Feeling something uncomfortable fill the pit of my stomach, I grab my robe and pull it on quickly while the knocking turns to pounding. Hitting the living room, I turn on the light, and that’s when I see Kelly standing outside, looking at me through the glass with her fist up ready to start knocking again.
“Hey,” I greet her as soon as I slide the door open.
“I’m leaving,” she states, tossing her hair that looks exactly like mine over her shoulder.
“You’re leaving,” I repeat, and she nods, shouldering past me into my apartment that she hasn’t been staying at and she’s only used when the guy she’s been messing around with kicks her out of his bed, leaving her no choice but to come here to crash. “Why… I thought—”
“I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I can’t,” she cuts me off, going to the closet, grabbing her black duffle bag from the floor, and opening it up.
“I need you,” I whisper, watching her pull things off hangers and shove them into the open bag on the floor.
“You need me.” She turns around to face me, picking up the bag, and I notice then that her eyes are wild, which means she’s gotten high recently—something she told me she would stop doing. “You don’t fucking need me. You just want to use me like every fucking other person in my life does.”
Rearing back like she slapped me, my body jolts. “That’s not true.”
“It’s not?” She laughs, but her cackle sounds evil and grates across my skin. “You didn’t even fucking try to find me until you were out of options.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“I’m sure, bitch!” she shouts, and I take a step back.
I’ve never seen Kelly like this. I’ve never seen her so out of control, and I don’t have any idea how to fix this or how to defuse the situation. “You know my parents never told me about you or about our mom.” And they didn’t. I didn’t even know I was adopted until the day the test came back and I found out my kidneys were in the beginning stages of shutting down. That’s when they told me I had an identical twin. That’s when they told me everything.
“I don’t fucking care!” she screams at the top of her lungs, leaning toward me. “I do not fucking care about you.” She points in my face, and my heart cracks open. “I don’t care about any of this shit. I do not need your kind of fucking drama in my life.”
“What happened?” Something had to have happened. Something had to have set her off to make her act like this.
“Nothing happened. I just finally got a fucking clue.”
“Kelly, please.” I grab onto her arm as she starts to storm past me. “Let’s just calm down. Please don’t go. Let’s just get some sleep and we’ll talk about this tomorrow, when you’re thinking more clearly.”
“Thinking more clearly? Fuck you, Kim. Fuck you and your holier-than-thou attitude. Ask your fucking perfect, rich-ass parents to help you out.” She jerks her arm from my grasp and heads for the door.
Running after her down the steps in the garage, I yell, “Kelly, please don’t do this!” as she hits the remote for the garage, sending the door up. “Kelly,” I beg, but she doesn’t stop or even turn around to look at me. She ducks under the door, runs across the pavement, and gets into the car that is parked and running in front of my garage with the lights on, slamming the door once she’s inside. Standing here, I watch her back out of the driveway then take off.
“Oh, God.” I crumple to my knees, dropping my face to my hands as rain starts to fall. Realizing I’m now soaking wet, I get up and make my way back into my apartment where I call my parents and tell them what happened while I cry until I can’t cry anymore.
*
PULLING UP OUTSIDE the shop that I need to open in the next ten minutes, I put my car in park and pull out my cell to once again check if I’ve missed a call or a text from Kelly or Sage. I haven’t heard from either of them in over a week, and even though I shouldn’t be surprised or hurt, I am.
Really, I’m more hurt by what Sage did than by Kelly taking off. I knew she was struggling with not only her decision to help me, but her life in general. I knew there was a chance she would take off, but Sage, I didn’t expect him to play me the way he did. Not after the day we spent together or after him seeming so sure he wanted to continue seeing me the morning after. I should have known better, but I stupidly thought he was feeling the same thing I was.
Seeing he hasn’t replied to my text of “Hey” from two days ago, I shove my phone in my purse and step out of my car. Slamming the door, I turn and stop dead when I see him standing on the sidewalk, sweaty and wearing nothing but a pair of black workout pants, his eyes on me.
“Hey,” I say quietly, walking toward him. That’s when I notice his eyes are hard and his body is tight.
“You live in this town. Gonna say this once and only once. You pull some shit like you did again, next time, you’ll be sitting behind bars,” he says harshly, and my feet stop moving while my heart starts to pound. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I do know he’s pissed.
“Pardon?”
At my question, his eyes travel over my hair and face then down my body, but not in a good way. Not in the same way they did right before he made love to me. No, the way they travel over me makes me feel dirty and cheap, like I need to take a shower to get clean.
“You were good, babe. So good I would have paid you for it if I knew that’s what you wanted.”
His words are like a punch to the gut, and I take a step back, feeling my throat get tight. “What?” I finally get out, and his eyes harden even more.
“Coming up to me in the bar, playing games, acting like you did, then trying to slip some shit in my drink so you could get my wallet?” He scoffs, and reality hits me in the face. Kelly. She did this. That’s why she took off, and that’s why he’s not spoken to me. He thinks I did those things to him.
“My sister.” My eyes slide closed, and my hand tightens on the handle of the purse in my hand.
“Your sister?”
“My…” I pause, opening my eyes and try to pull in a deep breath because my lungs suddenly feel too tight, like they are twisting inside my chest. “My twin… my twin sister. She…” I take a step toward him, and he takes a step back, like he can’t stand the idea of me getting close to him. Stopping, I hold out my hand palm up toward him, and my words come out whispered. “Whatever happened, that wasn’t me. It was my sister.”
“Right.” He nods, but I can see he doesn’t believe me. But why should he? I never told him about Kelly, because I didn’t want to ruin whatever was happening between us. I didn’t want him to find out about my problems until I knew he was the kind of guy who could shoulder them.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Just stay the fuck away from me, bitch.” And with that parting blow, he takes off without a backward glance. Standing here with my heart pounding in my chest and my stomach twisting into knots, I watch him until he’s out of sight.
Feeling sickness climb up the back of my throat, I run for the door of the salon, unlock it, and get inside. I toss my bag to the couch then move to the bathroom where I fall to my knees in front of the toilet. Throwing up the bagel I had for breakfast, I rest my forehead against the seat of the commode, not caring how gross it is. Not caring about anything.
Tears fill my eyes, and I whisper, “Fuck everyone, and definitely fuck Sage and Kelly.”
Chapter 1
Sage
“HERE’S WHAT YOU asked for.”
Looking from the envelope that was just tossed on the table, up to the man who has been my dad since I can remember, I feel my chest get tight. I know what’s in the envelope without looking at it, and I also know it’s too late. The soft check I did on Kim came back as her being an only child, but I know now from a few different sources that she was adopted by a couple in Florida when she was born. I also know she has an identical twin sister who grew up in Alabama with their mom and had a life completely opposite of Kim’s. That life has led her to trying to cope with the pain of her childhood by using drugs and men, going so far as prostituting herself out to deal with that hurt.