Falling for the Psycho

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I slipped into my stepbrother's bed again tonight.

He isn't my brother. No blood, nothing on paper that couldn't be torn up. Just a boy I'd grown up beside, wanting him the whole time.

And tonight I was going to do something neither of us could take back.

Because the woman they'd matched him with at that dinner was perfect for him, and somewhere between the appetizers and the goodnight texts, I had gone quietly out of my mind.

The plan was simple. Cross the one line he never would. After tonight, asleep or awake, whether he wanted me or not, he'd have to make it real. He'd have to keep me.

Everything was going fine.

Then, at the very last second, I lost my nerve. I started to ease off him before he could wake.

That was when a hand closed around my ankle.

His grip was steady. Unhurried. Not even a little bit asleep.

"Quitting halfway is a bad habit." A pause, soft as a blade going in. "Don't you think so, little sister?"

Chapter 1

By ten o'clock, Caspian was asleep.

By midnight, I pushed his door open. He never locks it. He should. Not with me in the house.

My feet made no sound on the carpet. He was already deep under, flat on his back, breathing slow.

I knew his sleep better than I knew my own. He went down like someone had cut the power. He wouldn't surface before six.

I turned on the lamp and let my fingertip hover over the line of his brow, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth. Tracing him without touching. The light pooled in the hollows of his face.

He frowned, like the attention itched.

My hand went still. I wasn't afraid. I'm never afraid in here. He's the one who should be.

His breathing evened out again.

I killed the lamp, kicked off my slippers, and slid under the edge of his blanket. He sleeps on his back. I fit myself along his arm, hooked my hand around his waist, and buried my face in his chest.

Some nights I wished the whole world were only night. Then he could be mine and no one would ever know.

Wishful thinking.

At five, my watch buzzed against my wrist. I was awake before the second pulse. I shut it off.

The room was still dark. I climbed out, careful, and smoothed his hair down once with two fingers before I left.

Back in my own room. Almost dawn. I wasn't tired anymore, so I went to wash up instead.

The mirror gave me back a pale face.

That was when I noticed my mouth. Red. Swollen. It stung when I touched it.

Strange.

Chapped, maybe. Or I'd bitten them in my sleep. The seasons were turning. That was all it was.

That was all it was.

Winter break. I packed up early and moved home from the dorms.

Caspian had been buried in work lately, always staying late at the office. He still kept the one promise I'd hounded him into as a kid, though: home by ten thirty, every single night.

That evening I was curled on the couch with my finals work when the lock turned and he came in.

He'd been out drinking, I could smell it on him. His movements ran half a beat slow as he bent to change his shoes.

My eyes caught on him and wouldn't come loose. Drunk, he was somehow worse to look at. Better.

While his head was down I let my gaze run over the high ridge of his brow, the flush at the outer corner of his eyes, the wet sheen on his mouth. My mouth went dry. I was close enough that leaning in one inch would have put my lips on his. I didn't. I only wanted to, so badly my hands ached with it.

When I was little I wrote in a school essay that my brother was beautiful. He corrected me, very seriously, said beautiful was a word for girls.

I kept thinking it anyway.

He stood up too fast and swayed.

I dropped the laptop and got to him, steered him down onto the arm of the couch a step at a time. His shirt had already come loose, tie hanging slack, hem pulled free. The way he tipped back, a strip of his waist showed, lean and hard.

I swallowed. My pulse had climbed somewhere up near my throat.

"Marlo." He said my name without opening his eyes.

"Hm?"

"Can you grab the hangover pills?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

I dug through the cabinet. When I came back, he'd fallen asleep sitting up. Too warm, probably. He'd dragged the tie off himself, collar gaping, a wedge of his chest bare.

My head went hot, too hot to hold a single straight thought.

It took me a long moment.

Then I slid my phone out and took the picture.

One more for a collection no one will ever see.

I stopped asking myself what kind of person does this a long time ago. I already know the answer.

Chapter 2

He shifted.

I jammed the phone behind my back and said his name like I hadn't done a thing.

"Cas?"

"Mm." His eyes opened, focus crawling back into them.

He thanked me and took the pills from my hand. Then he pushed up, unsteady, and shut himself in the bathroom. Water started running.

I sat on the couch and looked at the photo. Pinched it bigger. Smaller. Bigger again.

In the quiet, my own pulse was very loud.

Then, from the bathroom, a crack of something hitting tile. A short, pained sound after it.

I was up and across the room. "Cas? What happened?"

I hit the door with the flat of my hand. Nothing came back.

I didn't think. I turned the handle and went in.

He was sitting on the floor, face tight with it, like the fall had really hurt. When he saw me he scrambled to pull his robe shut, except drunk, his fingers had gone clumsy, and he couldn't get the tie knotted.

"Let me."

I got him up, face calm even with my hands shaking the whole time, and once I was sure nothing was broken, walked him up the stairs.

He smelled good. I trailed half a step behind him and breathed it in where he couldn't see.

Same body wash I used. On him it was a different thing entirely.

A drop of water slid off the end of his hair and landed on my fingertip. The only part of him I'd let myself touch all night.

It was cold. It caught anyway, the way a single spark takes a whole dry field.

I pressed it into my thumb until it was gone, and made myself keep my hands where they belonged.

He'd had the hangover pills tonight. He went down fast regardless.

I stood in the dark and looked at him for a long, long time before I made myself go.

That weekend, Frankie dragged me out. She's the only person alive who knows all of it.

The second she saw me she started in.

"Well, well. How does Marlowe Vance have circles under her eyes? Somebody go creeping into her brother's room again last night?"

I didn't answer.

She took the silence as a yes and bumped my shoulder, grinning like a cat.

"Did you finally do the"

"No."

The two of us looked at each other and knew exactly what the other was thinking.

I'd said it too fast. Frankie clicked her tongue and patted my shoulder.

"You're a genuine marvel, you know that? Too unhinged to be normal, you break into the man's room every other night. Too chicken to be a real freak, you don't even touch him. You sneak in just to sleep next to him. That's the whole crime."

I looked down. "If I did anything, there'd be a trace. He'd find out. And the way he is, he'd lose his mind." A breath. "Then we couldn't even be whatever it is we are."

"True. He does have that wholesome thing going." Frankie propped her chin on her hand. "You've been under the same roof since your mom passed. Half the people who meet you think you're his sister. If he had any idea what runs through your head, it'd scare the life out of him."

"Yeah."

The drop came down on me slow and heavy, and for a second even breathing snagged.

Frankie caught it. She hooked an arm around me.

"Hey. My advice? Quit loving him. Love one person, it kills you. Love ten, you don't have time to bleed over any of them."

Then she leaned in close, all conspiracy.

She'd gotten me a present, she said. And I was going to love it.

Chapter 3

Half an hour later, in a private karaoke room, I met Frankie's present.

He was a man who looked maybe seventy percent like Caspian. A model.

Frankie towed him over to my side and told him to keep me company. Really talk to me.

His hand rested light on my shoulder. I'll admit it, for a couple of seconds I blanked.

Then he opened his mouth, and every word was so eager to please that the whole thing went flat at once.

Caspian would never talk to me in that voice.

He's the kind of man who looks warm, easy to be near, mild and unfailingly polite, and keeps every single person at exactly arm's length anyway. Like there's a pane of glass laid over him that you can never quite see through.

I've lived beside him half my life and I still can't read what's behind it.

"Sweetheart?" The model waved a hand in front of my face.

I came back, told him to slide down a seat and not worry about me, and leaned into the chair with my phone.

That was when the tracking app pinged.

I'd slipped it onto his phone months ago. I opened it.

A second later I was staring. Caspian's dot had slid right on top of mine.

I refreshed it. Refreshed again. Not a glitch.

I was out the door.

Why was he here. Wasn't he working late.

I went past one shut door after another, the distance on the screen ticking down. Closer. Closer.

Zero.

I put my eye to the gap in the door.

Caspian was in there. So were half a dozen men and women around his age, soft instrumental music, easy laughter.

I pressed myself to the seam and strained to hear.

It took me a minute to understand. They were setting him up. A match.

My eyes climbed, slow, to the only woman in the room.

Striking. Elegant.

I'll give her this much. She looked like she belonged next to him.

She didn't. That spot was mine before she ever learned his name.

Heat climbed the back of my throat, fast and acid. My hand found the door handle before I told it to, and my nail dragged down the metal with a thin screech.

His head turned, like he'd heard it.

I dropped into a crouch before he could see, fast enough to be grateful for my own reflexes, and fled back to my room.

The model peeled tangerines for me, a whole little pile of them. I couldn't have swallowed one.

I watched the dot.

Half an hour later it started to move.

I grabbed my bag and went after it.

In the lobby the group was trading goodbyes. Caspian flagged a car himself and handed the woman into it. Her face was flushed pink.

I read her mouth. See you next time, near enough.

He nodded. Watched her go. Only then got into his own car.

When I got home he was on the couch with a book.

I crossed to him and caught it instantly. A woman's perfume, heavy on him.

My jaw locked. I played dumb.

"Where'd you go today, Cas? You're drowning in someone's perfume."

He paused, lifted his sleeve, and actually sniffed it. Something almost sheepish crossed his face, which I had never once seen on him.

"A friend set me up with someone. We were sitting close, probably. It rubbed off."

"You want to get married."

I didn't blink.

He nodded. "I'm at that age. I should start thinking about it."

Chapter 4

"That age? You're young."

It was out before I could stop it.

He looked tired about it. After a while, a sigh.

"Marlo, for years the only thing I wanted was for you to get into a good school. Every bit of attention I had went to you. I never got around to thinking about my own life." He looked up. "You're a junior now. Don't I get one?"

"But"

"But what?"

He tipped his head up to look at me, and the line of his throat drew into something smooth and breakable. The light ran down his eyes, his jaw, and pooled in the open collar of his shirt, where his collarbone showed and didn't.

He was just.

He was beautiful.

I was going insane. Or maybe I'd been insane a long time already.

I wanted to kiss him. Bite him. Lock him somewhere he could never get out of, where he'd never smile at another person again.

My heart threw itself around with no rhythm to it. I clamped my hands shut and worked at my breathing until not one piece of it reached my face.

He caught the strangeness anyway. He stood and came closer, worry all over him.

"Marlo. What's wrong?"

I dropped my eyes. It took me a while to find my voice.

"I just don't want to lose you. You get married, you get a family, and slowly there's less and less room left for me."

"That won't happen."

He rubbed the top of my head.

"It will." Stubborn. "Since I started college you're already not what you were to me."

"That's because you grew up. I have to keep some distance now."

There it was.

I closed my eyes. If the price of growing up was losing him, I'd stay a child forever.

My eyes stung out of nowhere.

He ruffled my hair again. "People grow up and get married. It's the most ordinary thing in the world. One day that'll be you too."

I won't.

I screamed it where he couldn't hear.

That night I drifted into his room again at midnight, quiet as something already dead.

His door wasn't locked. It never is.

I took his hand and pressed his thumb to his phone, and it opened. I found the thread with her and read it end to end, fast.

This was day one. Day one, and they'd already said all of this to each other. They'd said goodnight.

Did neither of them know what a loaded little word goodnight is?

He'd even sent her one of those cute sticker packs.

He has never once sent me a sticker like that.

I was jealous. So jealous I could barely keep hold of it.

I dropped the phone and closed my hand around his throat. Tightened it, slow. Let go, all at once.

No marks. He's too sharp. He'd wonder.

I sat there in the dark a while.

Then I pulled the blanket back and fit myself against his chest again.

"What am I supposed to do," I said into his heartbeat, to no one at all.

"I want to marry you too. But you'd find that terrifying, wouldn't you."

Nothing answered.

I curled into him and let the dark drop over me.

I don't know why, but that night I slept like the dead.

My watch buzzed for five whole minutes before it tore me awake.

He was still deep under, thank god.

I eased up off him, careful. My legs buckled and I almost went down across his chest.

Strange.

I hadn't been drinking. So why did every inch of me ache like the morning after something.

Whatever. Forget it.

Chapter 5

From that day I had one more thing to do in secret: read the thread between Caspian and his match.

They really were aiming at marriage. The topics kept going deeper.

I was sour and wound tight and had no standing, no right, to stop any of it.

A month slipped by.

Then it was Valentine's Day.

I'd bought a tie a while back. The plan was to give it to him like I had no idea what day it was.

But I waited until ten thirty, and he still wasn't home.

My head was a tangle. The pressure of it sat on my chest until I could barely breathe.

He promised me. Home by ten thirty, he promised.

Where was he. On a date? Even on a date, if you can't make it back on time, you tell someone. Don't you.

Or maybe he'd decided that a promise that old didn't need keeping anymore.

I bit down on my lip. Every tick of the second hand dropped my stomach another inch.

A century later, the doorbell finally rang.

I had it open before I'd decided to move.

His face went surprised. "You're still up, Marlo?"

He didn't say one word about being late.

My stomach dropped again. I trailed him toward the living room, face caving.

That was when I saw it. A lip print, bright red, on the back of his collar.

He's tall. That's a spot you'd have to go up on your toes to reach.

A sharp sour spike, jealousy folded into it, shot straight to the top of my skull.

I could see it. Her arms around him from behind, her mouth at his collar, telling him how she felt.

Were they already this far.

The next time I saw that woman, would it be here, in this house. Or at their wedding.

"Marlo." He turned.

I dropped my eyes fast and dug my nails into my palm, using the hurt to hold back the thing that was about to swallow me whole.

"It's late. Go up to bed."

Then he went to shower.

He didn't know that under the rush of the water I was standing right outside the door.

The metal strip on the frame gave me back my own face. Pale. Black at the edges.

He's mine, the girl in the reflection said.

He's mine, I said back.

That night I didn't make it to midnight before I went into his room.

He'd gone under fast, the way he always did. The door wasn't locked. It never was.

Caspian. Caspian.

I touched his face. How do you have no guard up at all.

But of course. Who keeps his guard up around his little sister. Who would ever guess his little sister was this sick.

In the dark my eyes dragged over his face, slow, heavy.

At some point my hand moved on its own and slipped one button free.

I'd tried, this whole time, to talk myself down. It's fine if he marries. As long as I never marry, as long as I plant myself in this house and refuse to leave, I get to see him every day.

Tonight I finally understood it was useless.

I love him too much. I can't stand him marrying some other woman. He so much as leans toward someone else and it eats through whatever sense I have left.

So I decided.

I'd make it something that couldn't be undone.

The way he is, he'd take responsibility.

Chapter 6

"Caspian." I said it to myself.

"When you wake up you'll hate me, won't you. You'll despise me.

"But this is your fault. Who told you to be this good to me. You kept me warm against your chest, and you raised this snake."

My hands moved faster on the buttons.

The clothes in the way were gone.

I leaned down and kissed him