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Blair
My chest constricted, and I couldn’t seem to breathe. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw them kissing passionately in the hall. Were my crazy suspicions about them actually right all along?
“What the fuck is going on?” I managed to scream out. There must be a reasonable explanation for this that doesn’t involve Dean cheating on me, a part of me tried to reason.
But as soon as I saw the pale, guilty expression all over his face, my heart lost all hope. I didn’t need to wonder whether something had happened between them. The look on his face told me all I needed to know.
Time seemed to pass slowly. Seconds seemed to feel like minutes as we stared at each other in shock.
It was Katherine who broke the silence. “I wanted to tell you, Blair, but I was trying to protect Dean. I’m so sorry you had to find out this way.” Her face twisted into a forced frown, and it felt as if she had stabbed me with a cold, sharp knife and twisted it inside my wounded flesh for good measure. How can my own sister do this to me?
“Blair, she’s lying to you. Please let me explain. This isn’t what it looks like!” Dean pushed past Katherine to rush to my side.
I took a few steps back to maintain his distance from me. The ultimate betrayal committed by both the man I loved and my sister fueled the anger that grew inside. “So, you’re telling me I didn’t just witness the two of you kissing or my sister’s tongue down your throat?”
“I...” He blinked. “She kissed me, but I didn’t kiss her back. It all happened so fast, I was shocked when it happened.”
Waves of confusion crashed through me as I tried to make sense of what he was telling me. I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t try to rationalize what you just did. The two of you kissed. That shit just doesn’t happen!”
He flinched at my words and his face feel into a sunken despair. “No, you’re right. This doesn’t just happen. There is a reason it had happened, and it’s something I’ve wanted to tell you since that night you brought Katherine over to my place.”
His words were more than I could take. He had just admitted there was indeed something going on. I felt sick to my stomach as the image of Dean and Katherine kissing replayed in my head. Suddenly the room began to sway back and form. I braced my hand against the wall as the room spun around me. “Oh, God,” I moaned, “I need to throw up.”
“Blair?” Dean’s alarmed voice came rushing toward me.
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed as I pushed him and stumbled toward the bathroom.
“Blair, you look sick. Please let me take care of you.” Dean’s face twisted in agony as he reached for my arms.
“What the fuck, Dean! What the fuck!” I screamed as my hands pounded against his chest as I felt myself spiral deeper and deeper into a state of crazed frenzy.
Just then Katherine walked up to us and I saw a triumphant smile spread across her face. “For the record, little sister, I didn’t steal Dean away from you. You’re simply having some fun with my leftovers. So if there was any sort of ‘sister code’ for dating, I’d say you’re the one that broke it.”
“Shut the fuck up, Katherine!” Dean interjected. “Haven’t you done enough damage? She’s your sister! Do you have no compassion?”
Their words and Dean’s angry expression sent my world into a tailspin. Her leftovers? I broke the sister code? I looked at Katherine, unable to respond. I then turned to Dean, searching his face for answers. I saw the guilt, betrayal, and fear splashed across his face and knew Katherine was telling the truth.
“Blair, please let me explain,” he pleaded as he approached me.
It was then that all my crazed anger gave way to intense, unbearable pain. I pushed past Dean and Katherine and ran as fast as I could toward the bathroom. Dean raced after me but he was too late. I slammed the bathroom door right on his face and immediately locked the door.
My heart ached and I gasped for air. I felt everything inside me shatter into a million little pieces, with each shard of my being seeming to cut against my insides, causing such an overwhelming intensity of pain that my body began to feel numb and detached.
How had things turned out like this? In a matter of minutes, my lost-long older sister had become more of a stranger to me than she was the second we had met over a week ago.
“Blair, please can we talk?” came Dean’s voice from the other side of the door.
“Please just go home, Dean. I want to be alone.”
“Josh and Katherine are gone now. Please let’s just sit down and talk about this. I need to explain this to you. Baby, this is a misunderstanding.”
“How is any of this a misunderstanding?” I spat, feeling the anger take over my every thought. “Are you telling me nothing has ever happened between you two?”
“Blair, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Answer my fucking question, Dean! For once in your life, can you tell me the complete truth? It’s a simple yes or no question. Do you two have a history?”
“Yes,” he mumbled. “I was going to tell you everything, Blair.”
I scoffed in disbelief. “Right, and when exactly were you planning on dropping this bomb? It’s been over a week! And this entire time, I thought I had done something wrong to upset you, that it was my fault things were so awkward the night I introduce you two.”
“Please, Blair. I fucked up. I wanted to tell you the day you brought Katherine to my place, but she twisted things around and I...I was afraid if I said anything at the wrong time, I’d lose you forever.”
“I don’t even know how to respond right now, Dean. I feel so betrayed and hurt. You just broke my heart.”
“I am going to tell you everything, Blair, and I’m going to tell you now.”
I didn’t respond but waited for him to continue. For the next half hour, Dean told me about his past with Katherine over a decade ago, about how she was his first love and lover, about how he had flown to LA to propose to her, about how he found out she had cheated on him, and about how he had transformed into the anti-relationship playboy.
After he finished his story, I no longer felt anger toward him. While I was upset that he hadn’t told me sooner, my anger was directed toward Katherine and fate for putting us into this situation.
I finally opened the door to the bathroom and saw Dean stumped against the other side of it. He nearly fell backwards as the door opened.
He got up immediately and grabbed my hands. “Blair, I’m so sorry. I fucked up. I should have told you sooner. I...I just didn’t want to lose you. You had just met your long-lost sister, someone you’re connected to by blood. I guess...I guess I was worried that at the end of the day, you’d pick her over me.”
“Dean,” I began softly. “I want to be honest with you...”
I saw his body tense at my words.
“I really need time to think through all this. My head is spinning at everything I found out tonight. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
I met his gaze and saw the pain on his face—it was the same pain I had in my heart. How had everything between us gone so wrong? How was it possible that my long lost sister was Dean’s ex-girlfriend, the one that had broken his heart years ago?
“Blair,” he begged. “This changes nothing about how I feel about you. I want you in my life, not her. I’ll do anything to make it right. Please.”
I shook my head as tears streamed down my face. “That’s just it, Dean. There’s nothing you can do to change things. There are some hard, cold facts that we have to face. Katherine is my biological sister and will probably be around in my life. Katherine was your first love, the one you were going to propose to, and the one that broke your heart. You can’t deny the fact that you haven’t dated anyone since her. She had hurt you that much. I...” I looked away from him and whispered, “I don’t know how to reconcile these two faucets of my life. I don’t know how we can coexist.”
“But how can you think about letting her into your life after what I’ve told you about her?” Confused and pain fought for space upon his face.
I sighed. “I’m not ready to give up on her yet. She’s my sister, my real sister. Everything she’d done that hurt you is in the past and that was over ten years ago, Dean. People grow up. People change.”
“She hasn’t changed!” he cut in.
“You don’t know that. When you look at her, all you see is the person that hurt you the most in life. I remember the day I met her, she mentioned you during lunch. She told me you were the love of her life, and she had taken you for granted. She told me that she was young and stupid, and letting you go was the biggest mistake of her life. And from what she told me, after things ended with you two, she had a pretty rough life.” Tears cascaded down my cheeks as I tried to imagine how it would have been like to have to go through everything Katherine had.
Dean shook his head. “You’re too kind and forgiving of a person, baby. She doesn’t deserve that from you.”
“Dean, she’s my sister. She doesn’t just deserve it, but I owe it to her.”
“Baby, don’t think like that.”
“Stop,” I raised my hand to motion for him to stop talking. “Dean I’m really tired. I have a lot to think about.” I paused. “I don’t think we should see each other right now.” My heart lurched as I heard the words come out of my mouth.
Dean didn’t say a word, but simply looked at me in shock. The torment and despair across his face was more than I could bear.
I walked him to my door and hugged him goodbye.
“Can I call you?”
“I don’t know.” I looked away, trying to hide the tears in my eyes.
“Please.” There was an unnerving desperation in his voice that broke my heart all over again.
I finally nodded but added, “But if I’m not ready to talk, I might not pick up. I hope you can forgive me if that happens.”
“I’ll really miss you, Blair.” He hugged me.
“Me too,” I managed to choke out.
As soon as I closed the door behind him, I slide down to the cold, hard floor. I grabbed my knees tightly and hugged myself, trying to somehow numb out the ache I felt in my heart.
I wasn’t sure how long I had stayed in that position, but at some point, I had cried myself to sleep. I didn’t get up from that floor until the next morning when my phone buzzed to life in my pocket. I jolted awake, half-hoping that it was Dean who was calling me.
But it wasn’t.
“Hi, Trent. What time is it?”
“Hey, Blair. I’m sorry, it’s 8:15 a.m. Did I wake you?”
“No, it’s fine. What’s up?”
“I need you to come over as soon as possible.”
“Why?” I sat up in full alert. I could hear a sense of urgency in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m at Dad’s house right now.”
Fear washed over me. “Is Dad okay?”
“Yes, he’s fine. I didn’t mean to startle you. I have good news. He seems to have regained a large part of his mobility and speech ability in the past two weeks.”
“Oh, my God, that’s great news, Trent!” I beamed at the news, and for that moment, I forgot about Dean and Katherine’s betrayal.
“Yeah. So, Blair, I think it’s time we told him about me and Katherine.”
