SERENA
The ride back to New Haven was brutal.
I sat in the passenger’s seat, stiff and stunned. Alex had stopped at a service station on the edge of town and purchased a bag of ice that he’d tersely commanded me to hold against my hand—the hand I’d used to punch—but the ice did little to stop the throbbing.
To make it worse, I could see the swelling and bruising of Alex’s own knuckles. He’d done that for me.
He’d done that for me, and now he knew. He knew every little shadow inside of me, everything I’d kept locked away for so long.
I felt raw. I felt exposed. I wanted to scream.
“Will you come back to my apartment with me?” Alex asked as we neared the campus. I wanted to—wanted to thank him for what he’d done—but I felt as though a giant scab had been ripped off of a wound that had never healed.
I couldn’t, I couldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t do anything at all.
Mutely, I shook my head. Alex grunted, the sound full of frustration, and I winced, which made him curse. I knew he wasn’t mad at me, but I was sensitive enough that his emotions felt like battering rams, beating me black and blue.
He pulled the car to a stop in front of my dorm, then was out and getting my bag before I could even undo my seat belt. Once I’d finally climbed out, he silently handed me the bag, knowing, I assumed, that I’d refuse to be helped inside.
What I saw in his eyes when I dared to look up made me want to crawl into a ball and hide. How could he be so kind, so understanding, after all of this?
I was a mess. I had come from a disaster.
I did not want to bring that darkness into his life on a permanent basis. He’d had enough of his own.
“Thanks.” I picked up my duffel, swung it over my shoulder, wincing as the strap brushed my swollen knuckles.
He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, then tucked his hands into the pouch of his hoodie.
“I know better than most why you want to push me away right now.” Alex spoke calmly. I wanted to scream at the words. Why couldn’t he be mad, or disgusted—something that I could understand and deal with?
“Nothing I’ve seen today makes me love you any less.” He looked like he wanted to pull me into his arms, but he didn’t, and I was grateful.
If he had, I would have shattered.
I had no words. I looked up at him helplessly, my feelings seeping from the wound in my chest.
“I’ll give you some time.”
I could tell from the tightness in his voice that this was the last thing he wanted to do.
It was the last thing I wanted, too, but it was what I needed. Tears began to fall, hot and heavy, and I felt a sob rip through my chest.
“Go.” I shook my head, my hair falling into my face until I was hidden in a curtain of yellow. “Please, just go.”
ALEX
She was going to break it off. I could read it in every line of her body, and I understood why, even if she didn’t.
She still felt like this was somehow her fault. And she was ashamed that I knew her secret.
If I was mad about anything, it was that she hadn’t felt comfortable enough to share this with me—that she’d thought I would blame her. Even knowing that I’d once been a victim too, she hadn’t thought that I could love her, she was so certain that she was flawed.
Well, I’d give her some time. It would kill me, but I understood the need.
After that, though... she had to let me back in.
The alternative... I couldn’t even imagine.
SERENA
It had been two weeks.
Alex had given me two days, and then he’d started to call. Once a day, before bed, just to let me know he was thinking of me.
Though I yearned for his touch, I also shuddered at the thought of intimacy, physical or otherwise, with anyone.
I’d finally been forced to come face to face with my own personal demon. I’d won, but I know I had five years of baggage to work through.
I had to do it on my own.
His calls dwindled to every two days, and then every three. Then he left me one final message.
I played it, alone in my dorm room in the dark.
“I won’t say that this is okay, because it’s not. We were made for each other, and you know it.” Every frustration that I felt was in his voice. “I won’t keep bothering you, but I just want you to know. You don’t have to be alone.”
I listened to the message sixteen times, deleted it, and then cried for hours because I’d fucked up so badly.
A month after we’d gotten back from Lodenville, Felicity showed up at the dorm again. Kaylee looked at me with alarm when she answered—she’d watched me go through enough trauma in the previous weeks, she was probably wondering what calamity would fall if she let Felicity in the door.
“It’s okay.” Standing, I shrugged into a plaid shirt, for the sake of warmth, not because I wanted to hide my scars.
I didn’t care who saw them anymore.
“Can we talk?” Felicity waited until we were outside the building to ask. I stopped, turned, and took a hard look at my mother.
She was dressed in jeans and a camp shirt, rather than her usual fancy clothes. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and instead of contacts she wore her glasses, which sat heavily on her face.
“Here is fine.” I looked out across the quad, looked at all the twenty-something’s scurrying about, seemingly without a care in the world.
I had been so close to being that way myself. I wondered if I would ever be that way again.
To my surprise, instead of speaking, Felicity folded me into a fierce hug. I was stiff in her arms, having no idea what to do with the embrace. She wasn’t discouraged by my lack of response; if anything, she held on even tighter.
When she pulled away, there were tears streaming down her face. I blinked at the sight, certain that my eyes were playing tricks on me.
“I’m so sorry,” She finally managed. Pulling a tissue from her sleeve, she noisily blew her nose, seemingly oblivious to the students giving her funny looks and a wide berth.
I had no idea what to say, and so I stayed silent.
Felicity looked me in the eyes then, and I was struck again by how much I resembled her with that feature. Setting her face, she tucked the used Kleenex into her purse and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Bob is gone.” She nodded decisively.
“I see.” My words were flat, monotone.
“I can’t... I can’t ever make it up to you.” The wound that had just begun knitting itself back together tugged, trying to separate.
It held.
“I should have believed you. I just... I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that someone I loved, someone I trusted, could do such a thing.” She seemed to need a response, so I nodded, jerkily.
“All I can say is I’m sorry.” She held out a hand, then snatched it back. I felt that same strange sensation that I’d felt in the hospital, that hint of warmth, trickling back over my skin.
“That’s a start.” I forced out. The wound stopped trying to tear itself apart again.
We stood in silence for a moment, each of us lost in our thoughts. When Felicity again spoke, I was surprised by her question.
“How’s that boy? The one who...” Her words trailed off. I thought of Alex, thought of how I’d made such a mess of things.
“It... it wasn’t serious.” At least, it wasn’t anymore.
“Really?” I was surprised that Felicity seemed disappointed. “I liked him.”
Yeah, I thought. I did too. And as I went back inside, the truth of that hurt most of all.
SERENA
Time marched on, as time does. And things got... better. I stopped hiding behind my hair, stopped feel nauseous when someone used lavender shampoo in the bathroom, and stopped flinching when people got in my space.
I tried not to think of Alex. It hurt too much.
One night, not quite two months after that day in Lodenville, I went to the campus pub with Maddy.
I drank vodka and seven. She drank beer.
“I’m scared.” She told me as we started into our final round. She was dating someone new, someone far nicer than Brett had been. “I’m scared of being hurt again.”
I said nothing, because her words had made me realize something.
We were all scared. Relationships weren’t fairy tales, and love wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows.
I pondered this as I slurped the dregs of my drink. I was reaching into my purse for cash when I saw him. Alex.
He was walking to the exit of the pub. He was with a girl.
He caught my eye, and my heart seized painfully in my chest.
He smiled, the smile somewhat sad. Then he was gone, leaving me gasping for air like a fish out of water.
“Ex-boyfriend?” Maddy had watched the exchange with sympathy written all over her face.
“Something like that,” I muttered, and changed the subject.
Alex had made me happy. So happy. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be happy on my own.
Still, my heart was tender as I trudged back across campus, and up to my dorm room. The nightmares had mostly gone, but I knew I wasn’t going to sleep well that night.
There was a figure standing outside my door. I startled, the way I thought I always would when taken unawares. But then I saw the lean lines, the dark hair and the gorgeous face.
It was Alex.
“Serena.” The sound of my name on his lips liquefied my insides. My knees wobbled as I made a show of fumbling for my key card in my purse.
“Hi, Alex.” My heart was pounding; I looked anywhere but at him.
Then my back was against the door, his lips on mine. He kissed me like he was drowning, and I kissed him back with every bit of pent up need that I’d held in check for the last eight weeks.
Down the hall, someone whistled. We broke apart, both of us panting. His eyes were slightly wild, and I suspected mine were the same.
We fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle. Another piece could be forced against either one of us, but it wouldn’t ever be the same.
“Hang on.” I slid the card through the reader, then silently led him into the dorm room. Kaylee was sitting on her bed playing with a flatiron.
She took one look at me and Alex and promptly slid off the bed.
“I’ll be back... later. Ish.” She said vaguely, then slid out the door.
We were alone.
I wanted nothing more than to fold myself into his arms, to kiss, to explore and to reacquaint myself with every inch of him. Instead I gestured to my bed, and when he sat where I’d asked, I perched on the edge of Kaylee’s.
“I owe you an explanation.” My words were still breathy from the kiss.
Alex held out his hands. “Serena, I get it. You do what you have to do to get by.”
I shook my head vehemently.
“No. I mean, yes, I guess so, but... I have to tell you this.” Sucking in a great mouthful of air, I steeled myself to speak the words I’d never spoken before.
“It started when I was fifteen...”
It took me an hour to tell, with fits and starts and tears. I told Alex about how I had once loved Bob. About how I’d been so happy when I was twelve and my mom had married him, excited that I was going to have a dad.
I told him about how my mom had started a new job when I was fifteen. About how the job took her out of town sometimes, and that was when he would come visit me in my room. The next day, as if in apology, he would leave me a bouquet of fresh cut lavender, in a crystal vase on my dresser.
“He told me no one would believe me if I told.” By this point we were lying side by side on my bed, our foreheads pressed together, our legs intertwined.
I’d forgotten how safe it felt, being close to him.
“I kept quiet for two years, and then I told my mom. She... didn’t believe me. Didn’t want to believe me, I don’t think.” Alex traced a finger over the lines of the scars on my shoulders, and I didn’t feel the need to pull away.
He’d been silent since I’d started talking, letting me get it all out.
“I started sleeping around, taking any attention and affection that I could.” I wasn’t angry at myself anymore. I’d done what I had to do to get through. “I’d put on a bunch of weight in self-defense. Then I started cutting myself. It was a relief, really, the way it let the pain drain away.”
“Never again.” Alex’s fingers tightened on my shoulders; they were the first words he’d spoken in almost an hour. “No harming yourself. You’re not alone anymore.”
“Never again.” I agreed. The ghost of a smile whispered over the corners of my lips. “When I came to college I decided to make a fresh start. That day in Lodenville, I was forced into making another one, all over again.”
“And... how do you feel now?” His words were casual, but I understood what he was asking.
Had he given me enough time?
“I’ve never told anyone that story before. Not all of it.” I propped myself up on one elbow. Tracing my fingers over the edges of the tattoo that peeked out of the neckline of his shirt, I closed my eyes and savoured the sensation of being near him again.
While my eyes were closed, he moved in and kissed me. Initially a soft, sweet brush of the lips, it quickly turned hot, a frantic need to once again be together.
As his hand slid down to cup my hip, Alex broke the kiss for just a moment. I moaned in protest, but when I heard his words I had to smile.
“I love you, Serena.” I leaned forward, captured his lips with my own again, reveling in the warmth his words brought.
“I love you, too.” I closed my eyes, and gave myself to him whole-heartedly.
Alex loved me for me, and that was all I had to say about that.
––––––––
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KAYLEE
“Uh-oh.”
I had been swaying to a song by Bruno Mars, my arms in the air, when Caroline’s voice filtered through. Opening my eyes, I saw her looking over my shoulder with apprehension.
A big hand was on my shoulder before I could ask her what was wrong. That hand pulled me, spinning me around on my heels. With three vodka sevens in me, I lost my balance, falling against the rock solid chest of the guy who had grabbed me.
The scent of soap and something that was uniquely him combined in my nose and told me who it was before my eyes actually took him in. My pulse quickened, my heart beginning to beat double time, as I looked up and my vision confirmed what I’d already known.
Thick, dark gold hair that stood up in spikes all over his head. Eyes that couldn’t quite decide if they were hazel or green. Chiseled features that were normally set in inscrutable lines.
I must have surprised him, because right now he looked like he’d seen a ghost. His hands ran up and down my arms, feeling the flesh as if he wasn’t sure I was real, and I shivered under the touch.
Could it really be that he wasn’t appalled to find me back in town? The sparks that I’d spent my time at college trying to dampen flickered, then burst back into the roaring fire that I’d always felt around him.
“Ella?” Those ever changing eyes narrowed and he cocked his head. I sucked in a breath when he used my sister’s name. I saw the second that he realized his mistake, but by then the pain had sliced through my veins.
“Out of everyone,” I started, my voice shaking as I stepped away from his touch. “Out of everyone who knew us both, I thought you would be able to tell us apart.”
Emotion that I couldn’t quite identify flickered over his face. I didn’t stick around to figure out what it was. Spinning, I shoved through the crowd of people, stumbling on the shoes that suddenly made my feet ache.
The combination of too much vodka, emotions running high, and the shock of seeing him again made me nauseous. I thought I might puke.
The downstairs bathroom had a line that snaked down the hall.
I’d only been here a few times, several years ago, but I remembered there was a small bathroom off the bedroom upstairs. I knew Caroline wouldn’t care if I used it, so I kicked off my shoes and, picking them up, hurried up the cheaply tiled stairs.
“Shit.” Clasping the edges of the porcelain sink in my hands, I bent over the basin and sucked in deep mouthfuls of air. My heart was thundering in my chest, adding to the sick sensation that threatened to smother me.
Dylan McKay had looked at me and seen the ghost of my dead twin. What he didn’t know was that he was my ghost, the mistake that would never stop haunting me.
The mistake that didn’t ease the want.
Bracing my weight on the sink, I looked into the mirror, cringing at what I saw. Sweat had melted away my makeup, the charcoal around my eyes smeared in a way that made me look manic. The shock of seeing Dylan had made me pale and sickly.
No wonder he’d confused me for my sister. Still, after what had happened between us, I’d expected... well, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from Dylan.
More, I guess. Or else nothing at all.
Sighing, I splashed cold water on my face, then scrubbed with a paper towel. With my skin naked, I looked more like the Kaylee that the people of this town knew and remembered.
Maybe that was who I was destined to be. No matter how I fought it, it seemed like I couldn’t ever escape the past.
Finger combing my messy, sweat dampened curls, I pulled them back in a ponytail with an elastic band that I found in the top drawer of the vanity. With it the transformation was complete, even though I still wore the siren red dress.
I was Kaylee Sawyer, the girl who had always stood in the shadow of her twin, the girl who had made a tragedy happen by not being content with staying in the shadows.
The reminder pressed down on me, and for an unhappy moment I considered calling Joel. I couldn’t tell him about Dylan, oh hell no, but he’d try to cheer me up just because I was hurting.
I dismissed the thought as soon as I had it. I had to stop reaching out to him like he was my boyfriend, unless I was actually prepared to give him that commitment.
If I hadn’t already known that I wasn’t, the mess that Dylan had made of my heart in the two minutes I’d seen him would have spelled it out.
“Get me out of here.” I shuddered, reaching for the door. I half meant the party, and half meant my home town in general.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as I left the bathroom. It gave me enough of a split second warning that I didn’t jolt when I found Dylan standing just inside the entrance to the small bedroom.
His arms were crossed over his muscular chest, and his expression was stern. He seemed to fill the entire room, just by standing in it, something that I remembered well.
Dylan had always seemed larger than life. Just like Ella.
“What do you want?” My voice was sharp, even waspish, as I halted just outside the bathroom. I curled my toes into the floor, concentrating on how the short carpeting prickled the bare soles of my feet.
I didn’t care that I was being short. What did it matter, after all? Dylan had been Ella’s friend, not mine.
“I’m sorry.” There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of emotion behind his words, but that was just Dylan. Stoic. A rock.
Not expressing how he felt didn’t mean that he didn’t feel it.
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t—of course it wasn’t. But all of the emotions that had been pushing at me all day had scrubbed my heart raw, and I couldn’t handle the thought of a confrontation. Not that I’d ever been any good at them.
“When did you get back?” Though his face remained nearly expressionless, those eyes raked over me.
I wished I didn’t still feel the tug between us.
“Today.” My voice sounded rusty, as if I hadn’t used it for a very long time. “I’m just here for the summer.” Next year I’d have to be extra diligent to find a job before school was done, so that I could avoid ever setting foot in Fish Lake, Oregon again.
There was a pause, and I stared at the toes that I was still curling into the carpet.
“How’s your mom?” He asked. As I sank my teeth into my lower lip, I told myself that he couldn’t possibly care, but I knew that wasn’t true.
Dylan had always seen too much, and he’d practically lived at our house during the time when my mom’s drinking had gotten worse.
He knew what she was like now, I was sure of it. If I let him in too close, he would see what I was like too.
Silently, I raised my stare and looked him over. His hair was that same thick golden mess that made my fingers itch to touch. He’d put a couple of inches on his already impressive six feet in the last few years, and the rangy muscle that I remembered had thickened. A hint of something sexy and smoky had replaced the notes of engine grease that had once layered into his addictive smell. The tattoo that peeked out the sleeve of his dark gray t-shirt was new. It looked like some kind of bird, though it was half covered up and I couldn’t quite tell.
I was entranced by it. I wanted to touch it, wanted to show him that I had one too. God, I’d wanted him for so long. Sometimes it felt like forever.
But he’d been Ella’s. Though I’d wanted so badly to believe differently, that meant that he couldn’t ever be mine.
“It’s good to see you, Kaylee.”
I stared at him, shocked by his words, to find the eyes in that inscrutable face raking over me hungrily. Against my better judgment, I felt myself respond, felt the heat begin to grow in my core.
I’d thought that the consequences of the one time I’d given in had dampened any actual urges that I had to act on my desire.
I was wrong.
“I’ve missed you.” His voice was quiet. As he unfolded his arms and stepped toward me panic flared brightly, and my thoughts swirled.
I wanted so badly to take his words at face value. But I couldn’t stop the memory of his face, of the accusation in his eyes, when I’d told him what had happened to Ella. When I’d told him why it had happened.
He blamed me. Of course he did. I blamed myself.
There was no way he was happy to see me. Which meant that when he looked at me, he saw someone else.
“Are you actually happy to see me, Dylan?” The words were hard to force out of my dry throat. I felt like I should cry, but I was suddenly just too tired. “Or are you seeing her?”
He stared at me as if I’d struck him. I stared back.
Seeing Dylan was a reminder. I wasn’t the same as I’d once been. I wasn’t going to go fade into a corner.
I just wasn’t that girl anymore.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice was suddenly raw, and in that moment I could see my own grief over Ella, reflected back at me.
He took another step toward me. I wanted to fling myself into his arms, to give in to the need that had haunted my every step while I was away.
Instead I did what good Kaylee would have done. I pushed away from the siren call of his embrace, and I ran.
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