He dipped his head and looked away. “I don’t know how much time you’ll have now that you’re going to be working . . .” I listened as his footsteps approached where I was standing. “But I noticed you were almost done with that book you’ve been reading, and I wanted to make sure you had something for the mornings.”
I turned, my face was already pinched in confusion, but quickly morphed into excitement when he held out the next two, and final, books in the series I was reading. “Jentry,” I whispered in amazement as I stepped forward to take the books from him. “Thank you. Wait—how did you know?”
He gave me an amused look. “You’ve been reading that book since I got home.”
“Right, no, that’s not what I—” I shook my head and exhaled quickly as I tried to steady my thoughts. “But you’ve seen my boxes of books. How did you know that I didn’t already have these?”
Jentry just watched me for a few moments, then lifted an eyebrow in response.
At that look, my eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I understand you are always taking in your surroundings and don’t miss much—if anything—but those books are in my closet,” I reminded him.
He didn’t falter.
“Good to know,” I whispered mostly to myself, then studied the books in my hands again. “Thank you, Jentry. This is—this is incredibly sweet of you, even if I do find it creepy that you’ve probably searched my closet and drawers.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said with a short laugh, “but I do want to know why you buy physical books.”
I shot him a confused look as I set the books down and walked toward the food again. “I like being able to hold the books,” I said slowly, not understanding why it mattered.
“But then you just store them away in your closet.”
“Oh,” I said when it finally made sense. “Uh, well, when we moved in here, I couldn’t find shelves that I liked that I could afford. Besides, I have these very specific shelves in mind, and couldn’t find anything that came close to them. I tried leaving some of the books out around the apartment. . . .” I stopped short of telling him how much Linda had hated it. “It just didn’t look right.”
He nodded slowly as he looked around the living room and I went back to divvying up the food.
“So what will you be doing while I’m gone all day?”
“Searching your closet,” he said immediately.
A smile spread slowly across my face as I shook my head. “Anything else?”
The energy in the kitchen shifted as he walked toward me and leaned his back against the counter once he was next to me. “I want to go through the police academy. I’ll start looking into when the next class begins, what I need to do.”
I blinked quickly in surprise. “You do?”
My surprise caught Jentry off guard. “Is that not something that Dec ever mentioned?” When I shook my head, he continued. “That was always my plan. Go into the Marine Corps, then become a police officer.”
“Why such dangerous jobs? Are you one of those people who like to do life-threatening things, like skydiving?”
He laughed, but his face was serious. “No, uh . . . no, that’s not me. I just want to protect people.”
“I see that,” I said softly, and my cheeks burned with frustration with the man next to me. “Jentry, what you said back at the hospital—”
“You didn’t understand why I wanted you—”
“I do,” I disagreed, cutting him off. “I do. You want me to be sure I’m making the right choice. There’s been the time of having you gone, and then time thinking we were all going to lose Declan, and throughout both of those, I was choosing someone. But from day one, it was never a choice with you, it was a need.” My cheeks burned even hotter. “There is nothing without you, Jentry. You told me yesterday that you fell in love with me that first night; is it so impossible to believe that I did the same?”
I could tell from his expression that he wanted my words to be true. “But Declan—”
“—would never be you. On paper, he’s perfect for me, but I still tried to force him to be you nearly every day of our relationship. In nearly a year, I have never felt for him a fraction of what I feel for you.” I placed my hand on his cheek and said, “For a time, things are going to be about Declan. They have to, even more now that he’s awake, and I know you know that and agree with it. Nothing can be about us right now, and like I told you yesterday, being close to you physically makes remembering that too difficult, but don’t for one second think that I will ever stop needing, wanting, or choosing you.”
Jentry
I watched Aurora walk to her room that night after we quickly finished our dinner. My arms stayed folded tightly across my chest so I wouldn’t reach out for her and bring her back to me as she turned from my sight. I lingered there for a second before turning and walking slowly toward the guest room in the apartment, letting the day wash over me.
Mom’s hatefulness toward the girl I love.
Declan waking up.
Aurora. Always Aurora.
I rubbed at the back of my neck, hoping to relieve some of the tension there, and loosed a slow breath as I entered the hallway. My footsteps slowed, then stopped.
The guest room door was cracked and the light was on. I had left the door closed and light off. I always did with my rooms.
My breaths slowed to a stop so I could listen to every little sound around me, and within seconds, awareness slid over my skin like a disease. I hissed out a curse as my hands automatically curled into fists and my body began vibrating with frustration and expectation.
“How the hell did you get in here?” I asked, then slowly turned my head to glance over my shoulder.
Jess lifted an eyebrow as if she didn’t understand why I hadn’t expected her, then shouldered past me to walk into the room.
Once I had followed her in there and shut the door, she let out a long, dramatic sigh that ended with a psychotic-sounding laugh. “This is incredible. Really, I don’t know what to do with myself now that I have this information.” She admired her nails as she plopped down on the bed and made herself comfortable. “How long has this been going on, Jent? Because it sounded like it was longer than the few days that you’ve been home.”
“What are you doing here, Jessica, and how did you get in here?”
She rolled her eyes and grumbled, “Fine, boring questions first. I told you I needed a place to stay for a—”
“You said that yesterday.”
“And I found a place to sleep last night . . . obviously.” Her lips curved up in a slow grin and her eyes faded to somewhere other than this room. “But the invitation wasn’t open for tonight. So here I am. And do you really need to ask how I got in here? How do I get in anywhere, Jentry?” she asked, but I knew the question was rhetorical, so I kept my mouth firmly shut. “I got bored waiting for you when Little Miss Perfect came strolling in here, but then you finally came back, and boy oh boy did I get an earful.”
The way she laughed maniacally set me on edge; always had. It reminded me of our mother. Of her mother.
Once Jessica stopped laughing, she speared me with an excited look, and her face contorted as her smile twisted into something sinister. “How you feelin’, Jent? You worried about what I know? Worried about what I’ll say? Worried about how dear ol’ Declan will react when he finds out about you and his precious girlfriend?” She spouted off her questions softly, but rapidly, and I could see it in her expression that she was getting excited about the prospect of pissing me off. “You gettin’ mad? I bet you are. You feel it? It’s inside you, always inside you. Does your precious Rorie know about your sickness?” she asked, sneering Aurora’s name. “Does she know how you’ll ruin her?”
Despite the anger coursing through me, I didn’t move or speak. I knew it was what Jessica wanted, and I refused to give it to her. But as she continued to taunt me, I no longer heard her words, but our mother’s . . . and soon those words turned into my own.
Wo
rds I had said a year ago to Aurora, words that had never been truer, and words that had haunted me more than ever in the last few days.
“I see it, I see you getting mad. What does it feel like?” Her eyes widened in anticipation, and I wanted to throttle her for it.
She always asked what it felt like, and every time it made me feel worse than ever. Made me feel dirty somehow.
“Come on, Jent, hit something,” she goaded, and her excitement slowly faded when I forced my arms over my chest.
“Let me guess: don’t want the precious Rorie to hear? What is it about this bitch anyway? I don’t see anything special about her. She looks like a doe-eyed freak.” Jessica scoffed and went back to studying her nails. “What Declan ever saw in her . . .” She trailed off and shook her head.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
My jaw was starting to ache from clenching it so tight, but I knew I needed to fake my calm until she left. “You need to leave, Jess. You know when you can come back.”
She let out a soft, melodic laugh with just a hint of madness woven through it. “Why, you don’t want to be seen with me? Don’t want Rorie to know about me? Too late, Jent. Besides, I have nowhere else to go.”
“I’m sure you can find somewhere.”
“Like Declan’s bed? I’m sure he needs company now that he’s awake,” she hinted suggestively, and for the umpteenth time since finding Jessica in the apartment, I forced myself not to lash out at her. “And I bet he’s gonna need all kinds of company once he finds out that you’ve been taking care of his girl for a long, long time.”
I shut my eyes briefly as I focused on just breathing, and rubbed roughly at my jaw. “Out.” My demand came out louder than I meant it to, but no less harsher.
She pouted pathetically and sprawled out on my bed, as if she had no intention of leaving. “You said I could always come to you.”
“Yeah, and you know when. Now is not the time; you’re only coming here to piss me off. Go back to your house.”
“What house?” she asked bitterly, giving me the first glimpse of something other than the chaos that our mother had engrained in her.
“Where are you staying?”
“What does it matter? You don’t care!” she mocked, but like a light had been flipped on, that wicked smile came back, and she swayed as she sat up on the bed and sang, “As long as we stay away from you, nothing can go wrong in Jentry’s perfect world because he’s in denial of who he is and what’s inside him.”
“When you want help, I’ll fucking help you, Jess. But you don’t want help! You want money when you don’t get enough from whoring yourself around, or because you spend too much on drugs for Mom,” I hissed as I closed the distance to the bed. “So until then, get the fuck away from me. I’ve tried to help you too many times, and in return, all you do is try to ruin what’s in my life before you take off running again.”
She lurched forward until there were only inches between us, and eyes as dark as mine glared back at me. “Me ruin your life?” She laughed haughtily and shoved her hand against my chest. “You ruin everything you touch, Jentry. Don’t forget that. You see your best friend lying in that hospital? What was that I heard tonight about why he got in the accident in the first place?” She smiled knowingly, then sneered, “That’s what I thought. You had a hand in that, didn’t you? How long until your so-called family knows about that, huh? And how long until Little Miss Perfect isn’t so perfect because you’ve destroyed her?”
“Leave,” I said on a growl. “Now.”
She shouldered past me as she got off the bed, and turned as she reached the door. “I’ll be waiting to watch you burn in your own flames, brother.”
I followed her out of the room, and my stomach dropped when I saw Aurora standing halfway across the living room with a look of shock on her face.
“Well, well, well,” Jessica began, but I cut her off.
“Jess.” Her name rumbled in my chest and shouted its warning, but Jessica had never cared about my warnings. She had always pushed against them, hoping to watch me explode.
“If it isn’t the cheating whore herself—”
“Fucking leave!” My voice boomed through the apartment, and I caught a glimpse of Aurora jerking away from the sound just before Jessica started on a fit of uncontrollable, frantic laughter.
“I just wanted to meet her.” She jutted out her bottom lip in a mock pout, then let her mouth curve into a wry grin. “After all, Rorie and I have taken a trip or two around the same cock.”
“Jessica!”
She lifted her hands in surrender, and giggled. “I meant block. Watch out for this one,” Jess said to Aurora in a singsong voice as she continued backward toward the front door, swaying and pointing at me the whole time. “He’s a bomb, and he’s about to go boom!”
I slammed the door shut as soon as she was outside, muffling her last words, and stood there staring at the door as my body shook with a rage that Jessica always brought with her.
Minutes passed with my back still to Aurora, my hands on the door as if Jessica might come barging through even though I’d locked it, before Aurora spoke. “What . . . what just happened? I heard you yelling and was coming to see what was going on, and that’s when I heard her, and then you were walking out of the room.”
“I told you to promise me that if you ever saw her again you would stay away from her. She’s crazy. You saw a glimpse. Literally, a glimpse of what she can be like.”
“Why was she here?” Aurora’s hand pressed to my shuddering back, and I let out a harsh breath at her touch. “Jesus, Jentry, why are you shaking?”
I turned and looked at her confused and worried face, and wanted nothing more than to take her into my arms and assure her that everything would be fine. But I couldn’t. Not after what had just happened, and not after Aurora had told me just an hour before that being close to me was too difficult.
I ran my hands over my face as I groaned, and tried to calm myself. “She was already here when we got back. She was here when you got back. I don’t know how she got in, but she has a knack for sneaking into places.”
Aurora looked horrified, but there was no point in lying to her about Jessica.
“This is what she does. She sneaks into where I live and waits so she can talk to me. That’s how she’d always done it until I went into the Marine Corps, then she started stealing my number from Declan’s phone.”
My explanation seemed to remind her of something. Her blue eyes searched my face and her mouth opened and shut twice before she hesitantly asked, “What did she mean . . . what did she mean about—just, what did she mean?”
My head shook slowly. “She said a lot, Aurora. You have to give me more than that.”
“She is your twin,” she stated, as though she was confirming. When I nodded, she blew out a harsh breath. “Then I’m going to assume that whole part after she said she ‘wanted to meet me’ had to do with Declan, unless she just said it because she thought it would upset me.”
I watched her expression closely as I confirmed, “They have a past.”
Instead of looking hurt, Aurora’s face showed disgust. “I might actually prefer Madeline for once.”
If I hadn’t still been shaking from the aftermath of my sister, I might have laughed. “Declan didn’t know who Jessica was at the time. He hadn’t seen her in about ten years because if Jess came looking for me before then, she made sure none of the Veils were around. I—” I quickly cut off from telling her too much at that time, then said, “It didn’t go over well when I found out. He’s avoided her ever since, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped searching him out.”
Aurora nodded, but she didn’t seem to realize she was doing it. “Is she dangerous?”
“No. She wants money, but she won’t just take it. She’ll wait until you give it to her, because she knows that we know she’ll just keep showing up until we do give her money. What she really wants is atten
tion, but she won’t hurt anyone or steal anything. But the way her mind works, Aurora, there’s no talking to her like a normal person. It’s like trying to reason with someone with multiple personalities, even though they are completely sane.”
She looked at me blankly. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”
I hesitated for a second, then said, “I can’t explain it all right now. Just know there’s no way to keep her out of here, but if you see her, stay away from her. She’ll get into your head and I can’t let that happen. But, Aurora, she was here tonight, so she knows about what led to Dec’s accident, she knows about us, and she will do anything if it will make me mad.”
Her face slowly fell as she backed up a step, and then another. When her eyes met mine again, she breathed one simple word that seemed to fit this situation so well. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Part V
That Night . . .
He released his hold on my hair, and let his hand trail down as I leaned forward to place my hands flat on the wall. The touch was soft and caressing, and my body came alive as I waited for the hardness that I knew would soon follow. Because it had to follow.
“Not a sound,” he reminded me.
I looked over my shoulder at him, and nodded. I kept my eyes locked with his as I waited. I’d known he was trouble the second I’d seen him downstairs—his body screamed it. But his handsome face, which had hinted at the bad boy underneath, had transformed here in the bedroom. Control made him intoxicating to look at.
He pushed slowly into me, and I bit back a whimper. I’d thought before was incredible, but feeling him in this position was all new and too much. Too deep, too full. It was taking my breath away in the most erotic way. His hands moved over my hips, and his fingers tightened against the skin there before releasing. With that wicked grin, he pulled out just as slowly, and I cried out when he slammed into me again and again.
I dropped my head between my arms and clawed uselessly at the wall as I tried to hang on. I felt it building deep inside me, and stopped clawing at the wall to push against it, and closer to him. Each stroke felt deeper than the last; each felt like it was taking me to a place higher and higher—and soon I was going to fall.