As odd as this whole thing was, this seemed an even stranger question. “Yeah, diabetes. Maddie said she’d been battling it for years.”
“I was under the impression she’d died of cancer. It’s what Mama told me when I asked her about it.”
Completely at a loss for words, I stared at her, not understanding why in the world her mother would lie about that. Before I could come up with a single thought, she asked another odd question. “I didn’t have a dad, did I?”
“No.” I shook my head, confused now. “Maddie said you’d never met him. Aren’t these things you would’ve asked your mom already?”
She nodded but frowned. “She kept stuff from me obviously—like that you and your brothers were ever a part of our lives—so I had to ask.”
Taking another hit, I pondered that. Regardless if any of this made sense to me, it must’ve to Loretta. Her mother really had gone through such lengths to keep Maggie from ever reconnecting with the incorrigible Cortez Brothers.
She asked about the vigils Shelby’s mom held every year on the anniversary of their deaths. I admitted that I hadn’t attended last year.
“Because of Tara?”
“No. She didn’t have an issue with me keeping up the memory of my dead girlfriend. It wasn’t like she was a threat to our relationship or anything”—I chuckled humorlessly— “until she was.”
I explained how I just needed to move on. The mourning had gone on long enough, and then my eyes locked on hers, even as I felt that too familiar warmth in my eyes. “I don’t think even a hundred years will be enough time for my heart to ever get over her.”
Glancing away as a fucking tear escaped my eye and rolled down my cheek, I tried to suck it up. “The day I found out . . .” I shook my head and glanced away because I was too close to losing it. Fortunately, I was able to get my shit together and went on. “I never knew someone could endure so much pain and not die. I thought I was gonna die. I wanted to.” I dropped my head in defeat, bringing my hands to my eyes. There was no way I was going to get through this without falling apart. “Still do anytime I think of her,” I managed to squeeze out. “And I think about her all the fucking time.”
With my voice breaking, I was done. I covered my face as I gave into the familiar pain. Her touch startled me at first, but I embraced it as she hugged my neck. I wrapped my arms around her and cried against her shoulder. Just like everything else about Maggie, even this felt exactly like when Madeline and I held each other. Just like when I’d consoled her after her grandmother passed.
No longer willing to fight it, I continued to let out all the emotion right there, holding on to her because it felt perfect. And then it happened. The first kiss against my temple was surprise enough, but then she followed up with two more. My heart nearly stopped, and every muscle in my body went rigid. Looking up at her, I stared into her startled eyes. “Why’d you do that?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“I mean three times? Why’d you kiss me three times?”
She shook her head in complete confusion then stopped, and her eyes went wide. “Why? Did she do that?”
“Yes.” I gazed into those beautiful eyes. “She said it was habit.”
I explained how Madeline only really did it when she was trying to calm me, but her touch alone was enough to do that. I should’ve let go of her, pulled back. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her a little tighter as my eyes dropped to her lips. “Jesus, everything about you is just like her, even the swell of your lips,” I whispered. “You’re so beautiful.”
Against my better judgment and my protesting head, my thundering heart begged me to, so I went for it. To my surprise, Maggie didn’t object even for a moment. Our lips and tongues came together with the same desperation, as if she, too, had been yearning for this for years.
Even through our moans and continued frenzied kissing, my heart nearly burst through my chest. This was wrong. It was beyond wrong, but I couldn’t for the life of me pull myself away. How could I possibly end this, when as wrong as it was it also felt so perfect?
Even when I would start to pull away, she’d cling to me, pulling me to her, as if she, too, didn’t want this to ever end. For a fleeting instant, I was able to pull away and take a breath. “Jesus,” I said against her lips, but then just as quickly, my tongue plunged back with hers as my body pressed firmly against hers.
Claiming her.
The kissing calmed a little but at the same time deepened, like all the times I’d wanted to express my love for Madeline via our kissing. But this wasn’t Madeline. This was insanity taking over, and I was finally able to pull away, though it hurt my soul. “Fuck!”
I walked away, running my fingers so roughly through my hair. Hair I was tempted to pull at like a madman. What the fuck had come over me? How the hell was I supposed to recover from this? On top of the yearning I knew I’d be feeling from here on—I’d also have a mountain of guilt to deal with. Beyond crazed, I stared at her for a moment before stalking through the motel door.
“It’s okay, Nicolas.”
“No, it’s not!” I retorted loudly as I grabbed my jacket, helmet, and keys. “You’re her sister, damn it. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. I’m sorry.”
I marched out of the room and off the porch. “Don’t be,” she said anxiously, following me down the two steps of her motel’s porch.
She rattled on about it being natural and how much she, too, missed Madeline. How we’d both been dealing with a lot and she did look just like her sister. Then she stopped and asked the inevitable. “Where you going?”
“I need to get away from here.” I hopped on my bike then turned to her, feeling the guilt before I even said it, but I had to. “From you. I’m sorry.”
Without waiting for a response, I kick-started the motorcycle and roared away
Chapter 22: Embracing the Memories
I found a room that night in a town about an hour away. For hours, I paced the small room as my heart and soul struggled to understand what happened tonight, even as my body and soul still tried in vain to recover from the taste of Maggie’s mouth. What was happening to me? Why was I feeling all this? This was Maggie, not Madeline. I knew this. Simple logic told me this, yet something deep inside me wanted to argue.
That mouth, those lips, and that tongue. Could it possibly be that, like everything else about them, even something far more complex than a smile or the sound of their voices, kissing them could feel and taste exactly the same too? For a moment there, I’d been transported back to those heavenly days on the lake as I spent glorious hours devouring my beautiful Madeline’s mouth. I knew that mouth better than anything. I’d memorized every angle and crevice. As much as every lap and swirl of our tongues felt exactly and as perfectly in rhythm as my kisses with Madeline, I knew it just wasn’t possible. Yet my heart . . .
“There’s no fucking way,” I muttered under my breath as I pulled my phone out.
I needed to talk to someone. Have someone talk me down before I completely lost it. This was insanity. Even though my head knew the truth, my desperate and delusional heart was begging me to at least consider the possibility. But how?
It was too late to call my shrink, even though I was pretty sure he’d answer. But this felt too insane to share even with him. I sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at my phone and running my hand through my hair. “What the fuck?”
There was no way I’d be getting any sleep tonight, not with everything going on in my head. There’d been many times in the past agonizing years since Madeline’s death that I thought I might be losing it, but now I was certain of it.
Without thinking, I hit speed dial. I hadn’t spoken to Dr. Hidalgo since the day I’d broken things off with her over the phone. If there was anything I could say about Tara, it was that she was the epitome of grace and poise. After our breakup conversation over the phone, when she didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was crying, I never heard from her again. That had to be hard.
She was a stronger person than I was because, even though I was the one who broke things off, this wasn’t the first time I’d been tempted to talk to her. Though it wasn’t for the reason I was sure she’d prefer it be. There’d been more than one occasion when I really needed her advice. I knew it was a shit move on my part to reach out to her now, but I was desperate, and this felt like an emergency.
“I think I’m losing my mind,” I said the moment she answered.
She was quiet for a moment. “What’s going on?”
I filled her in quickly about my trip to Huntsville, backtracking to tell her about Maggie calling then showing up at the shop a few months prior. She knew firsthand what seeing Maggie had done to me, and I was sure she could hear the desperation in my voice now. She had to know how crazy this was making me.
Tara listened quietly to all of it. I explained how there was more to this. It was more than me just feeling as if I were staring at a ghost in her eyes. I told her about how different Maggie was now than I remembered her. She’d never been this outspoken and obstinate. “That was Madeline and then she kissed me.”
I explained about the three consecutive kisses. How Maggie had done it exactly the way Madeline used to. “Did Maggie ever see her sister do that to you?”
It was a question I’d already gone over and over in my head. It’d be the only explanation, but I couldn’t remember a single time I’d been that worked up and Maggie had been there. Anytime Madeline and I argued or debated something that we knew might get heavy, we waited until we were alone. But then it did stand to reason that, like everything else, Madeline had shared even this detail of our relationship. As awkward as I knew it might be, I told her about the kiss that followed. “I know how insane it sounds and that this can’t be possible—”
“Why can’t it?”
That stunned me silent until I shook my head and stood up. “Because it can’t be. Jesus, Tara, you’re supposed to be the sensible one here, not encourage my insanity.”
“I’m not encouraging it,” she retorted immediately. “I’m just asking why can’t it be? They’re identical twins. You said yourself no one could tell them apart. Maybe whoever first identified Madeline as the deceased sister got it wrong.”
The idea both excited me as much as it terrified me. Mostly because I knew it couldn’t possibly be what happened, and yet what I felt in my heart—deep in my soul—when we kissed tonight and each time I gazed deep into her eyes was a complete contradiction of what I knew the reality was.
“The birthmark isn’t there, Tara.”
We’d spoken enough about Madeline in my early sessions with Dr. Hidalgo, back before it felt awkward talking about how I was still hopelessly in love and not over my late girlfriend to my new girlfriend. I’d told her all about Madeline’s beauty mark, the one only a select few knew about because it wasn’t something she went around pointing out. Even I wasn’t aware it was something Maggie didn’t possess until a few times after sucking on it when Madeline mentioned it. I liked being one of the few who could tell the difference between them immediately.
No surprise, Tara didn’t even attempt to argue. Instead, she said the things I’d hoped she say to help talk me down. “We’ve spoken of the power of thought before, Nicolas. When you told me you really believed you felt her presence, as tortured as you’ve been over her loss, it’s natural that your heart would be trying desperately to convince you that this is the case. That somehow someone made a terrible mistake and what you’re feeling is the real deal.”
As much as I hated to accept it, it made far more sense than the absurdity that I was grasping for. Once calmed a bit, I asked her how she’d been and we made small talk for a while, but then I cut the call. We promised to stay in touch, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen, not that I minded staying in touch with her. I could just hear it in her voice. The fact that she’d even taken my call with such grace was telling enough. As much dignity as she’d shown in her restraint to try and reconnect with me since our breakup, she did let it slip before we hung up that she missed me.
Tara was a good person. She didn’t deserve to be strung along, and I’d already hurt her once. If I hadn’t felt so desperate tonight, I would’ve never called her. I was just grateful she’d been able to talk me down. There’d be a flower arrangement coming her way. A very non-romantic arrangement offering my sincerest thanks, but it’d be the last she’d hear from me.
Before the kiss, I’d had no intention of letting Maggie go back and meet with that smackdat idiot, but I especially wasn’t going to now. I knew it was bullshit, but Tara was spot on when she spoke of the power of thought. I’d convinced myself without even really having to that Madeline would’ve wanted me to go back and make sure Maggie was able to get on her way home just fine.
After lying in bed for hours apologizing to Madeline about tonight’s unprecedented turn of events, I finally knocked out. But the next morning I woke with my heart racing and a new urgency to get back to Huntsville.
As wrong as I knew this was and as much as I knew I’d regret this once this weekend was over, my heart felt frenzied with anticipation. The whole ride back to town all I could think of was seeing her face again, gazing into those eyes, and knowing she’d enjoyed that kiss just as much as I had. As excited as my insides were, they were also a mess.
After giving it much thought, I decided Tara had been absolutely right. My heart would continue to grasp at what was nothing more than an illusion. So, I’d be making one thing clear from the moment I got there. What happened last night could never happen again. So why was I still so damn excited about being near her again? My heart even thudded a bit when I pulled up in front of her room. For a moment, I was afraid maybe she’d already left. Then the door flew open, and I was greeted with the most breathtaking smile ever. Seeing the excitement and giddiness in her smile inevitably brought on vivid memories of . . . It was almost more than my heart could take.
With much effort, I was finally able to speak and not have it sound emotional. “Did you think I’d be letting you go out there alone with Steve the Smackdat idiot?”
She continued to grin widely, and geez, it felt like she might be running down those steps and into my arms at any second. Mercifully, her smile flattened a little, and she chewed the corner of her lip. “Listen. About last night—”
“If you can, please pretend it never happened,” I said before she could finish, and I immediately saw all but shock in her eyes.
I knew what she was thinking. How could either of us ever forget last night? But it was what had to be done. Trying to shake off some of my exasperation over this, I exhaled before going on. “I’d appreciate it if you would because it’s what I’m gonna try to do. It was beyond wrong, and I spent the whole fucking night apologizing to your sister about it. Now I’ll apologize to you.”
Those bewitching eyes would be the end of me. Try as I might—even through the shock her eyes gazed at me—I felt what little resolve I’d attempted to show as I arrived dissipate, so I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. That won’t happen again. It’s just that . . .” Like last night, her lips were like a magnet, and my eyes were on them again. “Fuck!” I muttered, as the frustration of how easily I could give into what I’d given into last night mounted.
This was going to be even more impossible to erase from my mind. Walking past her, I stalked into the room and grabbed the duffle I’d forgotten last night. “Do you have to look so much like her?”
Maggie shrugged, saying nothing else, but it was obvious in her apologetic eyes that she felt bad about what she was doing to me. It wasn’t her fault my ass couldn’t man up already, so I changed the subject. “Let’s go get breakfast.” I walked past her and out the door. “We still have a couple of hours before we have to go meet that douche.”
After dropping her luggage off at the motel’s office, we headed back to the same café we’d had lunch at the day before. “So, where’d you sleep last night?” she asked when the waitress walked
away after bringing us our menus.
“In Bourbon,” I said without looking away from my menu.
I explained about the small town, refusing to look up from my menu because I just didn’t trust myself not to get caught up in her eyes again. We’d been quiet for a few moments as we both studied our menus until . . . “I think I’ll have the corned beef hash and eggs with a side of biscuits and gravy.”
Now my eyes were on hers, fully expecting her to be looking up from her menu as well. Possibly even grinning in a teasing way. But she wasn’t. She was still reading her menu, and I sat there, my insides heating as I tried to figure out if this was her way of being funny—breaking the ice. If it was, she was about to get a mouthful because, after last night, this wasn’t cool.
Finally, she looked up, doing a double take when her eyes met my glare. “What?” she asked, looking genuinely confused.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” Though she really did looked lost, I still couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg.
“Maddie always ordered corned beef hash and eggs with a side of biscuits and gravy.” Glancing down at her neck absentmindedly as if that beauty mark might magically appear and feeling even more frustrated when of course it didn’t, I glared at her again.”You hated biscuits and gravy.”
Her mouth fell open ever so slightly, but she recovered quickly. “I didn’t know that.”
“Just like you didn’t know her kissing me three times in a row was her habit?”
“I didn’t.” She sat up straighter, lifting that Hellman brow in a way I knew so well. “I swear I don’t remember any of that.”
“You really like biscuits and gravy now?” I asked, not the least bit convinced. “You used to say it looked like cat puke on shit and always said you didn’t understand why your sister had to order the prison slop every time. It pissed you off that you’d be forced to smell it whenever we all went out for breakfast.”
This time she didn’t bother trying to hide how her jaw dropped opened. But to my surprise, she didn’t bite my head off the way I was beginning to think she might. Madeline would’ve, had I gotten that exact same look from her. Instead, her disgusted expression morphed into a troubled one, and she shook her head. “I have no idea why I would like them now, but I do. I’ve been eating them for as long as I can remember.”