So was I, for that matter.

My first impulse was to comfort the small crying girl beneath me, to care for and protect my "little sister" and reassure her that everything would be alright.

But everything WOULDN'T be alright. Not if Belle continued on this path leading from sweet "I'LL love you forever" down to psychotic "You are

MINE forever whether you Like it or not".

I took a deep breath and gently pried her hands away from her face. I got off her lap and pulled on her arms so that she sat upright beside me. I found her shirt, tossed it to her, and with a stern look, I stated in a humorless tone, "Okay, we need to TALK."

She looked at me Like I was crazy. "We've BEEN talking."

“No, you've been bitching and I've been listening. But now we're gonna talk about where this is going. And it starts with this: I need you to give me my house key back."

Belle blinked. "What?"

“My house key. The one Mother gave you. You're going to give it back to me."

"why?"

“Because I can't trust you right now. I can't trust that if I'm sleeping overnight with one of the other girls you won't sneak in around midnight and smother her in her sleep.”

“That's insane."

"So is hanging out all day with our friends with a giant butt plug in your ass just waiting to say, ‘Fuck you bitches!‘ That's not a lapse in judgment. That's preparation, intent, and malice." I held my hands out and gave her a look that pretty much said, ‘I rest my case.’

“I didn't mean..."

“Oh, you meant it alright."

She shook her head. "You're casting everything in the worst possible

Light."

“I'm casting it in LIGHT, period. If I'd succumbed to the temptation of your ass and helped you burn down the BTC, I would never have forgiven myself. We're at a critical point, and we're gonna stop the overnights until you and I get this shit figured out.”

“Why are you doing this to me?" she whimpered, still clutching her shirt to her chest.

“Put the damn shirt on, and give me my key. We're not continuing this conversation until you do."

Only now did Belle seem to realize how far she was in deep shit and started crying. But after swallowing thickly, she put on her bra, pulled on the shirt, and then went to her purse to retrieve her keys.

She removed a familiar one with a red plastic loop around the key head and handed it to me. I made a mental note to add it to my own key ring for safekeeping.

“There, happy?" she muttered through tears, her eyes already turning red.

I took a deep breath, exhaled, and forced myself to relax. Taking the key back gave me something concrete to hold onto, and now that we'd taken that step, a lot of my anger started to melt away.

“Look, you said ‘I'm scared.’ I'm gonna assume that means you're scared of losing me."