Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“What?” This time, my voice sounds squeaky. “Are you… I’m not half-naked!”
“It’s forty degrees out.”
“So?”
“So you should probably wear something more than that flimsy thing you have on.”
The flimsy thing he’s referring to is my scarlet Vera Wang dress. And yes, it’s tight and short and hardly a cover against this brutal weather, but how dare he. It’s pretty and has spaghetti straps. It has a slit running down my left thigh and a huge rosette-style flower on the right side of the bodice that makes it both edgy and feminine.
“I’m fine,” I announce.
“If you keep standing out here for too long, you won’t be.”
“Are you saying you’re worried about me?”
“I’m saying I’m not in the mood to interrupt my smoke of the day to haul a dead body inside,” he says, taking a long drag to emphasize his point.
“Smoking is injurious to health,” I inform him primly even though there’s nothing prim or proper about me.
“Your point?”
“So you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“Now, are you saying you’re worried about me?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Why’s that good?” I keep arguing.
“Because I’m not him.”
“Who’s him?”
“Your boyfriend.”
“I don’t…”
It’s like I slammed into a wall.
And all my words, my breaths, my heartbeats get knocked out of me.
Leaving me empty.
Breathless. Thoughtless. Speechless.
I’m just… less.
Than I was a second ago.
A second ago, while I was going back and forth with him, I felt alive. I felt like I was flying on my fake wings. But now it feels like someone—him—froze them.
Froze me.
With his chill.
Leaving me a little less alive.
“And I’m not sure if your boyfriend would like it that you’re worried about me,” he finishes.
“He—”
“Actually, I’m not sure if he’d like it at all that you’re out here, talking to a strange man.”
I can’t help but rub my arms then. “You’re not a strange man. You’re his twin brother.”
I notice his chest moving then.
Expanding and contracting with the next drag he takes. The longest until now.
Then, “I wouldn’t.”
My heart races. “You’re—”
“So you should probably run along to him.”
“That’s what you said to me that night too,” I say before I’ve had a chance to think it through.
I also do what I try to avoid doing before I’ve had a chance to think it through.
Study him.
Or in this case, when I can’t see him: map out the differences in my head.
Differences between Shepard and him.
Even though they’re identical twins, they never looked similar to me, let alone identical.
Their hair may be the same color, dark chocolate brown, but one keeps it deliberately mussed up and longer, while the other keeps it short and pushed back from his face. They both may have the same heavy-boned and square jaw, but one keeps it stubbled and the other clean-shaven. And the shape and dusky color of their lips may be the same but only one has the perfect pout that I think has come from years of smoking one cigarette per day and slowly killing himself.
Even their voices are different.
As in, they sound different.
One sounds friendly and easy and open, while the other blends in calmness and condescension so easily that it hurts and feels good at the same time.
I’ll give you one hint who that brother is.
The one with shorter hair, clean-shaven jaw, and pouty lips. That hurt-y voice.
It’s not my best friend Shepard.
It’s the guy who pushed me toward him.
He did that, didn’t he?
Not only did he reject me that night, but he told me—explicitly—to go to him.
He told me to go to his brother.
So it’s not all my fault that I did, is it?
It’s not all my fault that I used Shepard to get to him and now Shep’s hurting. It’s not all my fault that he wants to be with me. With a girl who’s obsessed with his twin brother. He deserves better.
He deserves so, so much better than me and him.
“You told me to run off to him,” I accuse, my hands fisted, anger coursing through my veins.
“And you did.”
I’d like to think that his tone is accusing as well.
That he’s mad about it.
About the fact that I ran off to his brother minutes after trying to get him to kiss me. That I didn’t even wait to go flirt with someone else after flirting with him, mauling him half-naked as he called it.
I want him to be angry about that.
I want him to be jealous.
I want him to think that I’m a slut. The only time I know I’d like being called one: by him.
But I don’t think he does.
Because he sounds calm, his tone soft.
In fact, more than saying those words, he murmured them. Instead of standing up straight and taut like I am, he’s still leaning against that tree, cigarette dangling from his lips.
It pisses me off.
That he can remain unaffected like that.
While the world around me is burning.
“Yes, I did.” I narrow my eyes. “Because you were an asshole to me. You humiliated me. You made me cry that night.”