“Love you, too,” I say, right before I let the phone fall from my grasp, and then I roll to my side and curl myself into a ball.
Your sister’s been murdered.
My eyes burn as those words replay over and over in my head while I watch the ceiling fan spin in circles. I should get up. I should go shower and call my parents back so I can tell them they shouldn’t worry about me, but I can’t force myself to move. All I can do is think about Kelly, my identical twin. We shared the same hair, the same face, the same everything, down to the freckles across the bridge of our noses, and yet with all of that in common, I hated the person she was.
Hearing pounding on the door, I try to sit up, but I can’t.
“Kim, open the door.”
Sage. I’d know his voice anywhere.
“Open the goddamn door.” He bangs harder, and a new wave of tears fills my eyes. “Kimberly, if you don’t open the fucking door, I’m gonna break the motherfucker down,” he roars, making me jump.
“I’m fine. Go away.” I attempt to yell back, but the words come out in a whisper through my dry throat as my heavy eyes slide closed and I finally give into the darkness surrounding me.
“Jesus, baby?” I hear growled through my subconscious as warm fingers rest against my neck under my ear. My eyes open slowly and I blink. “Baby,” Sage whispers, taking a seat on my bed next to my hip, pushing my hair away from my face gently.
“Kelly’s dead,” I breathe, staring into his seafoam-green eyes resting softly on my blue ones.
“I know.” He pulls me against his chest and I sob, clinging to him. Climbing into bed with me, his big body curls around mine.
“I told her I hated her,” I say, pressing my face against his chest while my fingers wrap tightly into his shirt. “The last time we talked, I told her she was a coward and that I hated her.”
“She knows you didn’t hate her.”
He’s wrong; she didn’t know. She died not knowing I cared. Not knowing I only wanted her in my life, that I didn’t want to use her, that I didn’t want anything from her but to have her in my life.
“Don’t think about that right now,” he says gently, running his hand down my back. “Don’t think about that. Think about the good times you had together.”
Good times? I wish I did have good times with her. I wish I had a million happy memories of us together that I could recall right now, but I don’t have any of those. Kelly was angry at the world and pissed off at me. She thought I was the one who didn’t want anything to do with her or our mom until I was diagnosed with stage-three kidney disease. Until I was left with no choice but to contact her for help. But that wasn’t the case at all.
When I first found out about Kelly after I was diagnosed, I had been so upset with my parents for keeping the truth about my adoption from me, for never telling me I had a sister. I know they believed they were protecting me, but having grown up my whole life believing one thing, only to learn it was all a lie, was more devastating than finding out my kidneys were failing in the first place.
Even with the knowledge that my mother had been addicted to crack and had been arrested multiple times for prostitution, I still felt it should have been my choice when I turned eighteen whether or not I had any kind of relationship with my birth family. It took a long time for me to understand why they didn’t tell me the truth.
It had been Kelly who had made me understand unknowingly what my parents had been trying to protect me from. They didn’t want me to see the ugly side of drug addiction or feel what neglect was like firsthand. They didn’t want me to experience the disappointment Kelly had experienced her whole life growing up with our mother.
Where I grew up surrounded with love, Kelly grew up fighting just to survive. Our childhoods couldn’t have been more opposite, which made us both different people. Where I have always looked at the world with hope, Kelly looked at the world, wondering when it would knock her back down.
“I should have tried harder,” I whisper through my dry throat as more tears fall.
“Stop.” His lips press to my forehead and he doesn’t remove them. He keeps them right there while he whispers soothingly to me, until my eyes get too heavy to keep open any longer and I fall asleep held tightly in his grasp.
Hearing Sage’s voice and two others that sound like my parents off in the distance talking quietly, I wake slowly, blinking my eyes open. Finding the room dark with the only light coming in from the skylight and the moon overhead, I roll to my side, dislodging the blankets that have been carefully tucked around me.
“God.” I press my hand to my forehead as I sit up. I haven’t eaten today, and after crying for so long, my head is pounding, making me feel nauseous and dizzy. Blinking when the door is cracked open and light spills into the room, I watch Sage’s shadow step inside before he closes the door behind him.
“I thought I heard you get up,” he says quietly as he walks to the bed, taking a seat next to me and flipping on the lamp on the table. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the light, and when they do, I watch him take my hand and place two pills against my palm before grabbing my ever-present water bottle off the bedside table, handing it to me. “Your parents are here.”
“How long have they been here?” I ask, downing the pills before resting my suddenly heavy head against his shoulder and closing my eyes to keep out the light.
“About an hour,” he says as he moves his arms around me and tucks my head under his chin. “They came in to check on you when they arrived but wanted to let you sleep,” he explains, and I nod. “How are you feeling?”
“My head is pounding and I’m hungry,” I answer truthfully, leaving out the part about feeling like a part of me is suddenly missing.
“What do you feel like eating?” he asks, and I feel his chin move against the top of my head.
“Soup.”
“Do you want me to bring it in here to you, or do you feel like getting up?”
“I’ll get up.”
“All right.” He touches his lips to my hair right before he stands us both up. Moving to the door, he stops me with his hand, taking mine, and I turn to look at him.
“Are you okay?” I ask when I see the worried look in his eyes.
“How much do you know about what happened with Kelly?” he asks suddenly, and I frown.
“Two agents from the FBI told me that she was murdered, but they couldn’t tell me much other than that.”
“I thought so.” He shakes his head while running his hand down his mouth in agitation. That’s when I realize there would be no way of him knowing that unless something else happened. I didn’t even think about the fact he had shown up here out of the blue, threatening to break down the door until now.
“What happened?” I ask, feeling my heart start to beat hard against my ribcage.
“Ashlyn was kidnapped in the middle of the night. She and Dillon had both been drugged. Dillon woke up when Ashlyn was being taken, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening, since he had been given some sort of muscle relaxer,” he explains, referring to his cousin, who is my close friend, and her new husband.
“What?” I press my hand to my mouth, and he pulls me against his chest. “Please tell me she’s okay,” I whisper against my fingers as my stomach turns, and a fresh wave of tears begins to fill my eyes.
“She’s fine. She’s in the hospital recovering. She got away, but not before she saw who she thought was you at the time, dead. That’s why the FBI was here this morning,” he says, right before his hand wraps around my jaw and he pulls me back to search my face. Staring blankly at him, his words settle over me, and I watch his eyes close as he shakes his head, muttering a quiet “Fuck.”
“Did she…” My eyes close, and then I open them back up slowly. “Did she talk to Kelly… before?”
“I don’t know, baby.” Dislodging his hand still holding my chin, I drop my forehead to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and I do the only thing I can do, which is nod.
“Honey,” my mom calls as she knocks on my door a second later.