Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

Fifteen minutes after I dragged my ass in from the cold someone was raking their nails down my apartment door as if they were a fucking cat. I wasn’t about to move. Whoever darkened my door could go the fuck away. I was resolved to stay on the couch until a hard-fisted knock rattled the door-jamb.

“Mia, open up,” a girlish voice, muffled by the thick slab of wood, said.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t need to be psychic to know who waited in the hallway. My muscles knotted, taut as tripwire spooled through my body, and eager to erupt into violence. Pressing my hand against my forehead, I waited a minute, willing the rage hazing my vision to mellow.

Finally, when I felt like I wasn’t going to kill my guest, I stalked to the door and yanked it open.

Licia stood on the stoop with a black weekend bag bunched at her feet.

Was she fucking crazy?

My heart beat a frenzied staccato against my sternum, wanting to burst out like a damn chest ripper from Alien and punch her in the throat.

“Why are you here,” I snapped. The emotions drying my throat hadn’t cooled. They were just lying in wait before launching a verbal assault.

“Is that any way to greet your sister?” Licia sneered. Her bittersweet brown eyes, the same shade as mine, raked over me. She didn’t wait for an invitation. Licia hauled her bag up and shoved past me.

Her shoulder check pushed me towards the wall. I pressed my forehead against the plaster beside the door. I would not kill her. I wouldn’t. Besides, there was no place to hide the body. Glancing down the hall, I made sure my nosy neighbors weren’t acting like prairie dogs. There were a few old biddies on my floor and they thrived on gossip. Stepping inside, I shut the door behind her harder than anticipated. If Licia’s loud voice hadn’t pricked their drama radar, the way I slammed the door would.

I turned and faced my little sister. “After that stunt at the Alehouse, do you really believe you’re welcome here?”

I didn’t doubt for a second that her hook-up with Regi was accidental. He hadn’t changed physically since we’d first met him. He was still the humongous beefcake that had made all the girls at Shullsburg High swoon. If anything, he was bigger, fifty pounds more of rock-solid muscle, then he’d been at eighteen.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I needed eye bleach to remove the image of Licia and Regi. Maybe a lobotomy would do the trick.

“Why do you care. You don’t want him.” Licia tossed me a smirk over her shoulder, daring me to deny her assessment. I’d been vocal to anyone and everyone that Regi and I were just friends. That I would never, ever be caught dead in a relationship.

What a fucking bitch that she was using that against me.

Licia swiped a finger along the wall. The sharp noise of nails on the paint set my teeth on edge. Then she settled in between rooms, her eyes flicking through my apartment and assessing every detail. It was cracker-jack box small. You could see into every room, including the bedroom, if you stood at the cross section where the hallway led off into the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen/living room area.

I’d moved in after graduating college with my Bachelor’s degree. I’d obtained an amazing entry-level position at an up-and-coming public relations company right away. It was pure magic. I was using my Marketing degree. While my bachelorette pad wasn’t much and reflected my independent quasi-poor status — a one bedroom rectangle in a high-rise building — it was all mine.

“It’s complicated,” I muttered. With Regi and I, it always was. “You know it is. Why’d you do it?”

I didn’t know who to pile the blame on. Now that I’d had a chance to think, I remembered what he’d said. He didn’t recognize her. Licia was a far cry from the thin little girl she’d been back then. She was my sister, and even I barely recognized her.

Licia’s eyes were on me as I went back to the kitchen. I’d been aerating a bottle of wine before she’d knocked. I needed the numbing comfort of alcohol now more than ever.

Licia let loose a cutting little laugh. There was a smirk in her voice. “Because I could.”

My hands shook around the wine glass. This was the crux of my problem with Licia. When I’d left for college she’d cried, begged me not to go. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t put off my education for four years and take care of her. And I couldn’t take her into the dorms with me. She was old enough to handle mom’s issues herself. I’d been nine when I had to deal with them. She had four years to adjust before it was her turn. She viewed my leaving as some sort of betrayal. When I’d come home that year for Christmas she’d changed. Gone was the sullen teenager I’d left behind, and in its place was this vicious bitch wearing Licia’s face. I missed my sister and mourned the relationship we could have had.

I blinked back the tears. I didn’t dare face her and give her more ammunition to use. “It was cruel to both Regi and me.” God, how had he felt when he realized his newest hookup was Licia? He’d looked like death; pale and stricken.

Why did I care?

Because no matter how much you deny it, you want him.

I buried the voice before it got started and tore me apart.

Licia knew some of the history between us. She’d watched us dance around each other the last few months of our senior year in high school and all through the summer. She’d been the only one that had known about us.

“You need to toughen up, buttercup,” Licia said.

Damn, I wanted to throw my wine at her. I took a deep pull just so I wouldn’t murder the eighteen-year-old brat behind me.

“Why are you here?” I repeated.

“I’m touring the University this weekend.” Licia’s heels thumped against the carpet as she strolled to the couch and flopped down into the cushions. It was still newish, and the pillows sighed around her as they deflated. “This is comfy.”

“So, you came without asking, showed up at the Alehouse to be a bitch, and still expect me to let you stay?” I gritted my teeth. She was taking advantage of me, playing with me like a cat at a mouse hole. Licia was on my Facebook. She’d seen the group invite. And, up until her stunt, I wouldn’t have minded her visit and joining in.

Now it took every ounce of self-control not to launch myself at her. My fingers twitched, longing to dig into her hair and beat her up.

I’m not that girl.

Violence isn’t the answer.

I will not be like dad.

A lot of the time I feared I had his temper. The anger consumed me, and I wanted to maim and gnash and tear. Since I couldn’t do it with my fists, I often did it with words. My tongue curled around all the ways I could shred her false self-esteem. With the way she paraded herself, I saw the soft spots inside her. They mirrored mine.

Licia craned her neck, her smile more of a sneer as she gloated. “Yep, pretty much.”

I closed my eyes and turned away. She had me, and she knew it. Where else was she going to go? If she were truly touring the school, it would be wrong of me to kick her ass out. Despite the absolute cuntish behavior she depicted, she was still blood. She was still my little sister.

She didn’t fucking deserve my mercy. I gritted my teeth.

“Sunday morning you’re gone.” Grabbing the wine bottle, I vanished into my bedroom and slammed the door. The loud BOOM satisfied me, even if the force of it hurt my wrist.

Sinking onto the edge of the bed in the dark, I closed my eyes and drank the first glass of wine in two gulps. Then I poured another one.

If I crawled into the bottom of the bottle maybe I could forget about Regi, and Licia, and the broken bits of myself.

Drunken oblivion couldn’t come soon enough.