Page 19 of Second Position (Astor Hill #2)

“We should probably head out too,” I tell Andy, shooting Sloane a look that screams please go with it . She’s biting her lip in concentration as if trying to figure out the puzzle that is Genevieve Dupont. As if she can sense Gen’s desperation to escape, she grabs her hand.

“We can give you a ride home, right Grant?”

“I can just take an—” she starts, but I nod my head toward the exit, reaching my hand out to her.

“Come on, Dupont.” She stares at my hand for the slowest second of my life before taking it, but when she does it’s a gift I didn’t know I wanted. I know we’re not on campus, not around our usual group, but it’s the antidote I needed after her rejection.

We wave goodbye to Andy where he sits at the bar, waiting for Will, and I thank god that Gen didn’t stay with him. Wait for him, too.

The air is sticky, like it might start raining, and Sloane loops her arm through Gen’s free one, a sense of comfort blanketing the moment. Maybe it’s the twin thing or that she’s the only blood relative I really have, but something about her makes me feel at home in a way I don’t feel very often.

Sloane climbs into the back bench of my truck after insisting Gen ride up front, which I would’ve made sure of anyway, but seeing my sister rally behind this girl she barely knows has me grateful she’s here. Even if I still don’t know why.

I round the car and slide behind the wheel before turning over my shoulder to meet her eyes. “So…where am I taking you?” I ask pointedly and instantly see that mischievous smile I’ve come to associate my sister with.

“I figured where better to stay than with my brother. We need a little sibling bonding time after all.” Her tone is playful, but I know her well enough to know she’s hiding something .

“Where were you before?” Gen turns in her seat, grasping the back of it as she rests her chin on the dark leather. “I know it was an art thing…?”

“San Francisco. It was like an apprenticeship, a curator thing, but it ended up not being my speed. I need very loose constraints to be productive.” I catch her shrug in the rearview mirror, my eyes turning to slits as I try to decipher what could’ve happened.

“Oh my god!” Gen’s small gasp is adorable and distracting, and I have to force myself to keep my eyes off her and on the road.

“Our set designer needs assistants for the painted murals. I don’t know if painting is your thing, but I know she’s looking for people who won’t need a lot of hand holding? ”

“Ah—say less. Yes! Yes, yes, yes. That’s the perfect thing to help me get my footing here. What’s your number?”

They exchange numbers and make small talk, and I fixate on Sloane’s apparent need to get her “footing here.”

“Are you going to tell me why you left?” I ask, trying to be patient but my tone still comes off as irritated.

I love my sister. From a young age she’s been adored by everyone from adults to our peers alike—everyone except our parents.

I think her knack for quitting things before they get started or the way she seemed to care about both everything and nothing at all disenchanted them while simultaneously enchanting the strangers who came across her.

“I just said.” Her flippant tone is one I know all too well.

“Sloane,” I start, keeping my tone even as I pull into the parking lot of a fast food joint. I know her, and she has a tendency to back away if she feels like she’s being cornered .

“Thank god!” she all but shouts, and I give her a look raising my eyebrows.

“Tell me what’s going on or I will leave the drive thru line.” Gen sits up in her seat, about to interject. “Don’t worry. I’m feeding you, regardless,” I say, pleased at the way she settles back in her seat, a satisfied smirk on her face.

Sloane’s features are so expressive that you can see the contemplation written across her face. She bites her lips, her eyes gazing longingly at the poster depicting a large burger and milkshake taped up across the side of the building.

“I came to see Mom,” she relents and I instantly feel confused. I squint at her, pulling up as the next car moves to the ordering window.

“Here? I didn’t think they were coming up until our season opener. And they didn’t say any?—”

“I said our mom , not Evie,” she says with the slightest hint of irritation.

I feel my fingers grip the steering wheel harder.

It feels like someone carved my stomach out, that familiar hollowness ringing inside me.

It has me remembering the first time Sloane and I were sent to separate group homes.

I think Sloane probably etched it out of her memory, just as she seems to have done with most things concerning our birth mother.

We were so young, yet these memories that seem to have evaporated for her still haunt me: the day Connie came to visit me after we’d been adopted, the pull-out at Uncle David’s, the bare walls of Social Services, the unknown numbers still calling me today.

The car is quiet and still, until we hear the drive thru speaker scratch.

An overly chipper voice scrapes out, “Welcome to Burger Farm, would you like to try our new value meal?” Sloane leans up from behind my seat, speaking loudly into the speaker.

“We’ll take two number sevens, one with a chocolate shake, one with strawberry, extra pickles on both. And also…?” She shifts her gaze to Gen, who orders so swiftly I know she’s trying to make sense of what she’s hearing. Sloane just smiles at her, like she didn’t say anything out of the norm.

There’s something about being a twin, about the propensity for one of us to always be fine.

I sit there in stunned silence and Sloane juts her chin out, as if to say keep moving.

I move up to the window, snapping out of my shock.

I grab our orders and we slide into a parking spot at the front of the building in silence.

Sloane begins plowing through her burger, completely unfazed.

“Who’s Evie?” Gen’s voice cuts into my thought spiral, bringing me back to reality.

I start to say, “Our mom,” just as Sloane rolls her eyes and says, “Our adoptive mother,” and Gen’s mouth loses its capacity to stay shut. The rumble of my laugh shocks even me and the mood shifts back to something less pensive.

“We’re adopted,” I clarify. “When we were like ten.”

“Wow,” she says, genuinely taken aback. “How did I not know that?”

“Grant loves to make people think he’s a Fielder,” Sloane drawls out, dipping a fry into her chocolate shake before dramatically popping it in her mouth. I sigh.

“Not trying to make people think anything. I just am, legally, a Fielder.”

“But you still keep in contact with your birth parents?” Gen props her elbows on the center dash so she can talk to us both at once.

“We don’t know our dad. It’s just our mom—Connie. And yes. Well, I do ,” Sloane tells Gen, the hopeful air with which she speaks about our birth mom making my stomach turn.

“How did you find her?” I ask her, but I already know the answer.

Sloane winces, knowing the conversation at hand is a serious one. I can tell she wants to bail. Find any excuse to make this conversation more trivial than it is.

“Technically she found me.” She casts her eyes down at her fries, chewing on the straw of her shake.

“So she wants something, then,” I say, disbelief and hatred coating my words.

“You don’t know that!” Sloane shouts, stunning me a bit, but I recover. When I check to see if Gen is okay, she’s looking back like she’s wondering the same about me.

Sloane’s always had a soft spot for Connie.

Every few years, up until we were about fourteen, she’d crawl out of the woodwork wanting to see us.

Usually, it resulted in Sloane “lending” her some of her trust fund.

She’s always run at our mother’s every whim, just like she is now.

I stopped agreeing to see Connie shortly after we got adopted, when I finally realized we were only useful to her when she needed something.

That my value to her wasn’t inherent and priceless.

That our new home was just a cash cow to her.

That leaving us wasn’t hard at all, because if it was, she wouldn’t keep doing it.

“I do.” My jaw is set and so is Sloane’s. Gen’s hand finds mine, lacing her fingers through mine, and her subtle squeeze has me taking a breath.

I don’t understand why Sloane can’t just let this go. Why she always allows this woman back into her life to hurt her.

“Well, I’m going to see her. ”

I shake my head in disbelief, but I know there’s no stopping her. Sloane is the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. If she wants to do something, she just will.

“It’s been years, Grant…” Her voice is almost a whisper and I glance over to her.

Tears start to wet her eyes, but she has this sense of hope lacing her features that instantly makes my heart drop.

Yes, I’m frustrated—I don’t need this negativity in my life especially with the draft this year, but I love my sister.

Even though I know it won't, I want this to work out for her.

“You can stay at my place,” I say, letting my voice sound warmer than it feels. I hate that Sloane always puts me in this situation but when she smiles brightly back, I can’t help but feel a little better.

“Oh, one more thing…” she adds. I roll my eyes and give her a look that I hope shows her that she’s on thin ice and she returns it with a mischievous but pleading look of her own. “Can you maybe not tell our parents that I’m here?”

I drop Sloane off first, craving just a minute of peace before becoming roommates with her again. The moment it’s just Gen and I, I hear her shift in her seat.

“So that’s Sloane.”

“That’s my twin,” I say, heading toward her apartment. “I’m sorry you had to sit through that.”

“I’m sorry I intruded,” she says with a nervous chuckle, and when I look over, she's looking down, fidgeting with her hands. I still them with my own, the cabin of my truck quiet enough that I can hear the steady in and out of her breath .

“Don’t be. I liked having you here.” My thumb brushes across her knuckles. “You kept me from losing it.”

Her eyes twinkle in the darkness and her lips curve into a smirk as I park in front of her building.

“So you won’t see her?” she quietly adds, like she’s unsure if she should pry.

“No. I won’t,” is all I tell her, but I know there’s more.

“If I could see my dad again, I would.” And it has my chest sinking, the sadness woven between the words. But it’s not the same.

“What happened?” I realize all I know is that he died, but nothing else.

“He was sick for a long time. Probably longer than I knew. So.” She sighs deeply before regarding me seriously. “I just don’t think you should take any time you have with her for granted.”

“Well, I’ve never been worth her time.” I choke on worth , suddenly feeling raw. Her hand covers mine before she lifts it and kisses it, feather light.

If I could hide I would, because her gaze feels so perceptible. I can feel her seeing me, the parts of me I barely show myself.

I force a smile on my face, sighing the emotion off and shrugging.

“I don’t miss her,” I say, but it feels like a lie. I shut off my car, rounding it to open her door.

She hops down, looking up with her hazel eyes playfully slanted at me, grateful to see she’s moving on from our conversation, too.

“I could’ve opened my own door.”

I scoff as I take her hand freely, wanting any excuse to be close to her. “Not when I’m around.”

The soft chirp of crickets and the dimly lit sky trick me into feeling like we’re entirely alone as I trail the path she leads to her door, and I don’t want to leave her.

“Thanks for tonight. I really don’t ever go out with actual friends,” she says.

“Friends?” I push back, stepping close to her.

“You know what I mean,” she says, the tilt of her head sending her curls cascading down her shoulder. I catch one between my fingers, pull it taught before caressing the side of her face, finding myself once again lost in the mosaic in her eyes.

“You kiss all of your friends?” I ask, my voice coming out lower than I intended.

“Just the one.” She peers up at me through her dark lashes, this knowing smirk plastered on her face.

Capturing her mouth with mine for the second time tonight feels like I’ve won something rare.

The chance to taste her, to experience her plush lips pressed against mine, to feel her sharp intake of breath as I kiss her harder, the harmonious tangling of our tongues sending something hot down my spine—I don’t deserve it.

Something this good can’t possibly be mine.

Like she hears the echoes of my internal dialogue, she breaks our kiss and smiles against me.

“When’s our date?” she whispers, still so close to me as her eyes look straight up to meet mine.

It feels part joke, part serious question, and my stomach pitches at the idea that she really only sees this— us —as a means to an end.

But this was always the plan—to promise this date, promise that we’ll sleep together, to drag it out until it no longer matters and she inevitably moves on. The feelings were not part of the plan.

Fuck .

“There’s a place I want to take you. I’m still working on it.” A lie, but I see the moment she buys it.

“Sounds fancy,” she says, the slightest grin on her face as she turns to open her door. “Goodnight, Fielder,” she throws over her shoulder, the door shutting softly.

“Night,” I utter to myself, the same dread I felt when I made this deal with her rolling back in.