The ache in my chest is real. Fucking heart-attack real.
“I didn’t know.” Her voice catches on the tears spilling over her bottom lashes. “You’re identical twins.” Remy clutches her stomach as if in pain.
“Everyone knows.”
“Everyone except Remy, apparently,” Bash says.
“Oh no.” Remy shakes her head and her shoulders stiffen. “You’re not putting this all on me.”
“Who else is there?” My brother hasn’t flinched since I barged in on this conversation. He hasn’t moved a muscle. He’s a stone-cold fucking statue, watching her as if she planned the whole scenario.
“Um,you?” Remy blinks the tears back under control. “And him.” She hooks a thumb my way again. “Don’t you communicate by twin telepathy or something? Or did you both have a laugh at my expense?” Her face grows flushed with embarrassment.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I glare at Bash, then turn back to Remy. “It wasn’t like that. I promise you, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night in Bash’s apartment. You’re special, Remy. You?—”
“Don’t!” she snaps, shutting me down. “You didn’t speak to me again. I thought that you were him. I thought…” She shudders as if it’s too painful to relive. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
She steps around the couch and glances at the elevator. Neither of us tries to stop her. Because while she’s trying to process the discovery that she had sex with us both, I’m still trying to wrap my head around my twin fucking the only woman who has ever stolen my dreams and replaced them with a fantasy that I’ll never grow tired of.
“I had stuff going on.” It sounds like a copout even to me, and I know it’s the truth.
“Don’t even bother.” Remy’s eyes touch mine briefly, and my heart melts.
I cross the room and try to hold her hand, but she backs away from me, keeping her distance. “I wanted to see you, Remy. I thought you felt the same way.”
“I…” She shakes her head again and shrugs. “It’s too late now. Whatever game this is that you’re both playing, I want no part of it.”
“It isn’t a game. You’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t know about Bash, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t share you with him.” The image leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that I’ll never be able to erase.
She looks to Bash for confirmation. He remains silent.
I can’t even begin to imagine how she feels, thinking that we used her, that because we’re twins, we share everything, including our women. I want to scrub this conversation fromher mind and start over, and my brother is still standing there, untouched by the whole scenario.
“Tell her, Bash.”
He hesitates like this is something he has to think about. Then, “We’re not the ones playing a game.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Remy beats me to it.
I know exactly what it means, and for the first time, I’m not going to take my brother’s side on this one. “Drop it, Bash.”
Remy’s gaze darts between us again. “No, don’t drop it, Bash.” She’s firm. “I can’t wait to hear what game you think I’m playing.”
“He doesn’t think you’re playing a game.” If I don’t intervene, he’s going to push her away, and I don’t want to hold this against him for the rest of my life. “This isn’t about you, Remy. This is about George Quinn.”
“George?” Frown lines appear between her eyebrows. “What has he got to do with anything?”
“He and his fiancée want a slice of the Murray pie in New York.”
I fill in the blanks on Bash’s behalf. His silence is unnerving me; when it finally morphs into action, it isn’t going to be pretty, and I’m fucked if I’ll stand here and let Remy experience the full force of it. It’ll only cement the notion in her head that we’re twins with psychopathic tendencies, and we’ll never see her again.
That isn’t what I want. I don’t care what she thinks of me right now; I know that I have unfinished business with Remy Jones.
“But, of course, you already know this,” Bash says coldly.
“With the timing,” I quickly add, “we had to consider the possibility that he was using you to get to us.”
“Using me?” The incredulity in her voice is unmistakable. “I haven’t seen him in eighteen months.”
