Two Sisters

July 14th. 3 AM. The city is quiet finally, just the hum of my old fridge and the distant sigh of a bus brakes a few blocks over. I can't sleep. My skin feels too tight, my mind replaying a film reel I swore I'd destroyed. It's been five years. But some memories are tattooed on the inside of your eyelids, you know? You close your eyes, and there they are. Vivid. Unforgiven. Unforgotten.

It's about my sister. My half-sister, technically. Isla. She came to live with us the summer I turned twenty. Her mom - a woman my father briefly loved after my parents' divorce - had died, and there was nowhere else for her to go.

I remember the first time I saw her. She was standing on our front porch with a single, battered suitcase, looking like a startled bird. All sharp angles and wide, wary eyes. She was eighteen, but she seemed younger. I was the brash college kid, home for break, all fake confidence and cheap beer. I thought I knew everything.

"You must be Chloe," she said. Her voice was softer than I expected, with a faint, melodic accent from a childhood spent somewhere overseas.

"That's me," I said, too loudly, grabbing her bag. Our fingers brushed. A static shock, tiny and sharp, passed between us. We both flinched back. An omen I was too stupid to recognize.

The first few weeks were… awkward. Our house was a minefield of my dad's quiet grief and my stepmom's brittle attempts at normalcy. Isla was a ghost in the halls, silent and watchful. She'd curl up in the window seat in the living room, reading, her knees tucked under her chin. I'd catch myself watching the way the sunlight caught the copper highlights in her dark hair. She was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache, a quiet, profound beauty that had nothing to do with makeup or effort.

The shift started small. She'd laugh at one of my stupid jokes, a real, unguarded sound that seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. I started seeking her out. I'd bring her a coffee in the morning, exactly how she liked it - a ridiculous amount of cream, no sugar. I'd find excuses to be in the same room.

One night, I found her crying in the kitchen. A soft, hopeless sound in the dark. She was just standing there, holding onto the edge of the counter like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

"Hey," I said, my voice rough with sleep. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. "It's nothing. I just… I miss her. I miss the sound of her voice."

I didn't think. I just walked over and put my arms around her. She stiffened for a second, a statue in my arms, and then she just… melted. She buried her face in my neck, and her whole body shook with silent sobs. I held her tighter. I could feel the delicate ladder of her spine through her thin t-shirt. I could smell her shampoo - jasmine and something earthy. Her hair was soft against my cheek.

We stood like that for a long time. And something in the air changed. The comfort, the pure, sisterly intention… it curdled into something else. My hand was on her back, and I became hyper-aware of the heat of her skin through the cotton, the way her breath hitched against my collarbone. My heart wasn't beating in sympathy anymore; it was hammering. This was wrong. This was so wrong. But I couldn't let go.

She pulled back first, her eyes red-rimmed and luminous in the moonlight from the window. She looked up at me, and her gaze dropped to my mouth. The air was so thick I could barely breathe.

"Chloe…" she whispered. It was a question. A warning.

I should have stepped back. I should have made a joke. I did neither. I brought my hand up and wiped a stray tear from her cheek with my thumb. Her skin was impossibly soft. She leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed for a second.

That was the crack. The first one.

The next day, the tension was a live wire in the house. We couldn't look at each other. Every accidental touch - passing the salt, brushing past each other in the hallway - was a electric jolt. I was obsessed. I couldn't think of anything but the feel of her in my arms, the scent of her hair.

It all came to a head a week later. My parents were out of town. A rare, empty house. A storm was brewing outside, the sky a bruised purple. We were in the living room, watching a movie we weren't paying attention to. The room was dark, lit only by the flickering TV screen.

I was hyper-aware of every detail. The sound of her breathing. The way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The faint scent of jasmine that seemed to follow her everywhere.

During a loud clap of thunder, she jumped, and her hand landed on my thigh. She didn't move it. I stopped breathing. I could feel the weight of her palm through my jeans, the warmth seeping into my skin.

I turned my head to look at her. She was already looking at me, her expression unreadable in the dim light. The movie's dialogue was a distant murmur.

"Isla," I said. Her name was a prayer, a curse on my lips.

She moved first. She leaned in, so slowly, giving me every chance to pull away. I didn't. I met her halfway.

The kiss wasn't gentle. It was frantic, hungry, a release of all the tension that had been building for weeks. It tasted of mint tea and guilt and something utterly, uniquely her. Her hands came up to frame my face, her touch surprisingly sure. My own hands found her waist, pulling her closer until she was half in my lap. The world narrowed to the softness of her mouth, the little sound she made in the back of her throat.

We broke apart, gasping for air, our foreheads pressed together.

"We can't," she breathed, but her fingers were clutching my shirt, holding me to her.

"I know," I whispered back. And I kissed her again.

We didn't make it to a bedroom. We sank into the old rug on the living room floor, the storm raging outside, providing a soundtrack to our sin. It was a frenzy of hands and mouths, of clothes pushed out of the way, not off. It was fumbling and desperate and so fucking intense I thought I might break apart.

I remember the feel of her skin under my hands, like warm silk. I remember the way she arched her back when my mouth found her breast, the breathy, broken way she said my name. I remember the taste of her everywhere - salt and sweetness and her. I remember the look in her eyes, a mix of fear and wonder and raw need, as I touched her, as I learned the rhythm that made her forget everything, that made her cry out and dig her nails into my shoulders.

Afterward, we lay tangled together on the floor, listening to the rain slow. The guilt crashed down on me like a physical weight, cold and suffocating. What had we done?

She felt it too. I could see it in the way she wouldn't look at me. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, hiding herself from me. "This was a mistake," she said, her voice small.

"I know," I said again, the two most useless words in the world.

It happened twice more after that. Each time was a little less frantic, a little more tender, and a thousand times more devastating. We'd find moments of impossible privacy, in my room late at night, in the shower with the water running loud. We were trying to map each other, to memorize a country we knew we'd be exiled from.

But the world doesn't stop for a secret. My parents came home. The summer ended. I went back to school. We didn't talk about it. We barely talked at all. The few times I came home, the silence between us was a third person in the room, heavy and accusing.

She moved out a year later, got a job on the other side of the country. We exchange polite texts on birthdays. Christmas. That's it.

But I still dream about her. I still wake up sometimes, my heart pounding, convinced I can smell jasmine in the air. I still remember the exact sound of my name on her lips in the dark.

It was wrong. I know it was wrong. But my god, it was the most real thing I've ever felt.

And that's the secret I've been carrying. The one that keeps me up at night. The one I can only confess to the dark, silent, judging page.