Page 76 of Dual
"And if it's not her... then the problem has to be...me, then, right?" I force my voice to remain steady. Fuck, I hate being weak. "I've been in a fight with my sister. Maybe that's just what's got me on edge."
"Oh?" Dr. Ezra tilts his head. "What about?"
Heat flushes my face, anger rising hot and fast. I stand abruptly, pacing to the window, watching raindrops race down the glass. The city below is a blur of gray buildings and black umbrellas.
"I gave her simple rules to follow," I say, my back to him. "Only fuck inside the club. I was trying to keep her safe. And what did she go and do?" I whirl around, my voice rising. "She ended up fuckinghim. Of her own free will!"
"Him, who?" Dr. Ezra asks, his voice infuriatingly calm.
"You know who!" The words explode from me, filling the quiet office.
"Sometimes it helps to say it," he says softly, and I want to punch his gentle, glasses-covered face. Rain lashes the window behind me like my own rage made manifest.
"The fucking monster!" I spit. "My abuser. The same man who---" I heave out a huge breath, the memory of hands on me, holding me down, making my skin crawl even now. "The same man who used to rape me almost every day. My sister fucked him intentionally."
The words hang in the air, ugly and raw. Outside, thunder rumbles, distant but growing closer.
"Did she know he was your rapist?" Dr. Ezra asks, as if we're discussing the weather. As if my insides aren't being shredded as I speak.
"No." I rake a hand through my hair, tugging at the roots. "He'd tricked her. He was just using her to get back at me and Mads, but still! If she'd just followed the rules---"
"Your rules," Dr. Ezra interrupts, his pen making that scratching I despise.
I glare at him, stalking back to the chair and dropping into it. "Yes. My rules."
"How old is your sister?"
I shrug. "Twenty-three now, I guess."
"Does she have any learning disabilities?"
"What?" I frown at him, the non-sequitur catching me off guard. "No."
"So why did she need rules?"
My eyes narrow. I see where he's going with this. The bastard is clever, I'll give him that. "You've met Moira, what? Once? Twice? You clearly don't know her. She's incapable of taking care of herself."
Dr. Ezra tilts his head at me, the light glinting off his glasses. "How do you mean?"
"She's a sex addict, for one." The words come faster now, my accent thickening with every syllable. "She can't hold down a job. Won't go to treatment. I've kept her safe and out of trouble her whole life, and believe me, that's been a full-time job. And this is how she repays me."
He interlaces his fingers under his chin, just staring at me, allowing uncomfortable silence to stretch between us like a live wire. The clock ticks. Rain falls. The city moves below us, oblivious.
"You don't know how many times I've had to bail her out of trouble," I continue, unable to bear the quiet. "Literally bail her out of jail sometimes for public indecency on multiple occasions. Our mother was total shite, and I basically had to raise Moira from the time she was a little kid, but I couldn't always be there."
My hands clench on my knees, knuckles white. "She's always been a wild little banshee. And then when we gotolder, I had to keep a roof over our heads, and she just got wilder and wilder and discovered fucking, and then---"
"Then what?" Dr. Ezra prompts when I cut myself off.
I toss my arms out. "Then I had an even harder time keeping her under control!"
"And that was your job? To keep her under control?"
"I love the little shit," I say, my voice dropping. "I don't want something awful to happen to her. So yeah! That was my job."
Dr. Ezra nods, his expression unreadable. "But since you've been in this fight with her, have you kept doing that job?"
His words take a little of the wind out of me, deflating the anger that's been propelling me forward. "Well, no. I guess I decided it was finally time for her to grow the fuck up."
