HUGE X2: A Twin Stepbrother Romance (With Bonus Book 'ESCAPE') Read online

  I should have known better.

  We sit and wait. Hours pass like they did in the car and my mind is fogged with worry and fatigue. Ethan and Nathan take seats on either side of mine. I don’t know when I fall asleep but I wake with my head in someone’s lap, one heavy hand on my shoulder and another on my hip. I try to turn, but I’m so stiff from sleeping uncomfortably that I struggle.

  “Hey,” someone says from across the room. It’s Wendell. He’s looking much better than he did last night.

  “Is she okay?” I ask hoarsely.

  “She’s doing well.” His smile lights up his face. “She’s groggy from all the meds but she squeezed my hand and managed a few words. The docs are really pleased with her progress.”

  I sit up, taking in the amazing news. Mom’s getting better. Maybe my promises made a difference, or maybe not. Whatever. I feel good for making them and mom getting better is all that matters.

  I don’t get to see Mom that day. They want to keep visitors to a minimum in case of infection. We decide to stay at a hotel around the corner from the hospital. Wendell remains at the hospital and the twins and I drive over. I feel like the walking dead. All the stress has really taken it out of me. I catch them looking at each other, communicating something but I don’t know what. Maybe they are just worried about me. The intimacy we shared hangs between us even though all our minds are elsewhere.

  At the desk, Nathan goes to book a family room but I ask for a single. Both the twins frown but they go ahead and pay anyway. I take my key card and we make our way in the direction of our rooms. We come to my door first and it’s so damn awkward.

  I put the key card in the door and push it open. I feel the boys coming in closer as though they want to come in the room with me but I stop and turn. “I need some time,” I say.

  “We just want to make sure you’re okay,” Nathan puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes gently. His tenderness brings tears to my eyes.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say turning to look at them. Their normally bright blue eyes seem dull and ringed by the dark circles that come with a terrible night of broken sleep and worry. Their hair is mussed and their chins are scruffy with a day’s growth. They’re standing so close and all I want to do is slip into their embrace and hide there. I want to draw on their strength and cry myself out. I want to hear their reassuring words. They would take care of me. I know this.

  They are so close but I’m alone. It has to be this way. I step back into the room, my hand on the handle as a sign that they can’t come any further. Nathan nods once, as though he understands, but his expression is grave. “Call us when you want to go back to the hospital,” he says and I nod. I don’t watch them leave to go and find their room. I can’t. I have a lump in my throat that feels like a boulder. When the door is closed I make no move to turn on the light. I drop my purse to the floor, flop onto the bed and cry myself to sleep.

  8

  TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

  It takes Mom months to recover from the accident. I make good on my promises, spending lots of time at home doing chores and trying to make her life as easy as possible. I volunteer at the food bank and it feels good dedicating time to help others. I’m being the best sister I can possibly be to the twins too and that means pretending nothing ever happened before the accident.

  My college work has been getting better grades. I’m on top of my assignments in a way I’ve never been before. I’ve even been going out more with my friends and it’s been fun. Everything’s great, except that it isn’t.

  I have a terrible empty feeling inside that I can’t seem to fill with promises and better intentions. I went on a date last week and it was nice, but I don’t want nice. Nice didn’t make the ache go away.

  All my promises feel good except the one I made about the twins. The trouble is that it seemed like the most important one at the time, and I can’t go back on it, no matter how much I want to. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of iced tea when they breeze in the backdoor. They’ve been out for a run and are out of breath and dripping with sweat. It’s so hot out I don’t know how they can exercise but it doesn’t seem to bother them.

  “Hey, Carrie,” Ethan says, pulling up a chair next to me. Nathan fixes them some water and takes the chair opposite me, then they both down their drinks. This close, I can smell them and their scent fills my mind, making me woozy. I plaster a smile on my face.

  “What’s up?” I say, to break the awkward silence.

  “Not a lot these days,” Ethan says. He makes it sound like a joke but there’s an undercurrent of something in his voice that makes my heart skip.

  Nathan gives him a look that’s filled with warning but Ethan just shrugs his shoulders and glares back.

  “How long are you going to keep this up, Carrie?” Ethan continues.

  “Keep what up?” I ask, attempting innocence that sounds so false.

  “Pretending that nothing happened between us.”

  “Ethan,” I hiss. “Don’t do this. Not here.”

  “What?” he protests, putting his hands up, palms facing forward. “It’s been months and it’s like you’ve just switched off. You won’t talk to us. You don’t want to spend time with us.”

  Nathan sits forward, resting his hands on the table. “What my brother means is that we want to know what’s going on. We’ve given you space because that’s what you seemed to need, but now we need to know, Carrie. You’ve turned into a stranger.” I shake my head, but I know that they are right. I’ve been putting on a friendly front but if it hasn’t felt natural to me, it sure won’t have felt natural to them. “We miss you,” Nathan adds gently. “We miss how things were before…”

  “Before my mom almost died,” I say bitterly, hoping they’ll back down when they hear the emotion in my voice.

  “But she didn’t, did she?” Ethan says. He reaches out to take my hand but I snatch it back.

  “She nearly did,” I hiss. “My mom nearly died and look what we were doing while she was going through that. We were….” I can’t even bring myself to say the words. “Fuck this,” I say, exasperated. I stand, taking my tea to the sink and pouring it out. I watch the liquid disappear, trying not to register the pain I feel inside. I don’t want to hurt them. My stepbrothers are good men. They have good hearts. I know that they only want to talk about this because they feel the same way as me. I love them. But I can’t love them that way. Not after I promised.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Carrie. We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “How can you say that?” I turn to face them, anger and frustration boiling up inside me.

  “How can you be like this?” Ethan sounds so wounded. I feel awful. This is not what I wanted. “The way you talk, it’s like you think we’re disgusting. We love you, Carrie. That’s what we were doing that night. We were loving you, nothing else.” He stands then, and heads out of the room slowly, like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Nathan turns to me but says nothing, then follows his brother.

  Love.

  It’s just a word. It has four small letters. By themselves they mean nothing. Joined together they mean everything. I go and outside and just stand, gazing at our back yard. Mom has been planting again, and the flowers flutter in the breeze.

  They have a truth. They love me. I know that as certainly as I know the sky is blue.

  I have a truth. I made a promise.

  I need my stepbrothers to understand that we can’t be anything more than we are – a fake family forced to live together until we were old enough to leave home – but they won’t. They can’t. Because understanding why I made the promise can only end up a being taken as a criticism of them; of the way they feel and the things we did. Nothing I did that night with them felt wrong at the time. It all felt right and good. The connection between us was so deep it was almost like a physical bond.

  So what does that make me?

  Denying how I feel makes me a liar. I know this. But I can�
�t go back. I just can’t.

  I spend the next few hours locked in my room, staring at my ceiling. The hollow feeling is always there but now it feels bigger somehow, and deeper. Katelin calls me and she must hear the blue in my voice because she tells me that we just have to go out tonight. Excuses form at my lips but I stop myself before I verbalize them. I can’t lie here all night feeling sorry for myself. I’m letting regrets eat me alive.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Get your sexiest gear on, lady,” Katelin shrieks. She’s a great best friend, always full of enthusiasm. She’s sunshine on a stick. “I’ll pick you up at 8 pm and we can leave my car in the lot overnight.”

  We say our goodbyes and I drag myself into the shower. I do as Katelin ordered and put on my teal lace mini-dress and gold heels. I curl my hair and apply smoky eyes. I feel on edge. Dangerous. It’s as though I know something has to give, one way or another. I need to break out of this funk.

  When Katelin sounds the horn outside I grab my clutch and jacket and sprint down the stairs. I’m trying to avoid the twins if I can. Our earlier conversation is hanging over me and I don’t think I can face them. The house is quiet though, so I’m out of the door with no problems.

  The bar is heaving when we get in. It’s happy hour and everyone is drinking from huge pitchers and fishbowls. The music is pumping and I know once I get on the dance floor I’ll be able to lose myself in it, even if it’s only for a few hours.

  We find Abigail and Brandy at the bar and they add our drinks to their order. I ask for two Red Devil’s, because it worked so well last time. I catch the girls looking at each other as I down the drinks in record time, but I don’t care. I grab Katelin’s hand and pull her towards the dance floor.

  The lights strobe in time with the beat and I’m lost in the pulsing, frantic rhythm that vibrates through me. I put my hands in the air and get a sudden flash of another time I was here, dancing between Ethan and Nathan, with so many different thoughts on my mind. I wish I could go back to that moment and walk away. Maybe my heart wouldn’t hurt so much if I’d never danced with them and heard what they’d spoken about after. So many things could have been different.

  I feel hands on my hips as someone tries to dance up close to me. I turn and see a man I don’t recognize. He’s young like me, and kind of cute. He smiles and his perfect white teeth reflect the flashing disco lights. “Hey, I’m Aaron,” he says.

  “Carrie,” I reply. I wouldn’t usually dance with a stranger. Not like this. But I’m different tonight. Reckless. Out to burn away my misery. Maybe Aaron-Perfect-Smile can help me. I dance like I did for the twins, hips swaying seductively. Katelin gives me a worried look but my falsely enthusiastic smile must fool her because she turns to dance with the others.

  When the music changes Aaron asks me if I want to take a walk with him. I know what he’s asking and despite the fact that my heart is aching, I let him take my hand and lead me outside. It’s a warm evening and Aaron walks us through the lot, towards his car, I’m assuming, while he talks about his friend who’s making it big in L.A. I’m not really listening. I feel woozy and it’s taking all my concentration to remain upright in my heels.

  Aaron has a nice ride but I don’t want to get in it with him. I start to say that I think I should go back inside but he has the door open and he uses his size advantage to back me towards the vehicle. “You’re fine,” he says, when I tell him I need some water. I put my hand on his chest as my back meets the side of his SUV.

  “I want to go back to the club,” I say, and the panic that is rising inside me seems to clear my head. His eyes flash darkly and I know in my gut that I’m totally out of my depth. He smiles, and I don’t know why, but that makes me fear him even more.

  “You like teasing?” he asks. “You put on that dress for one reason, baby. Let me give you what you’re begging for.

  “I’m not begging for anything,” I reply, keeping my hand against him, ready to use all my body weight to shove him away.

  I don’t need to though. Just as Aaron opens his mouth to reply, a shadow falls across his face.

  “You okay, Carrie?” Ethan asks, taking me by the elbow and pulling me toward him. Nathan is there too, crowding Aaron and making him look like a prepubescent boy.

  I nod but it doesn’t seem to appease my stepbrothers. Nathan grips Aaron’s shoulder in his massive hand and squeezes as he leans towards him. “I don’t like what I think I saw,” he says in a voice filled with menace. I’ve never heard cuddly Nath get really angry. I’ve never seen this side of him. “You need to stay the fuck away from Carrie, do you understand me?”

  Aaron looks pissed, those snake eyes of his still flashing with malice, but Nathan must squeeze harder and shove him away because he stumbles backwards.

  “Stay away,” Nathan hisses, getting right in Aarons face. I pull away from Ethan and try to intervene. I couldn’t bear Nath to get hurt because of my stupidity. What was I thinking leaving the bar with a total stranger? Eth holds me back though, and Aaron seems to have changed his mind about the confrontation because he puts up his hands and says he wasn’t doing anything. Then he makes a big mistake. He tells Nathan that I was begging for it.

  It seems to take less than a second for Nath to pull his fist back and make a connection with Aaron’s jaw. The crack of bone on bone is so loud it makes me flinch. Eth pushes me behind him so he’s in a position to step in but Nathan doesn’t need his help. Aaron is on his ass in the dirt, clutching his face.

  “Fuck you,” Nathan says, squeezing his fist. He spits on the floor right by Aaron’s feet and then turns to us.

  “Come on,” he says, and Eth takes hold of my hand as we follow Nathan through the parked cars. When we reach the door of the bar, Nathan hands Ethan his keys. “Take her to the car,” he says. “I’ll find her friends and tell them she’s with us.”

  Ethan nods and I’m steered to where Nathan’s car is parked. It’s only when we get there that Ethan turns to me. He looks pissed and worried and his chest is rising and falling so fast it’s as though he’s been for another run. “What the fuck, Carrie?” he says, looking my face over as though he’s checking for injuries. “What were you doing out here with that asshole?”

  I look down, feeling stupid and ashamed and I don’t have any answers, at least none that would make any sense to Ethan. Nothing about it makes any sense to me either. I look up at him and I can’t hold it in anymore. I start to cry, putting my hands up to hide from him. He pulls my curled form towards him and cradles me as my body is racked by sobs. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m so fucking sorry, Carrie. For everything.”

  I don’t want to hear him say that. I don’t want him to blame himself for any of this. I throw my arms around his neck and I tell him that it’s me who’s sorry and that everything is my fault. I can’t stop crying but Ethan doesn’t try and make me. It’s as though he knows I need to let it out. Everything is there, pushing behind my eyes. The guilt, the shame, the fear that mom wouldn’t make it.

  Then Nathan returns from the club and his big warm hand on my shoulder seems to bring me back to my senses. I turn from Eth to hug Nath. I just want him to know that I’m sorry too. He doesn’t let me burrow into his chest like Eth did, though. He takes hold of my face in his huge hands and forces me to look at him.

  “This is stupid,” he says, with anger and exasperation clear in his voice. “This is all fucking stupid. Why are you doing this, Carrie? Why are you pushing us away and putting yourself in danger with assholes like that?”

  I shake my head as if to say I don’t know but that only seems to inflame him. “I can’t do this anymore,” he says. “I can’t walk around pretending like nothing happened. I love you. We love you. You can’t push us away like this.”

  Tears flow freely down my cheeks and I try to swallow against the lump that has formed in my throat. I can’t do this anymore either. I can’t carry on fooling myself that I can be without them. My heart is broken be
cause I pushed them away.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let anything happen between us again. I promised because…” I can’t finish the sentence but Nathan won’t give up.

  “Why, Carrie?” he says, looking deep into my eyes, searching for the answers that I’ve denied them so far.

  “Because I felt guilty for what we did. Because I knew people would think it was wrong. I promised because I thought fate was punishing me.”

  Nathan uses his thumbs to stroke away my tears. Both the twins are silent and I think I’ve gone too far. I should have just kept my mouth shut.

  “You’re talking in the past tense,” Ethan says softly. “Do you still think those things?”

  I shake my head, looking between my beautiful boys. Their eyes are filled with tenderness and longing that I know must be reflected in mine. I missed them so much. “I’m so sorry,” I say again. I need them to know.

  “You don’t need to be sorry,” Ethan says from behind me. “Sorry doesn’t move us forward. Sorry isn’t what we need, baby. Just tell us that you want this too. That’s all we need to hear.”

  “I want this,” I gasp, surprising myself with the fierceness in my voice. “I love you.”

  Nathan bends and kisses me hard on the mouth. Ethan slips his hand into my hair from behind and grips, turning my face into his and doing the same. We’re in a public lot but I don’t care who sees. My lips feel bruised but I don’t care about that either. The pain makes the longing I feel for them sharper.

  “Get in the car, Carrie,” Ethan says. Nathan unlocks the vehicle and opens the rear door for me. I slide in, while Ethan goes around to the passenger side. We drive in silence and I assume that they are taking me home, but then we pull off the road towards a motel and my heart skips in my chest. The silence now feels tense. We all know what’s going to happen next. Just the thought has me throbbing between my legs. Ethan turns in his seat and reaches back, putting his hand on the inside of my knee and stroking. My clit pulses with every movement.