I couldn’t help it, I smiled. But then the memories flooded right back up and swallowed me. “I let her drive,” I finally admitted, “when I knew she was upset.”
Caroline was quiet for a moment before she asked simply, “And why did you do that?”
A sigh eased from my lungs. I glanced back up at the stars and pulled the warm woman in my arms tighter against me, realizing what an honor it was to get to hold her like this. In a second, she could be stolen away from me, too...just like that.
Tucking my face into her hair and appreciating what I had right now, I said, “Because she was upset. She loved driving, so I thought letting her take the wheel would make her feel better.”
“And did it...before the accident part, I mean?”
I shrugged. “Well, yeah. I guess. She was smiling and lecturing me when...” I broke off, remembering the headlights of the other car as they’d blared in my face right before it ran a red light and T-boned us. A shudder wracked me. Memories swirled of Zoey screaming my name, the fear in her voice as she begged for help, the utter helplessness I’d felt; it all haunted me.
“Why was she upset?” Caroline asked.
I shook my head and snorted. “Some stupid-ass guy. Thought she liked him, but then she went to a sleepover with her friends and found out one of her buddies was also hooking up with him. When she called me, crying, asking me to pick her up, I’d just—”
Fuck, I couldn’t tell Caroline about that. But she nudged me in the ribs with her pointer finger. “You’d just what?”
I glanced at her warily. “I guess I already told you about my first time, didn’t I?”
“You mean the stupid girl who laughed at your beautiful penis?”
Appreciating the way she described my birthmark, I grinned. “Yeah. Her. Well, I was driving home from that when Zoey’s distress call came in.”
“Wait.” Caroline held up a hand and twisted to look directly into my eyes. “So the same traumatic night you lost your virginity and were ridiculed by that idiot, twat girl was also the night your sister—”
Setting my hand over her mouth to keep her from saying what I couldn’t handle hearing, I nodded. “Yeah.”
Her eyes flared. “Wow. No wonder why you’ve had such an issue with your penis. It’s tied to your sister.”
I couldn’t help it, I snorted out a laugh. “Fuck, you have no idea how wrong that sounded when you said it that way.”
“What?” she asked before she must’ve mentally repeated what she’d just said. Then she snickered and bumped herself back against me. “Whatever. You know what I meant.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but it still sounds fucking strange.”
Caroline finally chuckled along with me before she cocked her head to the side. “So, was Zoey younger or older than you? I can’t tell from the way you talk about her.”
I cleared my throat. “She was...she was the same age. The same exact age.”
Mouth falling open, Caroline gaped. “You were twins? Holy shit.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. But the memories still attacked me. Every single detail of my childhood had involved my sister. She’d always been right there with me, almost an extension of myself until, wham, she was just...gone.
“Well, fuck.” Caroline rested her cheek on my shoulder. “No wonder you’re so messed up. I mean, losing a sibling has to be rough. It’s got to hurt like hell and make you feel as if you failed them somehow. But a twin? That’d be like losing...a part of yourself.”
“Yeah.” In need of a distraction, I ran my fingers through her hair. “It pretty much gutted me. And I swore to myself I’d never hurt like that again. I’d never...fuck, I’d never love like that again. I don’t care that it was just sibling love, it still—”
“No, I totally get it. Any kind of love—sibling, paternal, passionate, platonic—it still hurts just as painfully when you lose that person.”
I nodded. “It really does. And I was keeping my promise so well for three years. I didn’t let any chick in, not until you came along. And then Blondie showed up. Jesus, you guys know how to fuck my head up, you know that?”
Her fingers stroked my face again. “I’d say sorry,” she murmured, her lips tipped up in pleasure. “But then I’d be lying.”
I sniffed. Of course, she wasn’t sorry. She’d gotten exactly what she wanted from this. I gazed at her a moment, admitting I was glad she had, though. “Are you beginning to see why I stayed away from you for so long? It wasn’t just about your brother.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess. You irrationally fear someone else is going to die if you actually begin to like another girl.”
I snorted. “Begin to? The begin-to boat has sailed, sweetheart. I already like you. A lot. That’s why this is so hard. Why our whole girlfriend-boyfriend talk today was so awkward. I don’t like the girls I screw. I’ve made a point not to. I didn’t date, I didn’t fuck with the lights on, I never cuddled afterward.” With an impatient kind of sigh, I hugged her tighter to me. “You’re seriously breaking all my rules. You know that, right?”
Her smile just grew. “I’m beginning to get a clue.”
Jesus, she was loving this. Why did women love it so much when you got all sappy and poured your frigging heart out to them?
“So, if the timeline in my head is right, this all happened near the end of your...last year of high school, right?”
I nodded. “Two months before graduation.”
“God, that’s so awful. How did you...I can’t even imagine how you were able to graduate after that. How you moved on at all.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember much about the last bit of high school. I just know I passed. It was moving on to college that really changed everything. I guess I looked at it as a clean slate, as if I hadn’t existed until that moment. I had no past, no sister, no nothing. I was just me. Gamble...” I paused and glanced at her.
She nodded, seemingly okay with me bringing up her brother. I swallowed. “Well, he probably helped me through everything more than anyone, without even knowing what he was doing. We were assigned as roommates in the dorms. And he just...swept me along with him and kind of forced us into being this...team.” I shook my head and grinned. “It was easy not to tell him shit about me. That fucker was driven. I tell you what, he was looking so far into the future when he came to ESU, it was as if he never had a past. Like no one had ever had a past. So, shit, I don’t know. It was easy to forget anything that had happened to me before college, too. We just lived for the present and the future. I knew about you and your brothers because he would call home, like, every fucking day, but I figured you were all really young or something. I never really thought about it. He didn’t voice any concerns to me, so I didn’t worry about you either. And he never worried about any of my shit I’d pushed out of my head, so...it just worked for us.”
With a smile, Caroline hugged me. “I understand why he had to leave Colton and Brandt and me for a while, then. He had to be here for you.”
I stared at her, realizing shit, she’d had to suffer so I could find a way to heal. That sucked ass. But in a way, I was kind of glad it’d worked out this way. Her suffering had brought her here, to me.
Pressing my forehead to hers, I breathed in that amazing smell that was purely my woman. Then I cupped her face in my hands. “Whatever shit happened to drag us here to this moment...I wish most of it hadn’t needed to go down the way it did, but I’m still glad it ended up here, right here, with you and me together on this roof. The pain was worth it if it’s what brought you to me.”
Caroline sucked in a shuddery breath before murmuring, “Oren?”
“Hmm?” I closed my eyes, once again so grateful I had her.
“Your hour session’s over.”
I opened my eyes. She smiled up at me. Damn, I loved how horny she could get.
With a groan, I rasped, “Thank God,” right before I kissed her.
I should’ve known better than to open up to anyone abou
t my sister. The very night I sat on top of the old theater and told Caroline about Zoey, I went home after dropping her off near her house and fell asleep in my bed, only to have a fucking nightmare.
The dream even started shitty, with Libby Lawson shrieking at the sight of my dick.
“Oh my God! What the hell is wrong with it?”
I’d just crawled off her, was still naked, and I was scouring her bedroom for my pants before her parents returned from their dinner party.
“What?” I glanced down, hoping she didn’t think I was too small. Then I immediately covered myself. Shit, I wasn’t smaller than Rowdy Crowner, was I? She’d dated him earlier in the year, and I’d heard they’d gone all the way. But, damn, I’d have to kill myself if she told me I was smaller than that douche.
Face molted in horror, she veered backward up the bed in an attempt to get as far away from me as possible. “Holy shit. What is that thing on the side? You don’t have some kind of STD, do you?”
I blinked for a second before saying, “You mean my birthmark?”
“Your what?”
I opened my hands to show her. “It’s just a birthmark. I’ve always had it.”
She shuddered and turned her face away. “Eww. Put it away. I can’t believe you had that thing inside me. How gross. Why didn’t you tell me about it before we did anything? I better not catch something from you!”
“Don’t worry.” I couldn’t get the bitterness from my voice as I scrambled to yank my clothes on. I hated how my face was heating. “Birthmarks aren’t contagious.”
“It better not be, or I’m telling everyone what a freak you are.”
Acid churned in my stomach and bile rose in my throat. Panic clawed at me as I pictured myself walking into school on Monday with everyone laughing and pointing. Damn, I was going to have to drop out of school. Eight more weeks until high school graduation and my life was over...all because I’d finally lost it to a chick who’d obviously seen enough cocks to know mine was not average.
“Whatever,” I snarled. “Thanks for the lay. Maybe you’ll get better with practice.”
As parting shots went, that wasn’t my finest, but fuck, I wasn’t on my A-game at the moment. Bowing my head, I jogged from her house and out to my car, a vintage beauty that my dad had bought for me and my sister, thinking we’d be able to share it.
Mostly, we just fought over who’d get to drive it. Tonight, I’d won the keys, and I thought my luck was sticking with me when Libby had called me over, saying her parents were away, giving us an hour to play. Who knew it’d all go to shit so quickly?
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered and pounded my fist against the steering wheel. I’d never felt so humiliated as I did in that moment. Seventeen years old and my life was officially done. If Libby followed her word—and she was probably calling all her friends right now—I’d never get laid again. My first and only time to try sex, and it hadn’t even been that good.
“Damn it.” I started the car and roared down the street. I was reaching for the radio controls to find some loud, pissed-off music when my cell phone rang.
Fuck. That was probably one of my buddies who’d already heard about my freakish junk. I almost didn’t check the screen, but curiosity got the best of me. When I saw Zoey’s name, I groaned.
My twin already knew? Wasn’t that just...great.
“What?” I muttered when I answered.
“Come get me,” she demanded on a sniff, obviously crying. “Now.”
“What’s wrong?” Completely forgetting about myself, I slammed on the brakes and did a U-turn to speed back toward her friend’s house where I knew she was staying the night with a couple other girls from school. “Who the fuck do I have to kill?”
“No one. I just...I want to go home.”
“I’m four blocks away. Be right there.”
“Okay. Hurry.”
She came tearing out to the car, her overnight bag thrown over her shoulder and mascara streaked down her cheeks. I pushed open my door, pissed that anyone would make my sister cry. “Seriously.” I slid the bag off her shoulder and shoved it over the seat into the back of the car. “Who made you cry?”
She wiped at her black-streaked cheeks. “No one. She doesn’t even know what she did. It wasn’t her fault anyway. Just...let’s go. Please.”
I turned back to scowl up at her friend’s house, but the girls crowded in the doorway watching us looked worried and sympathetic, so I couldn’t rightly charge up there and cuss any of them out. When I came back around, Zoey had climbed into the driver’s seat.
“No,” I said, motioning with my thumb for her to get out. “You’re not driving. Not like this. Besides, it’s my night, remember?”
And I didn’t want to feel any more emasculated than I already felt. I’d already been told I was a freakish horror between the legs; I did not want my little sister to go driving me around. It didn’t even matter than she was only a minute and a half younger than me, I was still technically the big brother.
“Damn it, Oren.” She peered up at me from her tearstained eyes. “I need to...I just need to relieve some pressure right now. Please.”
I’d never really been able to say no to her, but especially not when she was crying, so I sighed, ground my teeth and muttered, “Fine. Whatever,” before I went around to the passenger side. I tugged on my seat belt as soon as I climbed in, and fucking awful brother that I was, I didn’t even notice that she’d neglected to put hers on.
“So, what’s the deal?” I asked as she peeled out down the road and veered around a corner.
“Corey Garboni slept with Suzanne.”
I waited for her to go on, but when she didn’t, I lifted my eyebrows. “Okay. So?”
“So?” She sent me an incredulous scowl. “So, I liked Corey. I let him go up my shirt last weekend.”
“You did what?”
“And he was supposed to take me to the movies again tomorrow,” she ranted on without even hearing me. “I had no idea he was into Suzanne too, and she had no idea about what I’d done with him.”
“Bastard,” I muttered under my breath. “I can’t believe you even liked that guy. I’ve always thought he was a fucking douche.”
“Oh, well I’m so sorry I couldn’t like someone you approved of.”
“You should be,” I said. “I could probably find you a better guy than you could. Someone who wouldn’t fucking cheat on you, anyway.”
“Really?” She arched me an incredulous glance. “I would just love to hear what kind of guy you think I should end up with.”
“Fine.” I cleared my throat and resituated myself in the passenger seat, thinking it through. “He has to like football, or I wouldn’t have anything in common with him, and if he’s going to hang out with you, then I’ll probably be stuck hanging out with him more than I want.”
“Okay,” she said on the nod as she slowed the car to turn a corner. “I could handle a football player.”
“Right.” I drew in a breath before adding, “Loyal, faithful, quiet.”
“Quiet?” She sent me a mystified glance.
I nodded, sticking with my original decision. “Yeah. We’re both talkers, so you’d definitely need a listener, maybe someone a little reserved but totally willing to stand up for you if need be. He’d have to be bigger than me, because I just wouldn’t be able to respect him if he wasn’t. Oh, and smart, like into science so that he’ll end up a rich heart surgeon or something.”
“You haven’t described his looks yet.”
I shrugged and made a face. “Fuck, like I care how he looks.”
She grinned. “Then I want him to be hot. Preferably blue eyes and maybe even a dimple.”
I shook my head, boggled as to why those two things had made the cut and nothing else. Girls were so strange. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”
She snorted out a quick laugh. “You know, we just described a guy who couldn’t possibly exist. A sexy, shy, biology-loving athlete. Really, O
ren. Never going to happen.”
“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to grow old together, single and hopeless.” Glancing out the passenger side window, I mumbled to myself, “Because I’m certainly never getting laid again.”
But my twin heard me, loud and clear. “What do you mean again? You haven’t—oh my God. Were you at Libby’s house when I just called?”
“I was on my way home from her house when you called,” I corrected.
She gasped. “Holy shit. So you two—” When she glanced at me, her eyebrows crinkled with worry. “Oh, no. Your birthmark freaked her out, didn’t it?”
I zipped her a hard stare. “How the hell did you know that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just...guessed. I mean, I’ve never actually seen a real live penis aside from yours when we were younger, but I’ve heard girls talk, and none of them mention bright purple spots on the side.”
I sank lower in my seat, wanting to just fucking die. “Well, thanks for cluing me in on that...after I’d already fucking humiliated myself for life. She’s going to tell everyone, you know. She’s going to say what a freak I am, and I’m never going to have sex again in my entire—”
“Oh, whatever.” Zoey snorted and rolled her eyes at me. “Not every girl out there is as callous as Libby, the slut, Lawson. One day, you’re going to meet an amazing girl—that I can actually stomach—and she’s going to love everything about you, even your colorful pecker.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I was actually hoping I could get as much pussy as possible before the one came along and I had to settle down.”
Zoey gasped and grabbed a wadded napkin that had been sitting in the center console before she flung it at me. “Don’t you dare end up being such a player, Oren Michael Tenning, or I’ll—”
“Watch out,” I shouted as we entered an intersection. The vehicle to the left wasn’t obeying their stop sign.
Zoey slammed on the brake, but it was too late. She screamed my name, and I screamed hers.
I was still shouting her name when I woke, thrashing in my sheets. “Zoey,” I choked out, only to jump out of my skin when a pair of hands grabbed my arm.