The Wrong Name

Clara?"

Dorothy's voice came out thick and slow from the bed. I was standing just inside the door with my hand still on the light switch, and I didn't move.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. If I said even one word, he would know it wasn't her.

I waited until my eyes got used to the dark. A little moonlight was coming through the gap in the curtains, enough for me to see the bed and the shape of him on it. He was lying on his back with one arm over his face. I could hear him breathing, fast and heavy, like he had just run up three flights of stairs.

Far away downstairs, I could still hear the orchestra. It sounded small and thin from up here, like it was playing in a different house.

"Clara," he said again. "You came."

I put my hand over my mouth. I wanted to leave so badly. I'm not going to pretend I didn't.

Clara's mask was itchy against my face and it had her perfume on it, something sweet and expensive that I would never have bought for myself. It felt strange to smell her on my own skin. I hadn't even done anything yet, and already I felt like I was stealing.

I thought about her for a moment, the real Clara, somewhere downstairs in her dark blue dress, probably looking around for him. She had always been polite to me. She had never once looked at me the way Isabella did. That made it worse.

I took my shoes off by the door. I don't know why I did that, there was nobody to hear me. Then I walked to the bed, one slow step at a time.

Dorothy moved his arm away from his face and reached out, feeling around in the dark until he found my hand. His fingers were burning hot.

"You're freezing," he mumbled, and he almost laughed. "Your hands are always cold."

That hurt more than I expected. He had said the exact same thing to me last winter, when he found me in the garden library without my gloves. He took both my hands and rubbed them between his and told me I was hopeless. Your hands are always cold, Evie. I thought about it for weeks afterwards. Now he was saying it again and had no idea who he was saying it to.

Maybe I could just sit here, I thought. Just sit with him, give him water, wipe his forehead, and leave before anyone came. I almost believed it.

I knew I should stop. I knew it right then, standing there.

He wasn't himself. Somebody had put something in his drink, and he thought I was another woman. He wasn't choosing anything right now. If I stayed, I would be taking something he never gave me, and there was no nicer way to say it than that.

I could have gone to wake the family doctor. I could have dragged the chair over and sat next to him until the fever went down. I knew that too. But every good thing I could do ended with me walking out of that room and never being this close to him again.

I thought about the keys on my dressing table. The apartment. A breakfast table where nobody would be sitting across from me. In a few months Dorothy would be busy with his own life, and I would just be the stepsister who used to live upstairs.

"Don't go," Dorothy said. His fingers tightened around mine. "Please. I don't want to be alone."

I told myself I was only staying so he wouldn't be alone. Even while I was thinking it, I knew it was a lie.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. He pulled me toward him slowly, like he was scared I would disappear, and I felt his breath on my neck.

"Clara," he whispered.

It hurt. It really did. But I didn't pull away.

I closed my eyes.

I shouldn't be here. The thought thrums through me like a second heartbeat as I stood at the doorway of his bedroom, watching the rise and fall of his chest beneath the thin cotton shirt. Dorothy my stepbrother lies sprawled across his bed, eyes open but unfocused, staring at the ceiling as if the answers to some cosmic question are written there.

He blinks slowly. Then his head turns toward me, and a lazy smile spreads across his lips. "Clara," he breathes, and my stomach clenches with a mixture of relief and devastation.

He thinks I'm his girlfriend. The drugs from the party earlier are still fogging his brain, still rewriting my face into hers. I should leave. I should close the door and pretend I never came up those stairs, never let my fingers brush against the doorframe, never let my eyes linger on the way his muscles shift under his shirt.

But I've been lying to myself for months. I don't stop.

I step inside, my bare feet silent on the carpet. The moonlight spills through his window, painting silver streaks across his arms those strong, defined arms I've watched flex when he lifts weights in the backyard. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my throat. Guilt is a physical weight in my chest, pressing down on my lungs, but desire is a wildfire burning beneath it.

"Clara," he murmurs again, reaching blindly toward me. "Come here."

I know he doesn't mean me. Every syllable of that name is a knife twisting in my gut, because I'm not Clara. I'm Evelyn, the stepsister who watched him for way too long, who memorized the way his laugh crinkled the corners of his eyes, who lay awake at night fantasizing about things no sister should ever think about. Even a stepsister.

But I take his hand anyway.

His grip is warm and strong, and when he tugs, I go willingly, falling onto the edge of his bed. His fingers curl around my wrist, thumb brushing against my pulse point. He notices it racing even drugged, he notices and his brow furrows.

"You're nervous," he slurs. "Why're you nervous, Clara?"

I swallow hard. "I'm not."

He giggles. It's a soft, boyish sound that makes my heart ache. "Liar."

He pulls me closer, and I go. I'm drowning in him, in the scent of his cologne mixed with sweat, in the way his eyes keep drifting in and out of focus. He reaches up and touches my face, his palm warm against my cheek. I lean into it involuntarily, and he smiles again.

"You're so pretty," he says, his voice slurring and soft. "My Clara."

The name burns. It's wrong. All of this is wrong. He can't consent to this not really, not with his mind wrapped in chemical fog. He doesn't even know who I am. He thinks he's touching his girlfriend, not his stepsister.

And yet I can't stop.

I crawl onto the bed beside him, my raven hair falling across the pillow as I prop myself up on one elbow. He shifts toward me like a plant searching for sunlight, his hand finding my waist beneath my thin tank top. The warmth of his palm sears through the fabric.

"You're trembling," he observes, his voice thick with confusion.

"I'm just... feeling a lot," I whisper.

He hums softly. His other hand comes up, fingers threading through my hair, pulling me gently closer. His lips part soft, slightly chapped, inviting. He thinks he's kissing his girlfriend. He thinks this is okay.

I know it's not.

I lean in anyway.

The first kiss is soft, hesitant. My lips tremble against his, and he responds with a lazy, drugged sweetness, his mouth moving against mine without urgency. He tastes like the sweet cocktail he had at the party, a faint trace of something tropical lingering on his tongue. I deepen the kiss, and he sighs into my mouth, pulling me closer.

His hand slides down my back, fingers splaying across the curve where my hip meets my waist. I gasp against his lips, and he takes that as an invitation, rolling onto his side to face me fully. His eyes are half lidded, heavy with the drug's haze, but there's something warm in them something affectionate, even if it's directed at the wrong woman.

"Clara," he whispers against my mouth, and it's like swallowing broken glass coated in honey. "God, I love you."

The words shatter something inside me. *I love you.* He means them for someone else, but they sink into my chest anyway, taking root in the fertile darkness I've been cultivating for months. I want him to love me. I want this so badly I can taste it, bitter and sweet all at once.

"I love you too," I lie, and it feels more true than anything I've ever said.

He smiles, slow and trusting, and pulls me against him. My body presses against his, the hard planes of his chest meeting the soft curves of mine. I can feel every muscle beneath his shirt, can feel the way his fingers curl into the fabric of my top like he's afraid I'll disappear.

I'm not going anywhere.

But I should. I should slip out of this room and let him sleep off the drugs, wake up tomorrow with no memory of tonight. I should spare him the betrayal of learning that his stepsister took advantage of his altered state.

Instead, I straddle his hips.

The weight of me settling across his thighs drags a low groan from his throat. His hands find my waist immediately, gripping still gentle, but firmer now. His eyes wander up my body, over the tank top clinging to my curves, lingering where the moonlight reveals the outline of my breasts.

"Fuck," he breathes. "You're so beautiful."

I'm not Clara. I'm not her. But in this moment, drugged and hazy and wanting, I can pretend I am. I can pretend this is the relationship I've fantasized about for months, that these strong hands belong to me, that his love was always meant for me.

His fingers slide under the hem of my tank top, grazing the skin of my stomach. I shiver, and he notices, a satisfied curve curling his lips. He's trusting me completely, this man who doesn't know my name, and the shame of it curls deep in my belly, hot and bitter and somehow arousing all at once.

"Dorothy," I whisper, testing his name on my tongue.

He blinks, confused, head cocking slightly. "Who's Dorothy?"

I shake my head, a sad smile playing on my lips. "Nobody. Just a name I was trying on."

He's too hazy to question it. He pulls me down for another kiss, and I give in completely, melting against him. My love for him is a flower growing in poisoned soil, fed by his mistaken affection and my own desperate longing.

The dawn will come soon. The light will spill through his window and chase away the shadows, and when he wakes, he won't remember this. He won't remember my hands on his skin or my lips on his throat. He'll go back to Clara, and I'll go back to being his stepsister, the girl he sees across the breakfast table without a second thought.

But for now, he's mine. Even if he doesn't know it. Even if I know he can't truly consent.

I press my lips to his jawline, my heart pounding with a love that will rot in the morning light, and I hold him like he's the last thing I'll ever have.