Page 2 of The Casualty of Us (Philosophies of the Heart Duet #1)

Chapter One

“Oliver! Ollie!”

Please get up. Please, please, please—

“O!”

I blink rapidly at the loud intrusion, latching onto the only voice that seems to be able to pull me back from the memories, and find him waving a hand in front of my face.

My eyes meet a matching slate pair, and his lips hitch up into a crooked grin right before he flicks me on the nose. “Don’t get lost, baby sister.”

“Rude,” I grumble, reaching up to rub at my nose as he leans back against his seat with a laugh, settling into the other side of the town car and fully ready for our first day of college with his light jeans and dark blue v-neck highlighting all his best features.

The complete opposite to my ripped black skinny ones and baggy white sweater but that’s been par for the course for years now.

I guess we’re both still wearing boots, though, but that’s also not entirely unexpected since there’s always that thread of similarity.

Twins. My twin. Semi-identical at that.

One egg, two sperm, split into a boy and a girl. A rare phenomenon, apparently.

Finally hitting eighteen a few days ago.

“Just fighting the madness, Ophelia.” Ollie drags out my name with the joke. “I like to think of it as my literary duty.”

“Not funny.” I cross my arms, narrowing my eyes at him but unable to stop the way they flick up to the scar running along his hairline for a split second before teasing. “ Ollie .”

Purposefully emphasizing my nickname for him since he’s not only using my full name but getting his kicks in too.

“None of that.” He grimaces, reaching up to run a hand through his wavy dark brown hair. Another matching set between us. “We’re about to pull in. Imagine if someone heard you.”

I roll my eyes at him before darting them to the window to see the tall, ivy-covered brick wall that escaped my notice before. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll happen at some point in the next four years that we’re stuck here.”

“Blasphemy,” he groans. “And turn that frown upside down, O, this is going to be great.” I shoot him a dubious look that has him quickly rattling off facts.

“Come on, we’re at one of the most prestigious private colleges in the country, no parental supervision, a mediocre football team, and lots of books for you, I’m sure.

” He lifts his brows pointedly. “And the best part, great security and no kidnappers to snatch my precious baby sister away from me when we run out for some ice cream.”

My lips lift against my will at his ability to poke fun at the heaviness of what happened to us, and I can’t help but add, “Those last ones were probably the selling points for Mom and Dad, though.”

“Nah.” He grins. “They actually told me they were hoping this place would debaucherize you out of your post-kidnapping haze.”

“Oh, I bet so.” A giggle bubbles past my lips before I toss back. “And cut out the baby sister stuff, we were literally born at essentially the same time, ass—”

“Ten twenty-two and ten twenty-six are very different times—”

“Oh, please—”

“A whole four minutes making me older and wiser and superi—” His words cut out with a quick curse taking their place. “Shit.” He leans toward the window. “We’re here.”

I turn my head in time to catch sight of the marble slab set into the ground proudly proclaiming Pinecrest College before our car carries us through the gates, pausing briefly at the guardhouse that sits right inside for the two security officers to check us off the list and wave us on.

One of them lifts a radio to his mouth, probably calling ahead to let the school know who exactly it is that’s just arrived, and I turn to run my eyes over the tall pines enclosing us on either side before looking back to watch the ornate iron gates close soundlessly behind us.

Sealing our fate for the next four years in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, with the nearest airport being over an hour away and the only town within driving distance at least thirty minutes.

Outside of holidays and summers, that is.

It’s definitely not Brown and UCLA like we’d originally planned…but after the kidnapping, there was no one on this earth who could convince Ollie to leave me, and UCLA wasn’t about to just give his sister a spot when I hadn’t even applied.

No matter how badly they wanted him to play football for them.

Plus…they still hadn’t caught them, and while the FBI assured my parents that the kidnappers wouldn’t risk being caught by hitting the same victim twice, they were still nervous. We all were.

It limited the list of possible colleges that would take both of us and fit our list of requirements to exactly one.

I swallow nervously and look back to find Ollie watching me closely. “Well, that’s that then.”

“It’s not the same, O,” he starts gently, that identical gaze sparking with our shared pain. “I’ll never let anyone lock you up again.”

“I know that.” I wave him off with a forced grin. “Plus it was only three days, practically a spa weekend.”

And in part…it’s true.

Not the spa weekend part. I mean, it wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun time being tied up and thrown in a dark room for three days.

Being traumatized. Not knowing if I was going to make it another ten minutes, much less get back to the people I love.

The panicked vigilance from it all lingers in my veins to this day, but the actual captivity isn’t what I seem to hyperfixate on.

It’s the image of my twin bleeding on the ground that’s burned into my corneas.

My screams for him that loop in my ears at night and still drive me to crawl into his bed some nights, like we did for the first decade or so of our life, just to assure myself that he’s okay and that we both made it.

“I am sorry, though.” I cringe around the words that seem insufficient. “That we had to be shipped off here and you had to turn—”

“O.” He frowns. “Stop it.” Censure fills his eyes with him starting to huff at me now. “What happened wasn’t your fault, and honestly, between Mom and Dad”—he shakes his head—“I’m surprised we weren’t shipped off to boarding school for safekeeping or surrounded by bodyguards by ten.”

“They thought about it.” I shrug, remembering some argument I overheard from childhood. “But they loved us too much to ship us off.” I give him a small smile while finishing off, “Until it was unavoidable, at least.”

A slow grin spreads across his face. “Loved me too much, you mean.”

“Right,” I scoff, ruminating in my own head over whether the kidnapping would have even happened if my parents had given way to certain precautions earlier in our lives.

Elite schools.

A security team for the family when we’re home.

Which, for the only children to the sole heiress of one of the world’s largest cosmetic companies and the District of Columbia’s Attorney General, seem like reasonable security measures.

But our parents tried to give us the most normal life they could for as long as they could.

It was important to them. That we grow up just like everyone else.

And while I’m grateful for it and know it was a decision born of love…

I still ended up bound in a locked room for three days and jumping at every noise.

Panicking over whether Ollie was alive or not.

The car comes to a slow stop in front of a red, two-story brick building with the words “ Altiora Petamus ” etched over the entrance and more ivy creeping up to wrap around the dark wood doors.

Seek higher things, the motto of Pinecrest College, with all its old-world charm, was dropped by a group of rich old men in the middle of Virginia about a hundred or so some odd years ago.

If the information they sent in the welcome packet is to be believed, I guess, and considering they didn’t let girls into the school until the past few decades, all that spouted history seems highly dubious to me at best.

Can’t argue with the fact the building is pretty, though.

It runs long before us with marble steps leading up to the doors and crown moldings flaring out around the shuttered windows.

A small stone courtyard sits directly in front of the entrance with a couple of benches on either side of it, and a pathway continues to wrap around both sides of the building.

The tall forest surrounding the three hundred-acre woodland campus shields everyone here from prying eyes and is one of the selling points despite its remote location.

One of the front doors opens, and a middle-aged woman with black, coiffed hair steps out dressed in an emerald blouse and black pencil skirt, smiling broadly at our car and giving us a little wave as she takes the first step down the stairs.

“Do you remember her at all?”

Ollie’s question pulls my gaze to where he’s staring out the window with his face scrunched up in concentration.

“Aunt Sutton?” The familial moniker feels foreign on my tongue, and I look back to see the woman who is one of my mother’s oldest friends waiting at the bottom of the stairs for us now.

Her hands are clasped delicately in front of her skirt and she stands with a small smile while maintaining distance.

A move that I appreciate, as this past summer has left me with the sense of constantly being rushed from one thing to the next while trying to avoid anyone with a camera.

“Not really.” I shrug, searching my memories. “I remember her being around more when we were younger, before she took the dean position here.”

“Same,” he mutters, reaching over to snag his leather backpack from where it sits on the seat beside him.

“She was always nice, though,” I add, grabbing mine from where it’s resting next to my feet with a grin. “Gave great Christmas presents, remember?”

His eyes meet mine, lighting up at the memory. “The drums.”

“The drums,” I echo with a soft laugh, vaguely remembering the grimacing that took place after our “aunt” had given us each a drum set for our eighth birthday. “Think we might’ve missed our calling there.”