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Taking The Plunge

Their night came to a premature end. Jess offered to have a girl's night with Kate, with Mark nodding and saying he could bunk with a friend, but Kate refused. There was someone her insides yearned to be with, and it wasn't her friends. Mark and Jess walked her home, and Jess stopped them outside a department store momentarily to purchase a bucket of ice cream, which she thrust at Kate as they came to a stop in front of the hotel.

"It will help." she whispered, her eyes filled with helpless sympathy, "Ice cream always helps."

"Are you sure you don't want us to stay with you?" Mark asked gently, "It won't be any trouble. I don't want you to be alone." Jess had shaken her head at him when he had asked what had happened, but his concern was evident despite his confusion.

Kate shook her head numbly. "I won't be alone." she whispered, reaching forward to give them quick hugs, "Thank you, guys." she waved them goodbye, then walked inside, clutching the ice cream to her chest.

She didn't take a detour to her apartment, instead taking the twenty minute walk to the villas, the punishing cold like a balm on her rattled nerves, numbing her skin and her emotions so long as she walked. She calmly entered the cottage, locking the door with trembling hands, and then placed the ice cream on the counter to fetch a spoon.

She stabbed the spoon in the ice cream and stared down at it, and just like that, felt her composure slipping away. Hot tears streamed down her face into the bucket, and she hiccuped and sobbed like a child, unable to suppress the tide of emotion.

All those years of therapy, she thought, stabbing her spoon into the ice cream and gouging out a huge scoop, and she still couldn't turn off her feelings towards them. She stuck the spoon in her mouth, messily sucking the glob. But was it really possible? Luke was...someone she couldn't define, but Will was her brother. Could someone really turn off their feelings for their own flesh and blood? Someone who had spent their whole childhood coddling you before doing a jarring one eighty?

She couldn't believe how much older he had looked, how whole and healthy and, before he had noticed she was around...happy. But then, there had been edges of roughness too, in the shadows under his eyes, the cruelty in his smile, the coldness of his eyes. He wasn't the Will who had returned baby sparrows to their nests when they had fallen out because it had upset her. He wasn't the Will who had found her crying over a rip in her only doll and had awkwardly wielded the needle to sow it back together. And he certainly wasn't the Will who had kissed her forehead every night before sending her to bed, ignoring the jeers of boys who had ribbed him for being too soft.

He wasn't her Will, but he was her brother, and the sight of him shouldn't have made all those memories crystal clear when the last eight years she had spent had been obsessing over his final bad deed. But it did.

She remembered the night her parents had died and the sirens blaring outside their house when the cops had come to find the children. The cops had been relaying the news to Will politely, respectful towards him despite his age, when Kate had woken up by the noise and had followed it, clutching her doll to herself and walking to her brother like a little ghost in her childish nightgown.

"S'matter, Will?" she had asked, slipping her hand in his and pressing close to him shyly when she had noticed the strangers eyeing her with compassion, "Did Mommy and Daddy come back?"

His voice had been low, broken, "Mommy and Daddy aren't coming back, Kate. It's just us."

She had instinctively pressed closer to him, "Did they go to a vacation again? Will they send over a babysitter to take care of us like before?"

Will had looked at her, his eyes blue and endless, and even as a child conviction had rung in his words, "Don't worry, Kate. I will take care of you."