Still Mine

3

Henry

Dallas! Really

I’d been told she just finished her high school .

A “good girl trying to adjust and make a life for herself”

That’s what Xavier said last night when he poured bourbon and talked about building a family. I nodded along, offered the right supportive son responses, but I didn’t care about some stranger’s personality profile.

All I wanted was for this house to stop echoing.

A woman moving in would help. A daughter a bit younger than I am might shake the silence. Maybe we’d coexist, make awkward breakfast conversation, pretend at siblinghood long enough to satisfy our parents’ fantasies.

I expected normal.

I expected it to be boring and natural

I did not expect her.

I heard the car pull up from upstairs. I didn’t rush. I never rush. I took my time coming down the curved staircase, fixing the cuff of my shirt, running a hand through my hair.

Then I saw her.

Dallas.

The world didn’t just stop—it punched the breath out of my lungs.

My foot missed a step. My vision blurred around the edges. My mind short-circuited into pure disbelief.

I thought I’d imagined her.

I thought time would erase her.

I thought distance had done the decent thing and killed whatever lived between us.

But there she was.

Older. Sharper. Beautiful in a way that felt dangerous. Her features were the same but defined now— her face looked matured, lips fuller, hair longer, eyes darker, her body curves became more pronounced.

Her hair fell around her shoulders and I remembered what it felt like between my fingers.

Her eyes met mine and I remembered what it feels like to drown.

She froze. So did I.

Xavier kept talking, but his voice turned to static. All I could hear was the memory of her laugh, or the memory of that night—too young, too reckless, too intense to name.

What were the odds?

Her. In this house.

My father is getting married to her mother.

Was this cosmic humor?

Cruelty?

Some twisted, looping fate?

Punishment?

She looked at me with a mix of recognition and fury—like she hated that her body remembered mine. My heart kicked hard, stupidly eager, humiliatingly alive.

Chemistry wasn’t even the right word.

It was collision.

Familiarity.

A hunger that had been sleeping, not dead.

I felt every day that turned to years we hadn’t spoken or rather that I ghosted her, press against my heart.

I wanted to say her name.

Touch her wrist.

Hear if her heart would beat the way it used to.

But I stood there like an i***t, staring.

“Dallas?” I said her name too softly, like a fear, like a secret.

Her breath caught.

And in that moment I understood something unwanted and unstoppable:

I never got over her.

Not even close.

And now she was going to live in my house.

*******

“Do you know eachother” my father asked

I'm sure they noticed the atmosphere, it was too strong for someone not to notice.

“No” we echoed

“Okay, now show her around and then to her room”

“ Yes sir “ I answered

I didn't say anything else as I took her round the house, she walked gradually behind me.

All of a sudden, she said “can you take me to my room please, this house is too big, you can show me around some other time or you want to run away again”

I wanted everything that happened between us to be in the past, let's focus on the present and how we will live together in this house as siblings -which it's difficult but I have to be my father's perfect son.

“Can we let whatever happened between us stay in the past, whatever happened was a mistake but I'm not sorry for because we clearly enjoyed every bit of it- you can deny it all you want, your body said otherwise”. I summoned all the courage I could get to say this

“We are siblings now and we need to act like it, no funny moves. I need my father to keep seeing me as a perfect child, I won't let you spoil that for me” I added, the look on her face was showing express disgust.

“Henry, I don't care about you in any way. I've moved on with her life, I have a perfect, sweet boyfriend now” she said

I could see anger written all over her face, it was funny, weirdly I enjoyed every bit of taunting her.

I showed her to her room, which was two rooms away from mine while my dad and his new wife's room were on the other side of the house.

“We are having dinner together as a family tonight, dress up and tell your sister to dress up too. A car will be waiting for you two outside” my dad said to me.

Hearing him call her my sister made me nearly choke on my saliva

Sister?

If only he knows I've tasted every part of my sister's body

If only he knows I've done things to her that he can't even think of, I'm sure he wouldn't call her ‘my sister’.