Page 12

TOMMY

“Loading tree stumps into the bed of a truck is basically the same as training.” I lift a log and toss it onto the pile with the others, swiping a hand over my brow and grinning for my sour brother.

Because he’d rather be in the actual gym, drilling actual takedowns, and having an actual session to pen into his little diary.

Instead, I insist on finishing the job we started at Bitsy’s more than a week ago.

“It’s a whole-body workout. No one else heading to Vegas is gonna train like this, so stop bitching.

” I bend and grab another log, my whole body flexing and straining as I lift the hundred pounds to my chest, then toss it higher to get it atop the quickly mounting pile.

“We can still roll later. Then your life will be back on track, and everything will feel better again.”

“You think you’re a good guy.” He knows he has to help, so he drags his shirt up to clean his sweaty brow, then dropping it again, he selects a log and bends in front of it.

“All this ‘ I understand you’re overwhelmed ’ and ‘ I know you’re not happy right now ’ like you think you’re a sensitive motherfucker who can read my moods and cater to my needs.

But all you really are is a sarcastic prick who uses my discomforts against me. ”

“Not true.” I move to one end of a particularly large log and wait for him to toss his and come back to help me.

“I read your moods because you have a tell for when you’re frustrated.

And I make decisions I know will make your life more comfortable.

Most of the time .” I grunt and lift when he takes his side, and shuffling back, I grit my teeth and prepare for when we have to get under it and toss it into the back of the truck.

“I am sensitive to your needs, but I’m also aware that life really fuckin’ sucks, and if I die tomorrow, I need to know you’re equipped to deal with things on your own. ”

“You’re not dying tomorrow.” His chest grows with the extra blood circulation, muscles firing up, and adrenaline following right behind.

Together, we toss the log, and when it rolls back this way, he places his palm on the rough bark and steadies it before it falls.

“We came into this world together. I figure when shit starts going sideways, we can find a way to go out together.”

“A suicide pact?” Chuckling, I stretch my arms high into the sky, the morning sun beating down on my back and the filthy heat penetrating already despite it barely being seven a.m. “Not a giant, concerning red flag at all.”

“Not a suicide pact.” He rolls his eyes. “Just a well-timed car accident and the end of a bloodline, the way it should be. Did you see Bitsy in town yesterday? She’s looking frail as hell.”

“Yeah.” I drag my hat down to shield my eyes from the sun. “She’s wasting away, and it’s like no one even wants to talk about it. It’s pissing me off, ‘cos she’s too fucking stubborn to admit it’s happening, and Alana is just?—”

“Alana?” He stops on a dime and looks me up and down with shrewd eyes. “Alana? Really? She couldn’t stand her mother, and she busted out of this shithole forever ago. She doesn’t care what happens back here.”

“She deserves the truth, doesn’t she? That her mom is dying. Even if there’s bad blood and a lot of miles between them, it’s her right to know. Same as we should have been told if Dad?—”

“Fun fact.”

A weak-ass yelp bounces from the depths of my chest as I spin and crash into the corner of the tail of my truck, thick steel bruising my back. Though, that biting pain isn’t nearly as shocking to my nervous system as seeing that kid from class. His smudged glasses and messy hair.

“Um… Hello?”

“Lifting heavy things is dumb.” He wears dinosaur pjs and clutches a book to his chest, his eyes swinging from me to Chris. Back and forth, then back and forth again.

The kid has a brain in his head, and he saw us together at the gym, but I’m not sure he’s ever seen identical twins up close before, and more importantly, I’m not sure he can tell us apart right now.

He doesn’t like the handicap.

“If you create a pulley system, you’d make your work much easier. Better yet, use the stumps’ weight to your advantage. Which one of you is Tommy?”

Like an idiot, I raise my hand. “Me…?”

Satisfied, he turns a fraction of an inch and smiles. “I thought so. But it was kinda hard to tell.”

“Most people tell because one of us is always talking,” Chris grumbles. “It’s always him.”

“W-why are you at Bitsy’s at this hour?” I cast a panicked look back to the house, though all seems quiet over there. The curtains are closed. The doors, too. “Do you know her?”

He nods. Short, sharp, wordless. But fuck if his eyes don’t swing back to Chris’ in curiosity.

“Are you staying here? I don’t presume to know you.” I attempt a smile, but it falls flat when his eyes come back to mine. “But I guess it would surprise me to find out you regularly wander town in your pyjamas, that’s all. You don’t seem the type. So?—”

“I live here now.” He nibbles on his bottom lip and pushes his glasses up his nose. “With my grandma and my mom.”

“And your… and…” No. Fuck no. “Your mom?”

“Ohhhh…” Chris sets his hands on his hips and drops his head. “Oh dear.”

“Is Bitsy your grandma?”

He nods. He’s not as animated as other kids his age, and it seems he’s incapable of friendly chatter the way Molly so carelessly tosses words around. But he brings hazel eyes back to me, his stare like a fucking freight train to my stomach.

“A-and your mom? What’s her name?”

“Don’t make him say it,” Chris rumbles. “You look stupid now.”

“My mom is Alana Bette Page.”

“Motherf—” I cling to the fury bursting through my veins. To the nausea and rage and the million other entirely unpleasant emotions that singe my blood.

I turn from the kid and stalk an easy twenty feet past the truck, if only so I don’t pick the fucking thing up and throw it.

“Alana Page is his mother. Alana Page is your mother?” Maniacal laughter takes me over, the sound entirely unhinged and not at all funny, rolling along my tongue and out to poison the air we breathe.

“Alana Page is inside that house right now?” I shoot a pointed finger over his head, only to lower it again because if I don’t, I worry it’ll turn into a fucking fist. And that fist will hit things until I feel something, anything , other than the pain slicing at my heart. “She’s here?”

“You knew she had a kid.” Chris gives the boy his back and pins me with a look that would usually—in other circumstances—pull me up short.

But his warning barely penetrates my senses this time.

His approach hardly touches my consciousness, not even when he stops in front of me, so close that the tang of his sweat hits my lungs, and his formidable stance becomes an impenetrable wall.

“You knew. We already had this fight, so calm the hell down before you scare him.”

Nah, fuck that! I shove past my brother and stalk back toward the Page boy.

Good fucking God, he’s Alana’s kid, all grown up and staring into my eyes.

“You’re Franklin Page?” I lower into a crouch and sniff so fucking violently I turn it into a huff akin to a charging bull.

Which is legions better than the ache intent on turning me into a blubbering mess.

“You didn’t tell me your name in class.”

“I didn’t have to.” He broadens his chest and meets my eyes without a single shred of fear in his. He’s got that Page blood coursing in his veins. The bravery. The complete disregard for what’s good for him. “It’s polite to introduce myself. But it’s not the rules.”

“Completely agree.” Chris glances up at the blistering sun and smirks. “Besides, who gives a shit about polite? Not me.”

“You’re Tommy Watkins.” Franklin pushes his glasses along his nose, his little nostrils flaring with the movement. “You told me your name.”

“D-do you recognize it?” I fight every single fucking urge in my body to reach forward and take his glasses off. They slide down anyway, and they’re smudged as hell. They can’t hardly be helping.

It’s not my right. But fuck, I’d give anything to see his eyes without the barrier between us.

“Before you met me at the gym…” I lick my lips and search for her in his features. Her cheekbones. Her nose. Her lashes. Dammit, he’s got her dimples. “Before we trained together, did you know my name?”

Did she speak of me? Did she miss me? Did she wish she had my baby and not that asshole’s from New York?

“Franklin?” I rasp. “When I said my name was Tommy Watkins, did that spark recognition in your mind? ”

He firms his lips into neutral lines. But he shatters my heart and pieces it back together, all in the space of a single beat when he nods. “Yes.”

“Franky?” Her panicked voice, her shouted demand. It’s like angels on the wind and nails on a chalkboard, all at once. “Franky?”

“Save us all.” Chris presses his hands together in prayer. “Fuck me sideways and protect us all. It’s gonna be messy.”

“Franky!” Alana bounds out of the house and skids to a stop on the porch, her sinful legs on full view in tiny lacy shorts and a full two inches of her stomach exposed by a matching tank top of spaghetti straps and absolutely no shelf support.

She scans the yard with wild searching sweeps of her eyes, her chest pounding and her hands shaking because, oh god, oh no, the big city girl can’t find her kid out in Bumfuck Plainview .

But then she wrenches her head this way, and just like she could a decade ago, like doing so is a fucking gift she was born with, she destroys me in an instant.

Because for a mere second, when she locates her son alive and well and not being eaten by the killer cows, relief plays through her features. But that relief morphs into a primal kind of fear. And that look comes only when she looks past him and finds me.