7. SEVEN
SEVEN
DORIAN
For a very long time, I was losing myself in the wrong direction. And for even longer, I was trying to find my way back to her. Look at her now—once my favorite person, now just my favorite stranger.
For two years, I waited. Not just for her—but for the moment I could make her feel what it’s like to be left behind with nothing but your demons.
For two years, she was the first thing on my mind when I woke up and the last thing I saw when I closed my eyes.
She was my poison, and I was drinking her in every second, letting her rot me from the inside.
They say if you love someone, you should let them go.
But those people have never loved like this.
Not the kind that claws into your chest and refuses to leave.
Not the kind that, when you try to let it go, cuts through you like glass—leaving you bleeding and broken, your mind reduced to fragments of her.
I was tired. Exhausted.
Because fuck, I still wanted her. But more than that I wanted her to feel every single thing I felt since the day she walked into my life.
I want her to know what it’s like to be untouchable—craving lips you can’t taste, hands you can’t hold, eyes so blue and perfect they burn into your memory.
I want her to know what it’s like to taste someone for the first time… and never stop craving them.
I want her to feel the pain I felt when she left. To know what it’s like to be haunted by memories—by us.
There have always been two kinds of love.
The first is soft—the kind that fills your heart, and wipes your mind clean.
The kind that makes you want sweet kisses and shared mornings, a world built together.
But then there’s the other kind—my kind.
The one where she consumes you. She becomes your food, your air, your wound.
She’s the only thing you want. The only thing you crave.
And nothing else can satisfy the thirst she leaves behind. No one else can replace her. No one.
Many tried. They wanted to fix me, to shape me, to build a life on a version of me that no longer existed. But none of them were her.
She was the one. The one who broke me. The one who made me question if I was ever enough. She was beautiful—God, she was everything. My person. My dream. But she was also my beautiful monster. The one I knew would be my end.
And even knowing that—I was ready. I would’ve gone to hell and back for her. She was my beginning, my end, and my always. My ever and forever.
And now... look at her.
Lying there. So innocent. So scared.
My little stepsister.
She’s afraid.
But little does she know, this is just the beginning.
I knelt beside her, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. How could someone be so beautiful… and so dangerous?
Sliding my arms under her, I lifted her gently, her body light against mine. I carried her down the hallway, leaving silent footsteps behind us, up to the bedroom on the top floor.
“Oh, Trouble,” I whispered, my lips close to her ear. “I’m going to break that pretty little mind of yours. You’ll never leave me again.”
I pushed the door open and laid her down on the bed, her limbs soft and still. Then I crossed to the far corner of the room, settling into the old ricochet chair that creaked as it rocked beneath me.
I watched her. Just watched. Wondering where it all went so wrong. She was never supposed to leave.
“You promised,” I muttered, rubbing my temples with trembling fingers. “You promised you’d never leave me. Not here. Not like this.”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t stir. Just lay there, eyes shut, as if sleep had claimed her as if the world we built wasn’t crumbling in front of us.
I looked down at my hand—at the faint scars etched across my skin. Little reminders of the nights I wanted it all to end. They called me crazy for that—for just wanting to be seen , to be loved , to be understood .
I grew up with a father who was there, but never really present.
He loved his whiskey more than his own son.
And my mother? She made me her project. Told the world I was sick, and fed me pills and syrups until I actually started believing it myself.
That’s how she kept me close—how she made herself feel needed. I was the sick boy. The weak one.
Then one day, she found someone else. A man who looked at her like she was sacred. Like she was salvation.
She left my father and me and moved here.
And when my father died, she locked me away. Threw me into an asylum and called it protection. Called me insane. I stayed there for ten years. Ten fucking years.
I was already fragile before. But what they did do to me there? That broke whatever was left. Crushed it until there was nothing but a shell—a cold, hollow body without feeling, without purpose.
And then Lenore happened.
She showed up at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and still, something in me shifted. She looked at me, really looked. And something inside cracked open. For the first time in forever… I felt alive.
But she fucking left me.
Looked me straight in the eyes, promised she’d stay—and then walked away as if none of it mattered. Call me stupid for falling for a bitch like her, but I wanted her. I didn’t care how crazy she was. I didn’t care how twisted her mind worked. I wanted her. All of her.
I was already mad. I just wanted to be kind of mad.
But she had to pay the price for making me fall in love.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
She turned my brain to oatmeal. Nothing but chaos and heat and her name stitched into every thought.
The second she started to move upstairs, I got up. Quiet. Controlled. I walked toward the door—not because I was leaving, but because I wanted her to miss me . To search for me the way I had begged for her to stay.
I moved down the stairs, step by step until I reached the front door.
I picked up the box that sat waiting on the porch, brought it inside, and placed it gently on the small table in the hallway—right beneath those golden-framed lies.
All those perfect portraits of a family that never was. We were good at pretending.
I heard her.
Footsteps above. Slow. Hesitant. Dragging.
She was coming.
Just as I opened the box, she reached the top of the stairs.
I lifted the severed hand from inside, turned toward her, and when her breath caught in her throat, I grinned.
“Hi, Trouble,” I said, waving the severed hand in the air. “Missed me?”
Her lips parted. Eyes wide. She looked at me like I was a ghost, but no words came out of that pretty mouth.
“Cat got your tongue, little stepsister?” I asked, clapping the hand against my own, the sound of it became sharp and wrong.
She stared. Couldn’t look away. Her chest rose and fell like she didn’t know how to breathe. I took a step forward. Then another.
She pinched her arm, like she thought this might be a dream or a nightmare. I saw it in her eyes: she couldn’t tell which.
I came closer.
“Uhhh, little stepsister,” I whispered, dragging the cold fingers of the severed hand down her arm, while my other hand gently moved hair from her face. “No man will touch you ever again.”
She flinched when those dead fingers met her skin. Her breath caught—sharp, shaky. And just for a second, I saw it.
She saw me .
Not the boy she once knew. Not the one who loved her.
She saw what she turned me into.
What she made me.
“Still think you can run from me?” I whispered, tilting my head. “Still think the world out there is safer than being loved by a monster who’d burn it all down just to hear you laugh again?”
She stumbled back a step, her spine pressed against the stair rail as if it could protect her. As if anything could protect her now.
“You don’t get it,” I said, walking toward her, leaving a faint trail of blood behind from the hand I still held. “You were my cure and my curse. And you left me.”
“Do you know what that does to a man already broken?”
Her lips trembled. Finally, she found her voice. Barely a whisper. “What… what do you want from me?”
I leaned in, close enough to smell the fear on her breath. Close enough to see my madness reflected in those eyes I once worshipped. “Everything,” I said. “I want everything you took when you walked away.”
I took her wrist gently like it still mattered, and placed her hand against my chest. “You feel that?” My heart, still beating. Still aching. “It beats for you. Always did. Even when I wanted it to stop.”
She tried to pull away, but I held her there. Not tight. Just enough.
“You don’t have to love me, little stepsister,” I said, voice low, almost soft, “But you will never forget me. Not in this life. Not in the next.”
She shook her head. “You’re sick.”
A twisted smile pulled at my lips. “No, Trouble. I was sick. You made me feel better. But then you became the disease.”
I let go. Watched her stumble backward up the stairs. She was scared.
“You left me in hell,” I called out as she turned around and ran, “so don’t be surprised when I bring it back with me.”
And just like that, the house fell into silence again. Just the ticking of that old hallway clock and the drip-drip-drip of blood from fingers that no longer belonged to anyone.
I looked up at the portraits above me—fake smiles, golden frames.
Perfect lies.
We were a family once.
Now, we were just... unfinished business.