Page 45 of Licks

The muscles in his jaw shifted, working mercilessly. I kissed the clenched knot and he softened slightly. “I know you think Finch and I always got along, but things got tense between us during high school.” He tilted his head side-to-side, brushing his cheek against my lips. “It’s great having an identical twin, growing up with someone who’s literally a part of you. I wouldn’t trade our childhood for anything. But looking the same comes with expectations of acting the same, performing the same. It frustrated the hell out of Finch.”

He leaned back slightly, his eyes shifting from distracted to piercing. Like he’d forgotten I was in front of him. “You are so goddamn beautiful.”

My heart swelled three sizes. “Are you stalling?”

He stared at me until my pulse pounded in my ears. “I might need you to pinch me sporadically, because I keep thinking I’m dreaming. The fact that I can touch you, kiss you”—he planted a hard one on my lips—“floors me. So if I stop mid-sentence from time to time to tell you how gorgeous you are, that your green eyes remind me of the first breath of spring, you’ll have to deal with it.”

I pinched his upper arm, as requested. To lighten the mood. To shrink my heart back to its proper size. Any bigger and the effects would be irreversible. “I see where you get your lyrics from.”

“Many from you, Possum.”

Oh, dear Lord. “Let’s not discuss ‘Girl with the Black Heart.’”

He shrugged a shoulder, no apology in his open gaze. I didn’t want an apology. I’d deserved every biting word. “Back to the Finch issue,” I said, nudging August’s hip with mine.

He turned and planted his sexy behind against my car. I wanted to worship his ass. Bite the firm globes. Suck on the length of him until he shuddered and spilled into my mouth. God, even here, minutes from facing Finch and searching for my father, I could do little more than fantasize about August.

He drew me into his chest. “Finch started acting out end of our junior year. He was pissed I was chosen to captain our soccer team. He started smoking weed regularly. His grades dropped, like really dropped, and every time our folks celebrated something I did, he’d withdraw more. Not with his friends. He’d put on his Finch smile and pretend all was roses, but at home he’d barely look at me. It got worse the start of our senior year. You and I had stopped speaking, but I knew he still spent time with you, so I…” His arm tightened around my shoulder. “I asked him for a favor.”

“Am I going to like this favor?”

“Unlikely.”

Not that it mattered. He’d forgiven my unforgivable WTF. There were no grudges left to hold, not now, all these years later. I squeezed his waist, telling him I’d support him. I was here for him, the way I wished I’d been for the past nine years.

He exhaled a harsh breath. “I asked him to watch out for you. Spend time with you. Being cut off from you messed me up, but I was worried. Figured something else was going on. I had to make sure you were okay.”

The weight of his arm slung over my shoulder suddenly turned crushing, and I fought the urge to shrug him off. It took every ounce of my control not to whirl on August and tell him I hadn’t been his charity case. I hadn’t been a helpless pet. As sweet as his gestures often had been, that was how I’d sometimes felt. That I’d been a problem for him to solve. A project he needed to ace, like everything else in his life.

Even now, I felt like I was seventeen again, shrinking smaller as Kayla Morgan told me August had pitied me. That I dragged him down. Long buried insecurities clawed to the surface, and I nearly screamed.

I wasn’t that girl anymore. I jumped out of airplanes, for Christ’s sake.

I was no longer a teenager who believed she was unlovable because her mother had sneered at her, called her unwanted. Stupid. I didn’t walk through life trying to make as little noise as possible, avoiding friendships, commitments, believing myself unworthy. Yet here I was, anxiety-riddled self-doubt resurfacing.

I needed to get a grip.

I slowed my overactive lungs. I replayed his explanation, how he’d been worried about me back then. There had been no hidden agenda. He may have approached our relationship from a hero perspective, wanting to be the savior, but based on all we’d admitted to each other today, asking Finch to keep an eye on me had been out of desperation, not pity.

All because I’d cut him from my life.

I nestled deeper into August’s side instead of pulling away. I was that woman now. A nestler, not a runner. “Did Finch show interest in me back then? Is that why he agreed?”

“He never said, but he knew exactly how I felt about you.”

“Which made what we did even worse,” I mumbled, still sick about it all.

“It did make it worse, but it wasn’t the only reason.” He looped a lock of my hair around his finger and twirled it. A guitar pick. My hair. Always busying his fingers. “The night I asked Finch to look out for you, he agreed…but asked for a favor in return.” He twirled my hair faster. “He’d tanked his SATs and hadn’t told me or our parents. I didn’t know how bad his grades had gotten, either. He had one more chance to take the test in December of our senior year, and he needed that score.”

“What did that have to do with you?”

“He asked me to take the test for him.”

Oh.

Fuck.

Identical twins.