Page 58 of Van Cort

RIVER

Ineed to leave.

I need to leave and get some space from Everett. From West!

West!

I close my eyes and try to block everything out.

“I need to go,” my words are a whisper in the room. “I need to go!” I shout it this time.

“No.” Everett stands opposite, his hands in his pockets like he can say and do anything he likes, and the world will obey. The knight I once saw, the businessman I questioned about dating, the lover I knew had secrets. And now, the brother. The twin.

He shakes his head at me.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not leaving.”

“Well, fuck you. Fuck you both.” My hand reaches for the pendant at my throat, and I yank my arm down, breaking the chain, and launch it at him.

He’s ruined everything. Poisoned everything.

I turn, marching for the exit, racing, as if that’s the only way I can escape this nightmare.

“Wait,” West grabs my wrist and spins me as I reach the door, backing me up against it so I’m blocking my own escape. His body pins me to the wood, blanketing me, smothering me. Then his hands are on me, his fingers angling my chin, and his lips coaxing mine.

It’s familiar – every move of his hand, the look in his eyes, and the feel of his lips on mine.

Not angry, but soft, alluring. Demanding.

“You belong here, Andie.” He kisses me again, stealing feelings from my traitorous lips that recognise him despite me never knowing his name.

“You belong with us.” My eyes flash to his, and I search for the man who I’ve shared time with. Feelings, stories, my body…

“I don’t—”

“Shh.” He seals my lips with his finger, this time. “You’re angry, we know that, but you don’t get to run away from this. If you need space, there’s plenty of it right here.”

“You can’t expect me to stay in here with you two prowling around.”

“We don’t prowl. Unless you ask nicely.” His lips tick up into a smirk that I would find sexy as hell if I weren’t on the verge of falling to pieces.

“West. I’m serious. Don’t you understand what you two have done?”

“We do.” Everett’s voice travels to us, and West takes a step back, giving me a fraction of breathing room. “And in return, you need to face this. Take all the time you need, but you don’t leave us. Not until this is resolved.”

“Resolved?” I question. “Actually, no. I don’t want to know.”

My eyes dart around the entrance hall and see the discarded pizza boxes Everett had ordered before the proposal.

I grab them both. “Point me in the direction of a room that neither of you will bother me in.” My spine straightens, holding on to the anger, and refusing to dissolve into the emotional mess I know is just under the surface.

Everett nods, and West leads me away from the door and to another area of the apartment. The décor is the same – all imposing lines and dark tones – and he opens a door to an ample-sized bedroom, neat, orderly. Without another word, he shuts me in.

Exhaustion cloaks me as I sit on the edge of the bed, and the rush of tears, hot and painful, can’t be stopped. With my hand over my mouth so as not to make a sound, I let myself have a moment. Let the emotion well up, and fade as the tears fall and my body shakes.

***

The bed is horribly comfortable, and several hours later – I think – I debate staying in here and hiding away for good. I can ignore the two life-sized and very real men somewhere outside the door then.

Two.

I’d fallen asleep or at least caught moments of sleep. Now the cold pizza looks pretty appealing. With that, and the ensuite bathroom, I won’t have to come out for a week, maybe longer. How long can you survive on water and cold pizza alone?

But my denial won’t help me.

Mustering my strength, I head to the door and creep out.

The apartment is eerily quiet, the type of quiet that only exists in the time between nighttime and dawn. I peer down the hall and see nobody – neither Everett nor West, waiting to corner me, so I venture out.

Crossing the main room, I take steady steps, the darkness making it hard to navigate until I come to the front door. My hand reaches out, the urge to run chasing me, until I press the handle and… nothing. Locked.

So I’m a prisoner here.

Turning around, I take a steadying breath and go back through the formal lounge area until I see a set of double doors. Pushing them aside, I’m hit with a cool breeze as I step out into the night.

The enormity of the rooftop garden, and not just the terrace I’ve been on before, would undoubtedly catch my breath if I’d found this at any other time. Now, it just serves as another secret I didn’t know about.

Shadows and shapes of plants pull me closer, and I walk along the sleek pathway until I find the glass boundary, with nothing else beyond but the city of Seattle.

“It’s a beautiful night.”

His voice, in the dark, pulls my attention, and I see the murky shape… him, approaching from the gloom of the night.

“That’s a matter of perspective,” I answer, my heart suddenly racing with questions. The question at the top being, which twin is this?

“He blindsided you in the vault. I’m sorry he did that.”

“West?”

He continues to approach and finally emerges into the light I’m in to lean on the glass railing to my side. Tilting his head, he smiles. And just like earlier, it’s familiar in a way that calls to a part of me. I do know this man. Even if my head is still furious at the level of deception.

I stare out at the night and think over the last few months. My mind runs over the conversations, replaying the answers, the times I was utterly exasperated with frustration at how he could switch on me, one minute being one way, the next… and now, it makes sense.

In a horrific way.

In a gut-wrenching betrayal. But it makes sense.

“You know, there were so many things that didn’t quite add up.

More, recently, but I never guessed it was because of this.

” I scoff. “I put it down to his need for control and everything on his terms. And seeing as we started off as a one-night stand, I could see it, the different sides to him, the not wanting to open up. I loved the fact that he could surprise me and keep me guessing. But it wasn’t him, was it? It was only half.”

“I can only comment on what time we’ve spent together.”

I roll my eyes at that, the anger now fizzing back to life.

“Everett didn’t spend the night with me, did he? That was…”

“Me,” he finishes. “That was me.” There’s an edge of vulnerability, maybe, in his words, like he needs me to know it.

I look at him, trying to see past the manipulation, he looks just like…

Everett, the dull light isn’t helping me find any distinguishing features.

And I scold myself for being so stupid, so trusting, because who in their right mind would assume all of the small, tiny inconsistencies would add up to this?

“Hey, stop it. Whatever is running through your mind, stop picking it apart. It’s not going to help.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. You can’t find a logical or reasonable answer to this because he, we, aren’t reasonable or logical in this.”

“You said you both want to marry me. And there’s a huge part of me that isn’t sure if I know you.”

“You do.”

“I didn’t even know you were called West until earlier tonight, and you want me to marry you?” My voice loses all sense of early morning quiet and screeches my response.

“You know me. Just close your eyes. Take a deep breath.”

My mind rails against the command, but I’m too tired, too emotional to fight. And as I let my eyes close, his hand brushes with mine on the rail, and he slowly lifts it until he’s running it through my hair. I don’t pull away.

“You know us, Andie.”

I force myself to keep my anger in check as I think back over the journey to here, and what I know about Everett.

The real Everett. The dates, the trips, the conversations that didn’t quite add up.

All of it is dissected and torn apart to find the two people who played me.

And as I re-look at everything through a new lens, I can see the differences, if not in looks, then in personality. In what they shared.

“He was going to sleep with me and never see me again. That was his plan until you showed up, right? That was the first time. I was so stunned, but I didn’t know him well enough to question it, past the explanation you gave me.”

“Do you mean the trip out for coffee?”

“Don’t,” I plead. “Just be straight with me.”

“You need to work this out for yourself, Andie. You know us. I’m not going to push that. Or you’ll never accept what’s between us.”

“And what if I—” don’t. I finish the sentence in my head, swallowing back the anger that’s so easily stirred.

He still doesn’t push.

If West took me for that trip to see the Sound and have coffee, if he showed me the sunset and took me for dinner, stayed with me, then is he also the one who took me to the island while in Vancouver?

I turn to study his face, his green eyes shadowed with night and secrets. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t rush me. And I gather the scraps of memories that I believe are him, grabbing them and clenching them tightly as if they are a tether to keep me grounded.

He did all of those things, gave that part of himself to me, because I needed it – I needed him. It was a part that Everett didn’t have, and I wonder if that’s because of his father and what he did, but then, if that’s how Everett is, why isn’t West?

In the cold, dimly lit darkness of pre-dawn, I can see that Everett wouldn’t be enough for me, just like his proposal wasn’t enough.

It was everything to him, but he didn’t show that.

West’s words from earlier come back to me about if I knew it was an important place for Everett, and I didn’t.

He’d forgotten about my claustrophobia because he wasn’t with me when my panic happened in that bathroom. It was West.

Is it more or less terrifying realising that the man you thought you’d fallen for isn’t just one man, but two? Because they are each a part of who I was in love with.

“You brought me flowers. You took me to the casino. You showed me the island.”

“And I’d do it a hundred times over if it means you can see what we feel for you.”

“How did it start? Did you two decide to play me? Because I’m pretty sure everything with Everett at the start was just him being an asshole and trying to sleep with me before never speaking to me again. Where does this fit into everything?”

It’s his turn to take a deep breath.

“It wasn’t my intention to fall for you. My brother and I haven’t seen each other in years, that was all true, but as I got to know you, realised that you didn’t know, suddenly I was in too deep and didn’t want to let you go.”

“So, this all started as a game?” The word twists in my mouth.

“Andie—” his voice cracks on my name, and I know I don’t want to hear anything more.

“No. Whatever you say, it’s just going to make me mad, and right now I’m trying to see past that.” If I can.

He nods. And I’m left with the lights of the city before me.

“What does being Mrs Van Cort mean to you? I’ve heard your brother’s version, but what does marrying you mean?”

“I hate to think what Rhett said to that. I’m sure, some kind of trophy on his arm. Maybe something about honour and respect.”

“Not far off, and it’s not what I wanted to hear. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Neither of you are whole, which is why—”

“You love both of us.”

“Maybe, but I still want an answer.”