Hiding Anna [rewritten]

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Betrayal

"Hey Izzy," George cooed, smiling down at his younger sister. She looked up with big, doll-like eyes and broke into a grin. The tiny girl didn't say anything when she reached her hands up to be lifted into his arms. He followed her silent command and cradled her lightly. "You gonna tell me what you've done at play-group today?"

"Right well now that I've got this cheeky miss of my hands I can go and take a well-deserved shower before we go out." Josephine said with her hands on her hips and panting slightly at the weight of the shopping bags. "Cassie, how are you darling?"

"I'm good thank you, Josephine." I replied, dragging my eyes away from Isabelle and George having a silent conversation with gentle hand gestures. "Do you mind if I stay tonight?"

It was a stupid thing to ask since this house was now practically my second home but I always worried that she thought of me as a burden and I liked to be polite.

She rolled her eyes. "Cassie, you don't need to ask. You are always welcome here."

Nodding with a smile in reply, I awkwardly stood with my fingers fumbling with each other and my ankles crossing and uncrossing.

"Well, I'd better go and jump in the shower before my wife does because otherwise we'll miss our booking." Christopher joked, nudging his wife with a cheeky smirk before sprinting away from the kitchen and up the staircase hanging above us.

"Oi you! I just said I was going first!" Josephine shouted back and also ran off in the direction of the second floor, a determined grin on her face as she tried to catch up with her husband.

"They are like children." George tutted under his breath, shaking his head.

"I don't understand why they have an open marriage."

"Well, because they live so far away from each other, they only see each for a week ever two months so it's easier to get rid of any urges without any consequences." He explained. "To be completely honest I don't actually think either of them see anyone else anymore, or have done for a while actually. It was more for when they were a bit younger, like when I was born and mum first moved here."

"So basically they have an open marriage because they're horny all the time. Or they used to be anyway." I said, laughing. "Huh, so kinda like you then?"

He poked my side with the other hand he wasn't using to hold Isabelle up. "Hey, I'm not horny all the time. Only when I'm with you. And for the record, even if we lived seas apart I'd never sleep with anyone else, however horny I might be." George said seriously, pushing slightly on my back so I could move forwards. "Here, hold her."

Before I could so much as take another breath Isabelle was gently placed in my arms, her tiny frame resting on my chest. She was awake, her eyes large and studying the new face, but there was a glassiness to them that told me she was exhausted. She opened her mouth, her peachy lips popping open slightly, but then closed it and rested her head against my collar bone.

"How did this happen?" I asked quietly. I wondered whether it would be okay to run my fingertip down the length of the long scar set into her cheek, growing up to the edge of her eyebrow like a protruding, unwanted vine.

"A dog came and attacked her when she was a year old. The doctors say that they were surprised she survived since she was so young. It bit her face, almost took out a part of her jaw and fucked up her eye," He crouched down a little just so he could be level with me and looked over my shoulder at the toddler. "See how it's black? Well it was blue like the other, but that dog's bite got into her eye and now she has this huge dilated pupil that's sort of leaking out over what was a blue iris."