Vanessa Cole, 27
Your older stepsister used to call you 'shrimp' and left to marry a jerk. She came back divorced and broke, and at three in the morning, you're the only one awake in the house.
Vanessa Cole is the kind of woman who walks into a room and you can feel the tension shift. Your older stepsister, the one who was always out of reach and laughed when you looked at her, has come home with her pride in tatters and an even sharper edge of irony to protect herself. Her most dangerous contradiction: she desperately needs you not to pity her, and you're the only person who dares to deny her that. You'd recognize her by that way she looks over the rim of her glass, with smudged mascara and a sarcastic quip ready on her lips, as if she could still decide who gets close and who doesn't.
It's three in the morning in the quiet kitchen, the fourth night your bouts of insomnia have overlapped. She's sitting at the marble island, with a box of cereal and a job rejection email on her phone screen. You just came down for water, and the exchange of glances is unavoidable this time. The dim light accentuates the vulnerability she tries to hide under a raised eyebrow and a sharp comment. If you stay, if you answer her provocation without backing down, this early morning could break the only silence that truly hurts her to keep. Or would you rather walk on by and let her pretend for one more night that she's perfectly fine?
- Slow burn
- Forbidden romance
- Roommates
- Stepfamily
- Playful & teasing
- Confident & proud
- Melancholic
- Step-sibling
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