Page 5 of Lifeline

“A good question,” Colin muttered.

“A real good question,” the shithead asked, and even the way he spoke didn’t sound right, but what the fuck? “Uh, hi…you’re the new guy?”

“You said that,” Jake pointed out helpfully.

“Fuck you,” he grumbled, smacking Jake with work gloves and scowling.

“Hey!”

“I…seriously?” I asked, the ache in my chest growing. It had been bad enough that he’d disappeared off the face of the planet, but to reappear and act like we were strangers? “That’s how you’re going to play it?”

“Someone help me,” he pleaded, and the act was so believable I felt doubt take root. Acting had never been a skill of his, and if that was acting, it was a performance worthy of awards.

“I don’t know how,” Colin muttered, looking at the others for answers.

“It’s nothing,” I said too quickly, too shortly. “Just…nothing.”

That could have been a weird, uncomfortable reunion, but it was going to add an extra layer of pain and regret to all the other memories I had. It didn’t help that the confusion on his face was too fucking believable to be ignored. Sure, there was the theory that we all had doppelgangers somewhere. There was that, and then there was his exact fucking clone looking at me like he’d never seen me before. What other explanation could there be other than I apparently had been considering a grade-A bastard to be the one who got away instead of the⁠—

Another voice, but it wasn’t new. It was his voice, but the way he shaped his words, the dry tone, it was… “Ugh, why does this have Reno’s stink all over it?”

The man in front of me looked offended and turned to look behind me. “Why the fuck is everyone ganging up on me?”

Reno?

I spun around and there he fucking was, Mikhail Anton Davis, as I lived and breathed. There was the face I knew, not just the features, but the way his expression of fond annoyance at the room shifted to wide-eyed shock when he saw me. Even the way his shoulders slumped forward rather than back when he was caught off guard, and I hated that I knew it meant he was feeling defensive and uncertain.

I turned slightly to look…Reno in the face. Yep, it was a stranger with Mika’s face alright; everything, even the goddamn dimple in his chin, was right there, but Reno…fucking Reno, his expression was less guarded, less reserved than Mika’s. He was wary and confused, and more skittish in the way he kept fiddling with the gloves in his hands, but more open and honest.

So much more honest.

“A twin,” I said, jaw tight. I turned back to Mika. “Not just a brother. But a whole ass fucking identical goddamn⁠—”

“Aid,” he pleaded in a soft voice, and if I had been ten years younger, I would have broken my ‘I don’t use violence to solve problems’ mentality and swung at him. I was older, wiser, and more in control than back then, but it was still a close call.

“Don’t,” I warned him in a low voice. “Just…don’t.”

Don’t use my name like that, don’t fucking use the stupid, obnoxious, overly shortened version of my name like I didn’t just discover, ten years after our breakup, that it wasn’t just any old brother he had, but a fucking identical twin. That miserable son of a bitch, that rotten, lying bitch.

“Wait, Aidan?” Reno asked, and my eyes snapped to him, and somehow my rage found a new level as I saw fucking recognition in his face. “Like, Aidan Rey…something-or-another, from like, college?”

Reynard, but he knew more about me than I knew about him.

“Fuck,” I heard Mika mutter under his breath, knowing me well enough to know what the hell I was pissed off about and what kind of blow his brother’s comment would be to me.

“Perfect,” I said, and an ugly laugh bubbled out of my throat, and I saw Mika wince. He knew, maybe because the laugh was ugly, or because he knew my feelings about laughing at moments when laughing was not expected. “So, he knew about me but…okay. You know what? Never mind, just…never mind.”

The tension was heavy, and I fought for control so we wouldn’t keep making a spectacle of ourselves. Only for Jake to look between us and blurt out, “So, are you two like…exes or something? Because this is some awkward as hell shit that can only happen when two people have fucked.”

I laughed again because what an absurdly oblivious question to ask when the evidence of a goddamn soap opera was laid out before him. I wasn’t mad at Jake, though, because it just…fit what I’d seen of him since we’d first met, and from the looks on everyone’s faces, they weren’t shocked by it either. Exasperated and irritated, but not surprised in the slightest.

Only for the mood in the room to take another abrupt shift as someone who was as big as Jake, as mean-looking as Mav, but somehow louder and meaner than both showed up and started barking at everyone. I didn’t miss the way everyone quickly paid attention, or how Colin, who was supposed to be the newest addition before I came along, was the one who snapped to attention the least when ‘Big Boss’ made an appearance.

Ordinarily, I would have been taken aback by how big and mean the man seemed, but these were not ordinary circumstances, and I felt oddly detached from the mood in the room. In a weird way, everyone acted scared of him, our boss apparently, but it felt performative. In the same way that their annoyance with Jake had felt like roles being played, not genuine feelings, so too these men ‘feared’ that loud man. Except Colin, he didn’t bother to play the role, proving my theory by teasing the man who did not strike me as the type to enjoy being teased.

Then I heard my name and realized Colin was getting the ball rolling. Jake was assigned to clean-up duty, and Reno was…assigned to be my tour guide.

“What? Why me?” Reno asked in alarm and stared at me like I was holding a bomb. “I mean, no offense or anything, but…I share the face of the guy you looked like you were going to brutally murder.”