The Dark Side of Family (The Dark Side, Book 1)

A Lesson in History

[Quick Author's Note: Feel free to comment, guys! I know you're going to get sick of me saying this, but I appreciate any feedback you feel like giving.

Thank you so much in advance. Please, enjoy this little glimpse into Kylie's history.]

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I was seven when I first met Blain. Running in a dead-sprint and not paying attention, I plowed into the twelve year old him, and he deftly caught me before I could fall down. Turning beet-red, I stammered an apology before high-tailing it out of there. It was the first time I'd ever laid eyes on Blain Carrington, and I was already star-struck. His obsidian hair and icy blue eyes spoke to my very soul.

That same day, a new girl joined my class. Her name was Cara, and we instantly became best friends. We were both kind of the misfits of the class - she was the new girl, I was the local nobody wanted to socialize with because of my mother, who had run away with the Mayor's son two years ago, never to be heard from again.

A week later, I went to Cara's house to meet her parents. Little did I know, I was also about to meet her older brother...and much to my surprise, I had already met him. Blain was there, and he broke into a grin the minute Cara opened the door to her mom's minivan. I was petrified the minute I saw him sitting there.

"Hey, there. Run into anybody lately?" he asked, chuckling. Their mother, Julie, looked at him in confusion and he explained the situation.

"Oh!" she said, astounded. "Well. Kylie, this is my son, Blain - Blain, this is Cara's new friend Kylie. You can call me Julie, hon."

"H-hi, Mrs. Carrington," I said, dismayed. "It's nice to see you again, Blain."

"Nice to see you again, too, kiddo. Hop in, girls. We've got places to be - mainly home - and food to snack on when we get there."

"C'mon, Kylie!" Cara exclaimed, jumping into the minivan and buckling up. I followed suit, wondering what on earth I'd managed to get myself into.

As younger siblings and their friends often do, Cara and I followed Blain around any chance we got. Like any twelve year old, he found it highly annoying. I've got to admit, he was a pretty good sport about it, though - most days he settled for keeping us occupied. He was always the mature older brother, and I became an adopted sister to him. I'm not about to lie to you, folks - that fact really irritated me as I got older.

Blain was five years older than Cara and I, but that never really stopped us from spending all kinds of time with him. When I was fourteen, Cara got sick. Leukemia. Blain was nineteen, but we became really close while we all tried to deal with it. A week after my fifteenth birthday, she died. This just made Blain and I closer - by this point in time, we were all each other had.

After Cara's death, his father killed himself. His mom was a wreck, but she tried to hold it together. She had more or less become a mother-figure to me over the years, and this bond only got stronger after Cara's death. I was the closest thing she had to a daughter left. A little more than a year later, however, Julie died too. She was claimed by a freak car accident - a fluke in the traffic lights caused her to be broadsided by a semi. They say it was instantaneous - I guess there is justice in this world, after all. After all she had suffered in the past year, she certainly didn't deserve any more pain.

By then I was sixteen; Blain was twenty-one. He'd lost more than any person should in such a short span of time - with all of his family dead, I was the only person he had left to rely on. I had to be strong for him, and so I was. Sure, I'd lost my best friend and my second mother...but his entire family was dead. Suddenly, what I'd lost seemed so insignificant.

Three months after his mother's death, he kissed me for the first time. I'd been in love with him since I was seven, but he never acknowledged that I was anything but his little sister's best friend - and later, his best friend. Until one night in the middle of August, while we sat on the roof outside his bedroom window watching a meteor shower. He told me that life was fleeting and he didn't want to waste anymore of it. When I turned my head to look at him, his face was barely a breadth away from mine...When our lips connected, worlds collided. Sparks flew.

No, literally. Sparks flew. I've never quite understood how that happened, but it did. He pulled away and laughed - the first real laugh I'd heard from his lips in over a year. My heart swelled, and in that moment I knew...

I knew I would do anything for him. I knew that I would make a complete fool of myself just to see him smile; I knew I would act like an idiot just to hear his laugh. It was an incredible feeling - it trickled over my skin and seeped into my soul. For that brief moment in time, we were happy. For that brief moment in time, he was mine.

It lasted for all of six months. He disappeared the night I turned seventeen.

He was supposed to meet me under the old maple down by the brook at midnight, but he never came. By 2am I was distraught with worry, but when I went to his house it was abandoned. He'd left, just like that...never to be heard from again.

Until the night before my eighteenth birthday, that is. Until the night he saved my life and simultaneously ripped my heart out of my chest once again.