Page 1 of You Were Always Mine
Kai
She moves through this house like a ghost only I can see—bare feet whispering against the hardwood, hair spilling down her back in waves that catch the light and blind me until there’s nothing left but her.
Scarlett Everly.My step-sister. My sin.
She doesn’t know what she does to me when she laughs in the kitchen, when she hums under her breath in the shower down the hall, when she leaves her door cracked just enough for me to imagine things I shouldn’t be imagining. She thinks I don’t notice. She thinks I’m normal—but I’ve never been normal—and the way she looks at me with those wide, startled eyes makes it worse, makes me want to cage her, corrupt her, and turn her into the thing I already see when I close my eyes.
The first rule when our parents married was simple: she’s off-limits. Don’t touch her. Don’t want her. Don’t ruin her.
I broke that rule the moment I saw her.
Scarlett walks past me now, head down, clutching herbooks to her chest like a shield, and I want to rip them away just to see her hands empty—just to see if she’d put them on me instead. I want to say her name out loud, taste it, drag it across my tongue until it burns.
But I don’t.
I just watch.
I always watch.
This is how it starts: the silence, the stolen glances, the ache in my chest that feels like punishment from a God I stopped believing in the night I realised I wanted my little sister.
And Scarlett?
She has no idea she’s already mine.
Her door closes, and I stand there in the hallway like some kind of lunatic—palms flexing at my sides, chest tight—because all I want is to push it back open and step inside. I want to see the way she perches on the edge of her bed with her knees drawn up, how she bites her lip when she’s nervous, how she tucks her hair behind her ear when she thinks no one’s watching. I want to ruin every little innocent habit until she can’t do them without thinking of me.
Scarlett doesn’t get it—she’ll never get it—that she lives in my head like a prayer turned dirty, a hymn twisted into something blasphemous, a sin I can’t stop worshipping no matter how many times I tell myself to stop.
I lean against the wall and close my eyes, listening to the soft scrape of drawers opening, the muffled thump of her footsteps, the creak of the mattress when she finally sits down. Every sound is a tease, every reminder that she’s inches away—one thin piece of wood separating her from me—and it makes my hands curl into fists because I don’t trust myself not to break it.
The first time I thought about her like this, I swore it was just a slip, some fucked-up impulse I could shake off if I tried hard enough. But it’s not gone. It’s worse. It’s in the way I can’t look at anyone else—the way no other girl feels real in my hands because they’re not her. They don’t laugh like she does, don’t flinch like she does, don’t burn like she does when I get too close and she can’t pretend she doesn’t feel it.
Maybe she hates me for it. Maybe she wishes I’d disappear. But she hasn’t told anyone. She hasn’t run. She hasn’t locked that door—not once.
Which means part of her wants this, even if she won’t admit it.
I press my head back against the wall and let a smile cut across my mouth—sharp and wrong.
Scarlett can lie to herself all she wants.
But I know the truth.
She’s already mine.
Scarlett isn’t soft. That’s what kills me most about her. She doesn’t glow like some fragile little angel; she burns—dark hair spilling like ink down her back, skin pale against it, lips too red for someone who pretends she doesn’t want to be seen. Her eyes are the kind that cut straight through you, blue so sharp they look almost violent when she’s pissed—and God, I live for that look, the one she shoots me across the dinner table when my knee brushes hers under the wood.
She’s twenty, barely, but she carries herself like she’s older, like the world already broke her once and she dared it to try again. Every move is deliberate—hips swaying when she doesn’t mean to, mouth curving into that wicked little half-smile she can’t hide, shoulders squared like she’s ready to fight me if I push too hard. And I will.
The door creaks open down the hall—not hers—and my father’s voice cuts through the silence.
“Kai? You’re still up?”
I drag my eyes off Scarlett’s closed door and force my tone flat. “Couldn’t sleep.”
He doesn’t press, just mutters something about an early meeting before disappearing again. His footsteps fade, the house settling back into quiet, and I almost laugh—because if he knew where my head was, if he knew what I wanted, he’d kill me with his bare hands.
Her door clicks then—soft, careful—and I straighten before I can stop myself. Scarlett steps into the hallway, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a black tank top that clings to every sharp line of her body and shorts so small they may as well not exist. She freezes when she sees me.
