SAWYER
“The Monroe file is on your desk,” Dana calls as I pass by her and into my office.
I snag the file and drop into an overstuffed chair. I’d always thought the thing was for decoration and wouldn’t fathom doing work on it at the risk of it being unprofessional, but that was pre-Aden. The post-Aden me says fuck it. Kicking off my heels I tuck my feet up under me and crack open the folder.
It’s been months since we buried my sister and though I don’t think anything will ever feel “normal” again, my life is back on track. They say that staying busy helps with mourning. I can’t say I agree, but it has to be better than sitting at home staring at the wall.
Dana pops her head in through the door. “The property manager from Paseo called and wanted to know if you’re ready to put down a security deposit?”
I worry my lip. I’ve been living with my parents and as much as I know it’ll hurt them for me to leave, I think it’s time we all move on. Lord knows I’m ready for my own space. “Sure, go ahead and give it to them.”
Dana smiles sadly but nods. “Will do. Oh, and Mark is on his way up.”
“Okay.” I go back to my file and force the thoughts of Aden from my mind as everything, even the idea of renting a new apartment, makes me think of him.
His name alone makes me miss him with a fierceness I didn’t think I was capable of. I’d hoped that over time his memory would fade into wistful thoughts rather than intensify, but no such luck. I only hope he’s doing well, that he’s managed to beat back what tortures him rather than end up alone and angry.
He deserves so much more.
My eyes drift to the photo on my coffee table. Celia and me at a holiday get-together a few years before she died. Her nose is pierced and she’s wearing a headband around her forehead like she’s straight out of Haight-Ashbury while I’m flashing a closed-lipped smile looking suffocated in my turtleneck. Her hair is falling all around her face and mine is pulled back in an extreme bun. If it weren’t for our totally opposite styles no one would ever know the difference between us.
I’ve often wondered if she and Aden would’ve made the perfect couple. If she never would’ve gotten sick and come home would they have met and ended up together, married, babies. God, how could I sit by and watch without having a crush on my own brother-in-law.
I couldn’t. I’d have loved him.
I love him.
“Knock knock?” Mark’s voice calls my eyes to him as he walks through the door and drops down on the chair opposite me.
“Hey.” I close the folder in my hands, genuinely happy to see him.
After Celia died, he’s been a great friend. I know he’s hoping for more but I can’t give my heart to anyone as long as it’s with Aden.
He tilts his head. “How’re you doing?”
“Good.” I frown. “Why?”
A shy smile pulls his lips. “Just checking in on you, ya know, with the date and all.”
“Yeah . . .” It’s the eighteenth. “I can’t believe she’s been gone for two months.”
“How’re your parents?”
I shrug one shoulder. “They’re a little better every day.”
“Good.” He scoots to the end of his seat and sets his eyes on me and I see nothing but sympathy there. “If you ever need anything, I’m here for you, Sawyer.”
I reach forward and grab his hand, squeezing it in mine. “I know you are and I appreciate that, but I’m okay.”
His gaze moves from my hair to my chin, then back to my eyes. “You’re different.”
“Am I?” I lean back to put some distance between us. As much as I do appreciate Mark’s attentiveness, I don’t want to lead him on.
“Since you came back from your break you’re more . . .” He shrugs and blows out a long breath. “I don’t know.”
“Well . . .” I smile at him. “Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.” His expression grows serious, and as handsome as he is he doesn’t light me on fire the way a certain someone does.
“Do.” His cheeks flush a little and he stands to leave, but turns before passing through the doorway. “Listen, do you want to grab a bite after work?”
“Oh, um—”
“As friends. I swear, no funny business.”
Friends.
It seems I finally have some, thanks to Celia.
My lips pull into a grin. “I’ve been dying for sushi.”
“Sushi?” He looks confused but nods. “Okay, I’ll be back to get you around six?”
My eyes land on the photo of me and Cece. “Actually, I wanted to swing by the graveyard first, drop off some flowers.”
“I can go with you.” There’s a hopefulness in his expression.
“That’s sweet, but . . . I need to do this alone. Why don’t you go grab us a table at Stingray and I’ll be there around six-thirty?”
“Sure.” He grins and it really does seem sincere, then he passes through the door to leave me alone with my thoughts.
I’m going to have to move on eventually.
The problem is . . . I don’t know if I can.
ADEN
CELIA MARIE FORRESTER BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER.
MAY YOUR ADVENTURES CONTINUE ON INTO ETERNITY.
I stare at the tombstone waiting for a clarity that never comes.
She’s gone.
According to the date etched into the stone she died two weeks after she left.
That must’ve been why she took off with no contact. She knew she had only a limited amount of time and I was her final hurrah. But she seemed so healthy, and staring at the proof with my own two eyes doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
The wind kicks up, but even though it feels like a blowtorch of hundred-degree air it cools my sweat-sticky skin.
It’s hard to trace my steps back to what brought me here. I was staring between empty bottles of booze and a full one in my hand and it hit me. Drinking myself to death wasn’t going to solve a single fucking thing. It wouldn’t bring Celia back to my boat, wouldn’t put her back in my arms, wouldn’t bring her lips back to mine when all I’ve ever dreamed of was to kiss her one last time.
Or even more, just to tell her I love her.
I loved her.
I gave in and I tried to call, even texted, but everything was a dead end. I pulled out her old rental agreement and dialed the number on there, but it had been disconnected.
Desperate to hunt her down, I logged on to the Internet and Googled her name and that’s when I saw the obituary.
Celia is dead.
I lost my chance to tell her how much she means to me.
I had to come here, to prove to myself she was really gone, and to admit out loud, even if to only her tombstone, that I loved her.
I crouch down and place a bouquet of violets at the base of her tombstone, my mind reeling with all I should’ve said.
I’ve attended burials for more people than I can count and always felt cheated. Life taken too soon has become an ongoing theme, but the one woman I loved, the one woman I could’ve spent the rest of my life with is gone and I never got to say goodbye.
“Aw, freckles . . .” I bite back the pain that claws at my throat at the thought of her beautiful skin six feet below me in a dark coffin. With a heavy heart I drop back to my ass and stare at the fresh grass. “I should’ve told you before, but I’m a coward. I love you. I know, it sounds crazy, but I do. I wish I’d known how sick you were, I would’ve been able to tell you . . .” I drop my head forward feeling the rush of emotion that I’m so used to being able to drown out with liquor. I haven’t touched a drop in weeks, forcing myself to feel for the first time in a long time. “I should’ve been there for you.”
I sit in the quiet cemetery hearing nothing but the wind through the trees and the cars passing by on the nearby street. It’s in that stillness that I sense movement at my back.
Paranoia pricks at my nerves and I jerk my head around to see—I go light-headed as the blood drains from my face.
“Celia?” I hop to my feet so fast she squeaks in surprise. My mouth opens and closes, but no words come out because—I’ll be damned—but Celia, the woman I’ve fallen in love with, the woman whose grave I’m currently standing on, is staring at me with eyes so wide I’d swear she’s just as shocked to see me as I am to see her, which is saying something since she’s supposed to be dead!
“You’re here.” Two words spoken so softly as if they were whispered into the breeze.
“I don’t . . .” My eyes skate between her and the gravestone. “What is this?”
Her eyes dart to the bouquet of flowers and I’d swear the corner of her mouth tilts up a little. “Violets.”
I swallow and take a step closer, half thinking she’ll disappear into thin air. “They were her favorite.”
She licks her lips, those perfect thick lips, and I rub the center of my chest as something works fiercely behind my ribs.
With our eyes locked she steps closer and holds out her hand. “You must be Aden.”
“Yes. And . . .” I blink and fight the faintness in my head. “You’re Celia.”
“No.” Her smile falls. “I’m her sister, Sawyer.”
“Sawyer.” Of course. Her sister, but they’re identical. I had no idea Celia’s sister was her twin. “You . . . wow.”
I shove my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out to her and study the gorgeous woman before me. Dress slacks that hug every curve of her legs, white button-up shirt ironed to perfection, her clothes a complete contradiction to her hair that falls around her face and dances in the wind.
“You look just like her.”
“We were identical twins.”
I look down at the headstone hoping to sever the connection I feel to the stranger in front of me. “She never told me she had a twin.”
“I know.”
My gaze darts to hers only to find her eyes are firmly fixed on the tombstone. “How do you know that?”
She squares her shoulders and looks up at me with all the assurance of a woman who won’t be intimidated. “Because I never told you, Aden.”
“I’m sorry?” It’s as if her words knocked the wind from my lungs. “When would you—”
“I lied to you.” She takes a step closer and I’m too frozen to back away, because what she’s saying can’t possibly be true. “My name is Sawyer Forrester. I came to San Diego to pack up my twin sister Celia’s house and . . .” She pauses. “I pretended to be her.”
I take a step back, my stomach curling with revulsion. Could it be that she lied to me this entire time making me believe she’s someone she’s not? Who does that? “You’re . . . Celia?”
She nods. “I’m Celia to you. But no, I’m Sawyer.”
She’s Celia, my Celia. And she’s a fucking liar. “How . . . why would you do that?”
Her face grows serious. “Because she asked me to, and when you love someone and they have a dying wish you do whatever it takes to make it come true even if it breaks your own heart in the process.”
I stare up at the sky and try to make sense of what I’m hearing. “I don’t believe you. The woman I knew would never do something like that, the woman I loved was loyal and—”
“Loved?”
For a moment I wish I could draw back the words, but then realize that yeah, this is what I wanted, to tell Celia I love her so I nod. “Yes. I loved her. But you are not her.”
She advances. “Aden, it’s me—”
“Prove it.”
Her big green eyes fix on mine. “You drink too much.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure that—”
“You have nightmares.”
I freeze.
She takes a step closer. “You eat raw fish straight off the line. You named a sea lion Morpheus.” Another step closer. “You don’t like crowds,” she whispers.
I open my mouth to defend myself, but she cuts me off.
“You blame yourself for the deaths of your men who died so you could live. You try to hide the fact that you’re hurting.”
She closes the last foot between us and it hits me. Her scent. The sweet smell of her hair mixed with the natural scent of her skin that I’ve dreamt about since the last time I held her. “Cece . . .”
“Sawyer.” Her eyes brim with tears.
I cup her jaw and watch a single tear trace down her cheek. “It’s you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re alive?”
“I am.”
Before I can barely think it, my lips find hers and her hands are wrapped around my neck and slipping into my hair. I nip at her mouth and when she opens to me I slide my tongue against hers. Her sweet flavor combined with her body pressed against mine is all the confirmation I need.
This is her.
The woman I fell in love with.
God, but having her back in my arms, it’s like she never left. Everything about her feels like coming home.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Our foreheads pressed together, we breathe each other in.
“At first I didn’t think it was a big deal, but then you told me about your past and after that . . .” She closes her eyes. “I knew telling you would hurt you, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”
“So you left thinking I’d forget you and move on.”
“Yes. Then I’d always be the girl you had fun with one summer.”
I tuck a lock of her shining hair behind her ear. “Only one problem with that, freckles.”
She blinks up at me.
“I could never forget you.”
Her lips quiver with emotion so I kiss her until I feel her fall limp into my arms.
Looking back, I should’ve known, if I’d paid more attention to the differences between how she acted and those photos of her . . . and the photo of her and Cal. I think on some level I knew something didn’t add up but didn’t want to accept it.
“Did Cal know?”
“Immediately.” She shrugs and her eyes move to stare at nothing over my shoulder. “When it comes to Celia, I’m a lousy substitute.”
I step back and stare down at the grave of the woman I thought I loved. “I wish I’d gotten the chance to know her.”
“In a way . . .” She peers up at me. “You did.”
“If you were pretending to be Celia, then . . .” I want to hold her to me, to force her to be the woman I came to know, but if I want a real chance with Sawyer I’m going to have to fall in love with someone I know very little about. “Who are you?”
“Sawyer Elizabeth Forrester.” Her spine stiffens as if she’s waiting for my rejection.
“I’m afraid of just about everything including the ocean. I killed my grandmother by giving her the flu and since then a lot of things have gone bad for me.” Her eyes fill with tears. “But in the last few months I’ve experienced the best possible feeling in the world coupled by the absolute worst. I pretended to be my twin sister Celia so that she could die with the knowledge that in the eyes of her friends she lived on, but in doing so I fell in love with a man who brought out a side of me I didn’t know existed. He helped me face what scares me, brought me to the edge of my comfort zone, and taught me that real living only happens when I walk through my fears. But he has a bad history of being lied to and there was no way I could break him with the truth so I gave him up, signing myself up for a lifetime of regret, and I’d do it again if I had to because in those two weeks I’d never felt more alive.”
My thoughts scramble to understand what she’s saying. A jolt of hope swells within me and I hold still in expectation.
“You changed me, Aden. I see it now, the whole point of all this. It was Celia’s last gift to me. And because of you she was able to deliver it in a way that has forever altered who I am.”
I’m mesmerized by what she’s telling me. That she could see me as a person who could make her better when all this time I’ve been convinced it was only her who was helping me. How is it possible for her to view me as some kind of hero after everything I’ve put her through? And God, but up until five minutes ago she was dead and now she’s standing before me confessing her heart and making me believe that there’s a future for us.
“I can bait a hook. Swim in the ocean at night. Make out with a stranger.”
I hold back a growl.
“But more than that, I’m not afraid to fall in love. I’m not afraid of getting hurt because you and Celia have taught me that two weeks of love are worth a lifetime of pain.”
“No.”
She jerks in my hold. “No?”
I sift my fingers through her hair and love how her breath hitches when I bring her lips close. “No. Not a lifetime of pain. Because I’m a man who has felt what it is to be loved by a beautifully loyal woman, one who would sacrifice her own happiness to grant a wish to her dying sister. I’m a man who knows what it’s like to be selfish and lose the only person who brought peace into my life. One thing I am not, Sawyer Forrester . . .”
She whimpers at the calling of her name.
“Is a stupid man. I thought the woman I loved was dead, but she’s here, standing before me, in my hands, warm and breathing, and there is no way in hell I’m letting her walk away again. Understand?”
“So . . . you’re saying—”
“I’m saying . . . I love you. I’m saying I don’t want to wake up another morning without you at my side. I’m saying I’m willing to give up whatever it is I need to give up in order to be with you.”
“But Celia—”
“Is just a name. You’re the woman I fell in love with, the one I’ve been thinking about every second of every day since the last time I fell asleep in your arms.”
“You want me? Even now, after I lied to you?”
“More than I could ever say.” I press a kiss to her lips.
“But . . . when you get to know me, the real me, not the one pretending to be someone else, you might not like what you see.”
“You willing to swim with me at night? Go snorkeling with me out at some remote island? More importantly, you done making out with strangers?”
“Yes, yes, and . . .” She chews her lip and I’m about to give her a punishing kiss for her delay. “Absolutely.”
“What do you say, Sawyer?”
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a silver coin. I release her and she steps back. As if in slow motion, she flips the quarter, but as it’s spinning through the air, her eyes come to mine and she rushes into my arms.
We kiss with all the passion of two people who lost each other forever only to find each other again. After long minutes pass and we’re tugging at each other’s clothes I pull away and whisper, “You didn’t wait for it to land.”
“That’s because when I flipped it I already knew what my answer would be.”
“Freckles . . .” My hands caress her delicate cheeks. “Sawyer.”
Her eyelids close as she seems to bathe in the sound of her name. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear you call me that.”
“I’ll say it every day for the rest of our lives if you’ll have me.”
She blinks up at me. “Really?”
“Nothing will take you away from me again.”
“Actually . . .” She checks her watch and those thick lips quirk so adorably I fall deeper in love instantly. “Right now, I do have to go.”
I kiss her neck, soaking in her touch and scent that I’ve missed so much. “Where?”
“I’m having dinner with a friend.” Her breathing speeds up with every brush of my lips.
“Yeah? And who is this friend?”
“His name is Mark.”
My lips freeze on her neck and I pull back. “Mark.”
“Yeah.”
“A man?”
Her hands caress my cheeks and damn but her touch moves me on a soul-deep level. I’d do anything she asked, grant her whatever she wanted. “He’s a man, yes.”
“Any chance you’d be willing to cancel with Mark?”
“No.” She kisses me. “But . . . if you haven’t eaten, how’d you feel about going out for sushi?”
I tug her to my side. “Didn’t know you liked sushi.”
We stroll to the parking lot. “A gorgeous guy introduced me to it awhile back.”
“Oh yeah?” I stop and turn her to me. “And who is this guy?”
Her expression grows serious. “He was in love with my sister, but I convinced him I’m a good second.”
Now it’s me who gets serious. “You will never be second to me, Sawyer.” The name feels as natural as if I’ve said it a million times, moaned it, whispered it. “You’re my freckles. My love, and now . . . my life.”