An impossible task, sure, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to.
“So you’re not taking care of yourself and avoiding Christmas because your brother is gone. I understand. But, Ripley…you’re still alive. What was his name?”
“Ramsey.”
“Is this the way Ramsey would have you living? By not living at all?”
My question struck a nerve but instead of the alpha getting upset at me, he began to cry. I scooted back my chair and wrapped him up in my embrace. He might not be mine. He might leave me. I might spend my life alone. But for now, for this moment, I could comfort this sweet man.
Chapter Thirteen
Ripley
I never planned to tell anyone about my twin who didn’t already know. In fact, the family never mentioned him in my presence. Oh, they might allude to what happened.
Ripley, you have to let the past go.
It’s time to embrace your future.
Be grateful it wasn’t you.
An uncle said that last to me when I was about thirteen. Hormonal. Preadolescent. Not even beginning to deal with what it meant to lose my twin. I still, years later, expected to hear him rolling over in the creaky bunk above mine. Wanted to wait for him to go to school with me. Actually made him a sandwich once when I made mine.
I didn’t tell anyone what my uncle said for years, wrongfully assuming nobody would care, but after he passed away, I mentioned it to my alpha father whogrowled and said, “I’d kill him for that if he wasn’t already dead.”
Extreme, but since most people thought I should just get over the whole thing by now, I was grateful to hear it. I’d never be grateful it wasn’t me.
“Oh, alpha.” Jude rested a hand on my leg. “You must have been crushed. Anyone close to you dying when you’re not old enough to understand what that means is traumatic. But your very own twin. I’m so sorry.”
“We’d quarreled,” I said, wiping away tears that I’d never fully shed before. “We never did that. Almost never. And then we did, over something dumb at breakfast, and so when everyone went down to the lake to slide around, I didn’t go.”
“That happens. All children argue, and just like adults, it’s usually over something unimportant.”
“The timing was bad.” I swallowed hard, gaze fixed on the opposite wall, determined not to cry anymore, but with his arms around me, it was hard. This man had known me such a shorttime. He didn’t need the full weight of my emotional load dumped on him. “I should have been there.”
“You don’t feel guilty, do you?” He squeezed me tight. “Surely you don’t think you should have stood beside him every moment of his life as a bodyguard? Never looking away or doing something independently?”
Did I think that?
“I do feel guilty.”
“I mean, there had to be times when you lived your own lives, right? I think if you hadn’t gotten angry with one another, you might not feel such a level of guilt. Anything could have happened to him or to you at any time. I understand twins have an incredible bond, but I’ve never heard that you shared one fate.”
“No, I haven’t either.”
“So, it’s not as if you were there and harmed him or watched and didn’t try to help. Right?”
“I would never!” Leaping up, I stumbled backward. “How could I…he was my brother, and he counted on me. My omega dad said we should always look out for each other. But the very first time he really needed me, I was pouting in my room. Mad. Over something I can’t even remember.”
The tears were swelling my throat shut again. I’d been upset and avoided the holidays all these years, but since his funeral, I’d held back outright sobbing or other expressions. They couldn’t bring him back, and all I did was make people uncomfortable.
“Everyone would say how like him I was, and of course we were identical, but I felt like they were saying maybe it would have been better if it was me.”
Now, Jude was off the chair. He grasped my arms and shook me. “Don’t you dare say that. You have your life to live. His was cut short, but not by anything you did or didn’t do. If you had been there, I’d bet you’d have thrown yourself in after him, and then where would I be?” Shoot, now, he was crying. Not sobbing as I had been, but big tears streamed down his cheeks. “I am glad you’re here. Weren’t there others present when your brother fell in?”
“Yes.” I nodded, remembering all the faces, shocked, saddened, panicked. “At least half a dozen people.”
“And didn’t they try to save him?”
