“We’re going to college next year,” Cole said. “Time is of the essence.” He gave me an easy grin, the one the girls apparently lost their minds over.
Someday, I’m going to leave here . . .
Only, Cole was right. We were the ones who were going away. But I hadn’t decided on the location—how near or far—and it’d always just been a given that I’d be back. I’d be back for Lia. Oh God, I’d stupidly assumed I had time . . . that waiting was the right thing to do. Maybe I’d been wrong. No, I’d definitely been wrong.
“But, what about Shayna?” I asked, the mild panic I’d felt a few moments ago, blooming inside me.
Cole shrugged. “There’s nothing serious between us. We’re only having some fun.”
“Is that what Lia would be to you? Fun?”
“You know she means more to me than that.” Yeah. Yeah, I did and that’s what made this unexpected turn of events so incredibly awful. “I’d wait for the timing to be right,” he added. Right timing? No timing was right for him to move in on Lia. I stared at him for a moment, a red cloud filling my brain.
“But, I—”
“Hey, if you’re interested, too, let’s race for her,” Cole suggested.
“Race for her?”
“Yeah, a foot race like we used to have when we were in track. Winner earns first dibs on Lia.”
“She’s not a prize to be won, Cole. Why don’t we both ask her out and let her choose.”
“How can she choose? She cares about us both, and we’re identical twins for Christ’s sake. Let’s make it easy for her.”
I stared at him, noting the pleased look in his eye, the happy-go-lucky expression on his face, the easy way he carried himself. We were identical twins, but we were about as different as two people could be. And that might be the problem. If Lia had to choose between us, wouldn’t she choose Cole? I paused, a sick feeling of certainty squeezing my guts. Of course she would. Oh fuck, of course she would. They had so much in common. Cole was funny and outgoing and made everyone laugh. People just naturally flocked to Cole. They always had. God, I should be happy he’d left it to a foot race. I could win in a foot race. If Cole had his sights on Lia, this might be my only chance.
“Okay.”
He nodded. “Same track as usual?”
I nodded back. When we’d been younger, our dad had taken us out in his pickup truck and measured the distance on two different back roads with a thick growth of forest in the middle, that met in the same spot, each ending at the mailbox at the end of our road. They were the same distance. Cole and I would each take one, not knowing the other’s pace until we came around the bend and spotted the mailbox. It had taught us not to use the other runners’ paces to determine our own, to simply picture the finish line and get there as quickly as we possibly could. We’d been really good and had beaten all kinds of records in middle school. But we’d moved on to other sports when we started high school and hadn’t run this route or any other for a couple of years.
“Brother oath,” Cole said, spitting in his palm and holding it out to me. I looked down at his outstretched hand. We hadn’t done this for years either. I supposed it spoke to the importance of the match we were about to enter into. Could I do this, though? Bet on the only chance I might have to make Lia mine? I hesitated, but when Cole thrust his hand closer, I spat in mine and gripped his, the wetness of our mixed saliva creating what we’d deemed an unbreakable bond.
When we were seven, Cole and I had gotten into an argument about something and when our dad broke it up, we’d both turned away, each of us holding onto our personal grudge. Our dad had made us turn back to each other and that’s when he’d told us about the brother oath. We’d shook, promising to drop the grievance. “All right then,” our dad had said, “you’ve promised to let it go, and so you will. A man is only as good as his word.” He’d repeated it often over the years.
A man is only as good as his word.
“Brother oath,” I repeated.
He nodded once. “If I win, you step away from her. If you win, I’ll step back. Honor between brothers.”
I pressed my lips together but nodded. Brother oath. Honor between brothers. And we’d never broken either.
A man is only as good as his word.
We dropped our towels and took a minute to stretch, eyeing each other like two gladiators about to go into the ring. We were each wearing water shoes, which weren’t ideal for running, but at least we were on even footing, literally.
We lined up, facing opposite directions, the dirt road I was going to run stretched out in front of me. This was stupid. This wasn’t right. I turned to my brother to call it—
“On your mark, get set, go!”
Despite my last-minute reservations, the words jolted me into action, and we both took off, shooting apart, running toward our goal. My legs pumped and my lungs ached, but I ran my heart out.
Lia.
Lia.
Lia.
I pushed myself as far as I could possibly go without breaking, not caring that I was shaking with effort as I rounded the bend. I ran for Lia. I ran as if I were running straight into battle for her. I’d never run so hard in all my life. And yet as I came around the corner, I let out a sharp cry of pain and defeat, the bitter blow of disappointment knocking what little wind I had left completely out of me.
Cole was just arriving at the mailboxes. He’d beaten me by twenty-five yards. How the hell had he done it? I was obviously far more out of shape than I’d thought. Fuck!
I came to a walk, breathing harshly, my lungs still aching from my effort, a sharp pang in my side where a nasty stitch had started. Cole was breathing just as hard, but he leaned back against the post, shooting me a smug smile.
“Don’t gloat, asshole,” I said, bending forward and resting my hands on my knees in an attempt to slow my breathing. I’d lost her before I’d even had her, and he had the gall to rub it in.
He laughed, slapping me on my bare back. “I guess she was just meant to be mine,” Cole said. I wanted to own those words. I guess she was just meant to be mine.
I tried to pretend it didn’t hurt as badly as it did that I’d just lost Lia. In a fucking foot race.
CHAPTER THREE
Lia – Fifteen Years Old
My mama stepped into our house, the door slamming behind her. I glanced up, and then paused, frowning at the look on her face. She always looked tired, always looked slightly angry, but tonight she looked as if she was in pain. “Hi, Mama. You okay?”
She dropped her purse on the table, sitting down in one of the chairs and swearing softly in Spanish.
“Is it your back?”
“Sí.” There was resentment in her tone as if I should know very well it was her back.
I sighed, standing from where I’d been sitting on my air mattress doing my homework. I went to the cabinet in the kitchen where we kept medications and grabbed the bottle of pain reliever and a glass of water. I brought them to the table and set them in front of her, moving around behind her wordlessly so I could massage her shoulders.
She poured four tablets into her palm and threw them back with a long drink of water and then let her head fall forward so I could work out some of the kinks.
I kneaded her muscles in silence, staring at the shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe that she often kneeled in front of in prayer. I knew that one of my mama’s prayers was that I’d never been born, so I’d come to look at that shrine with anger and pain. “The devil held me down and raped me all through the night,” she’d once told me. “In the morning he went away, but he left me with his eyes. Devil eyes to watch and curse me all the rest of my days.”
When I was just a little girl, I’d thought it was a terrible story, a scary story, and I’d felt deep sympathy and fear for my mama. It had been years before I’d understood that by “he left me with his eyes,” she meant he’d left her with me and that the strange green eyes I’d inherited had belonged to him, a monster and a rapist.
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It was no wonder she looked at me with such blatant hatred. It was why I wished so much to be someone different when I looked in the mirror. Someone other than the unwanted girl with the devil eyes who had caused my mama so much pain just by being born.
Once my mama had had a young husband and a dream. They’d crossed the border illegally and her husband had died at the hands of a coyote who stole their money and shot him in the middle of the desert just because he felt like it. Then he raped my mama and got her pregnant with me. Even though I knew a coyote was just a name for a human smuggler who helped migrants cross the border, I still couldn’t help picture the evil beast that had attacked my mama as a wild, four-legged predator with my same pale eyes.
After that, my then nineteen-year-old mama had somehow made it to California, starving, pregnant, and barely alive, where she had settled into a migrant farmworkers’ camp and begun working at one of the farms when I was still inside her belly.
She was only thirty-five now, but looked about fifty. She’d been here for sixteen years and no dreams had resulted—only a broken body and a broken spirit. I supposed I couldn’t even blame her for hating me the way she did. I couldn’t blame her but it still hurt—it hurt down to my soul.
“Las manos del diablo,” she murmured.
Hands of the devil. My hands.
I sighed. Sometimes it seemed she said things like that to keep her dislike for me alive and well—especially in moments when I was being kind to her. It was as if she accepted my generosity but wouldn’t allow herself to feel anything for me. “Silencio, Mama,” I said, not disguising the weariness in my voice. Hush, Mama. I continued massaging her until her muscles were looser under my hands.
“Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll come with you tomorrow and help clean so you don’t have to bend.” I didn’t mind cleaning in general, didn’t mind hard work. What I minded was how utterly disgusting the rooms at the motel were—how they were generally rented by the hour to prostitutes and drunks who left behind used condoms and bedbugs.
She made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat and got up and went over to her mattress and sat down on it. I wished I had the means to buy her something better to sleep on. Surely an air mattress was making her back even worse. It might be better just to sleep on the floor.
I took my sweater and made a flimsy excuse about taking a walk, abandoning my homework where it lay on the floor. The truth was, I didn’t want to be in our house when the sun hadn’t even set yet and my mama was sleeping. It felt stuffy and far too small.
It was spring in California’s Central Valley, and the air smelled fresh, the blue sky and green farmland stretched far and wide. I roamed, collecting wildflowers in a bouquet as I went: poppies, lupines, evening primrose, the sweet alyssum that smelled as if it was made of honey. I’d take it back to our house and at least there’d be a tiny corner in that ugly space that provided some beauty.
When I made it to the Sawyers’ fence, I leaned against it, holding the wildflowers in one hand and propping my face on the other hand that rested on the old wood.
I gazed across the farmland, melancholy gripping me at the fierce longing in my heart. Longing for all the things those damned parameters kept me from: a beautiful place to live, a loving family, good food that didn’t only come in cans and microwaveable boxes and sometimes—shamefully—from the free food store in town. And Preston Sawyer. Mostly, Preston Sawyer. My heart pinched at the thought of him, and I closed my eyes, picturing the strong lines of his face, his serious eyes, the way his body had grown tall and broad in the last couple of years. And I ached for him.
I’d always loved him, I supposed. But in the last year, my love had turned . . . different. In the last year I’d begun noticing him in ways I hadn’t before. And I’d begun wondering what it would feel like if he kissed me, if he touched me, if he wanted me, too.
I knew he cared for me in his own way. I knew both the Sawyer boys did. But I also knew that they were vaguely ashamed of me. I knew they didn’t invite me places where other people would be, knew they preferred to do things with me in places where no one else was likely to see us together. And I was so desperate for friends—so desperate for them—that I’d take anything they were willing to give. Even if it hurt me to know that even with Preston and Cole, there were parameters. Boundaries.
But I also knew I was partly responsible for the distance between us—I didn’t want them to know more about my situation and pity me because of it. I didn’t want them to see where I lived, to know the squalor of my life compared to theirs. I didn’t want others to see them with me and think less of them for it.
I was certain they already realized I was poor, and I could live with that. But I refused to allow them to know the details. The true ugliness was in the details, the tiny papercuts that sliced at your soul, and no one who hadn’t been dirt poor could ever really understand that.
When I opened my eyes and looked up, I saw both brothers in the distance and sucked in a breath, standing straight. I watched as they stopped and appeared to be talking and then one of them turned and walked back toward the house. The other one moved toward me and I squinted my eyes to see who it was, after a moment realizing it was . . . Cole. I could tell by his loose walk, by the easy grin on his face. I was happy to see him, but disappointed that Preston had turned away.
I smiled back as he approached. “Fancy meeting you here,” I teased.
Cole laughed, hopping easily over the fence with the natural grace of an athlete. He leaned a narrow hip against the fence and crossed his arms. I watched the way his biceps bulged. “You didn’t have to walk all the way here to see me. I would have come to you.” He winked, shooting me a boyish half-smile, the one he was very aware was completely adorable.
I couldn’t help laughing, not just at his joke, but at the picture of him standing in my small, awful house, gazing around in horror at the proof of our poverty. It was the very thing I worked so hard to avoid. And God, it was such a terrible picture, even in my imagination, that I had to laugh or I’d start crying and never stop. “I like the tradition of meeting here like this,” I said, tilting my head. “Where did Preston go?”
Cole shrugged, moving slightly closer. “Back to the house. He had something else to do.”
“Oh.” Disappointment washed over me. I hadn’t walked up here intending to see them, but now that Cole was out here, it caused a brief spear of hurt to know that Preston had known I was here and had chosen to go back inside. Maybe he was headed somewhere else. Maybe he had a date. I knew the girls in school all swooned over the Sawyer boys. I kept myself distant enough from the social crowd they hung with that I didn’t have to hear the details about the things they did when I wasn’t around. But I still couldn’t help knowing some of it.
“And I told him I wanted to talk to you alone.”
“You . . .” I frowned, confused. “Okay. What for?”
Cole moved closer, taking my hand in his. Surprised, I looked down at our linked hands. “I . . . I like you, Lia. I guess you probably know that.”
I stilled, blinking up at him, shocked by his words, shocked by the hesitation in his tone. I raised a brow. “Are you joking with me? I don’t know whether or not to take you seriously, Cole.”
He chuckled softly, running the hand that wasn’t holding mine through his thick, golden-brown hair. “That’s what I get for kidding around all the time.” His face turned serious and my breath caught. For a moment, he looked exactly like Preston and my heart jumped, responding instantly.
Cole stepped toward me, took my face in his hands, and brought his lips to mine. I froze, so surprised that I didn’t know how to react. His lips moved on mine, warm and soft, and I felt a tiny fluttering between my ribs. Cole moved in, pressing his hard body against me and I opened my mouth on a tiny gasp. He moved his tongue between my lips and groaned, and my eyes opened, watching as his expression turned slightly pained. I felt him harden against my hip and it shocked me, so I pulle
d back, our lips disconnecting with a wet pop.
I blinked at him, off balance after such an unexpected turn of events. “That was . . . nice.”
Cole laughed. “I’ll try not to let my ego get too bruised after that lukewarm review.” But his eyes sparkled with good humor. “Let me take you out, Lia. A movie on Sunday?”
A movie. In the dark. Of course. Still, it wasn’t like anyone else was asking me out on dates—in the dark or in the light. And though I liked to keep a certain distance between myself and the Sawyer boys, I also couldn’t deny the excitement I felt in my belly at the idea of going on a date, and of seeing a movie for the first time.
I bit at my lip, noticing the tenderness where he had pressed his mouth against mine. I had never thought of Cole in that way. Had never imagined he had feelings for me. I had only ever thought of Preston. But . . . if Preston had known his brother wanted to talk to me alone and had turned away of his own will, wasn’t it pretty lucky for me that the boy who was interested looked exactly like the one I pined for?
I frowned slightly, confused by my own thoughts, my own inner turmoil. I’d just experienced my very first kiss, moved outside those damn parameters, even if only for the breath of a moment. Wasn’t I supposed to be delirious with joy?
Still, before I answered, I wanted to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood the situation as far as Preston was concerned. I needed to know Preston didn’t . . . wouldn’t want me. Love me.
“Did . . . did Preston know you were going to ask me out?”
“Yeah.” He studied me for a moment, his brows coming together slightly. “He was fine with it if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He was fine with it.
I felt a dropping sensation inside as if something had fallen out from under me—something precious that I wanted to grab for but instinctively knew would slip through my fingers. I managed a nod. Preston didn’t want me. “We’ve just always hung out together, the three of us. I wanted . . . to make sure.”