam widened her eyes at him, as if saying ‘duh’.

“Are you telling me she needs to grow up?”

Sam laughed. “Not in so many words. Her body is obviously a thirty-year-old woman, but her mind, trapped in this permanent PTSD state, is stuck back ten years ago when it all happened. And with that, her emotions too. You’ve just asked her to lock herself in a room with a bunch of clowns playing falconry with a hundred pigeons.”

Dylan unfolded his arms, let out a sigh, and ran a hand through his hair. Staring down at the floor, he felt nothing but a complete idiot. “I get it,” he said. “I didn’t think of it like that.” He looked back up at his sister and asked, “So what do I do now? How do I fix it?”

Sam sat back down on the stool and let out a long breath. “You don’t. We do nothing. She doesn’t know that I know about you two. If I go over there now, after your mess this morning, she’s going to know that I know. I think that will just make her worse.”

“How will she know you know if you just pop over for a cup of tea or something?”

“Because we’re seeing each other later when we go out. I’ve no need to go see her now for a cup of tea. She’ll know something’s up. Knowing Kyla how I do, she’ll sleep it off, pull herself together, and soldier on like nothing’s ever happened.” Sam shrugged her shoulders. “That’s what she does. It’s how she survives.”

“By ignoring it?”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Dylan, she can’t ever ignore what happened to her. It’s in her thoughts all day every day, from the minute she wakes up to the minute she goes to sleep. She lives with it. She confronts it head on and refuses to let it get the better of her, but sometimes, sometimes there is a weak spot where the defences break under the pressure, even if just for a minute, and unfortunately, today, you made that happen.”

Dylan said nothing more and left the kitchen, wandering upstairs to his bedroom. Thinking over his sister’s words of wisdom, he realised he had two ways of looking at this—he either pressured Kyla to the point that she broke, or Kyla broke under the pressure that was already there and he happened to be there to comfort her.

“Definitely the latter,” he muttered to himself.

Chapter 13

Eight p.m. sharp, Kyla rolled up at Sam’s house, feeling brand new. She’d had a long sleep until late afternoon, rolling out of bed at four thirty. After fixing herself some tangy tomato prawn pasta, she took a long bubble bath before slowly getting herself ready for her night out with Sam.

Sam all but ran out of the front door the second she heard tyres on gravel. Her new red midi dress clung to her body like a second skin. Paired with a pair of stiletto heeled black suede ankle boots and a black diamante clutch bag, she looked, and felt, like a million dollars.

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