Page 24 of Written with You (The Regret Duet 2)
“My brother?” His head jerked to the side as if he’d been slapped. “Trent knew?”
Fuck. I shook my head rapidly. “No. I mean… There’s nothing to know.”
He swallowed the distance between us in three long strides. “Except for the fact that you have a twin sister named Willow. Who was also at the mall that day. Who happens to have the same name as the little girl who saved my life.” He thrust the piece of paper in my face. “The same fucking name I watched you sign months ago. Now, stop fucking with my head and lift up your goddamn shirt and tell me what the hell is going on.”
My mouth dried. I’d signed my real name. Nobody had told him. There was no speculating like Beth had insisted. No evil brother hell-bent on ruining me.
I’d made a mistake. Plain and simple.
I’d been trying to figure out for weeks how to tell him the truth. But it was an unforgivable confession. One that would cost me everything. There was no way out of this. No magical fix-all. No amount of words in the English language could make this right.
My hands shook.
It was over.
The masquerade.
The dreams of watching Rosalee grow up.
The unexpected benefit of falling in love with the boy—now man—who had once been my hero.
I could continue lying. But he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve any of this.
Not from Hadley.
Most of all, not from me.
And for that reason alone, with tears welling in my eyes, I finally gave up on having a family. “I didn’t save your life, Caven.” I lifted the hem of my shirt, revealing the spider web of puckered flesh caused by Malcom Lowe’s bullet. “You saved mine.”
The paper fell from his hand like a feather caught in the wind. But his knees went straight to the floor.
I slapped a hand over my mouth and fought the overwhelming need to go to him.
But that was no longer my right.
And if I was being honest, it had never been my right.
“Who are you?” he rasped, the words sounding as if they had been filtered through broken glass. “I need you to say it.”
I’d often imagined the moment when I finally told him the truth. Though, in those daydreams, it had never felt like a knife through the heart. “I’m Willow.”
He peered up at me with the most beautiful and soul-crushing awe. “And who is Rosalee’s mother?”
My chin quivered. If there was one thing I could change about the entire situation, that would be it. I would never want to go back in time and erase the incredible little girl who now existed only because my sister had had an ingrained need to break me. But I wished like hell I could answer this question differently. “Her mother was Hadley. My deeply, deeply troubled sister.”
His eyes scanned my face. Looking for something he’d missed. Some way he should have known I wasn’t her.
Or worse—at least for my aching heart—searching for some way he should have recognized that I was the girl he’d once met.
“You couldn’t have known,” I whispered. “My own grandfather couldn’t tell us apart when we were growing up.”
Slowly climbing back to his feet, he looked at the door and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “You gotta help me here. You gotta help me make sense of this. Because I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t know whether I’m relieved that you’re alive or livid that you’ve been playing me.”
“I wasn’t playing you. Everything I told you was the truth.”
“Except the fact that you aren’t her mother! And that you aren’t Hadley. You’re…” His breathing shuddered. “Oh, fuck, I gotta sit down.” He moved to the couch and sank down, putting his elbows to his knees and looking about as comfortable as if he were sitting on a bed of nails.
“Okay,” I breathed, wringing my hands to keep from reaching for him. I was a nervous wreck, but on the inside, I was just was so damn happy that he wasn’t racing from my house like a man on fire.
He used his thumb and his forefinger to rub his eyes. “Start from the beginning. And how about, for once, you don’t fucking lie to me.”
“Okay. Okay.” I swallowed hard. “Hadley never recovered from the shooting. After the first bullet was fired, she was trampled, her arm was broken, and she hid in a cabinet for hours, all alone, terrified out of her mind. After she heard my story about you, she became obsessed with all things Caven. You were the hero she’d needed.”
He tugged at the top of his hair. “Don’t call me a hero. Don’t you ever fucking call me a hero. Do you understand?”
He’d never been more wrong, but arguing with him about technicalities wasn’t going to keep him from leaving. Then again, when this conversation was over, nothing would.
