JADE
My heart was still racing even after Eli had silently driven us back to his place.
I couldn’t seem to catch my breath as we walked inside his modern beach house. “Tell me what happened, Eli. Please.”
Maybe most of the people at the cocktail party hadn’t seen or felt the pain I could sense coming from Eli. I hurt because I knew that he hurt. I wasn’t sure why it was happening, but I could experience his emotional pain, and feel it like it was my own.
Maybe it was because I knew what it was like to be bonded to a twin, and I couldn’t even imagine living through the death of my sister.
I followed Eli as he shrugged out of his black tuxedo jacket, dropped it on the dining-room chair as he passed through, and proceeded to the living room to fix himself a drink.
He didn’t bother to even take ice from the bar. He just turned up a tumbler and poured a significant amount of Scotch into the glass.
I reached around him and got into the fridge to pour myself a glass of wine, then sat on the couch.
“I don’t talk about Austin,” he said with a growl. “Never.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief as he sat across from me in a chair. I kicked off the heels I was wearing and drew my legs up in front of me. “How can you not talk about it?” I asked, desperately hoping he’d tell me what happened.
It was pretty plain to me that Eli was haunted. I could see the lost look in his eyes even now.
He gulped down half of the glass of fine whisky before he answered roughly, “It happened four years ago. Joel was Austin’s best friend. He was a photographer, so he apparently thought I’d want the pictures. End of story.”
I could hear the warning in his voice, but I wasn’t going to stop pushing. I knew in my heart that he needed to talk about his twin. Everything made sense to me now. He still needed to accept his brother’s death, no matter how painful it might be to get there. “How did he die? He must have been young.”
“Young and stupid,” he replied sharply.
Eli looked up at me and continued, “Austin and I were close, just as tight as you and Brooke are now. But shit happened after we went away to different colleges.”
He gulped down the rest of his drink and went to get another. I took a sip of my wine and waited. I’d sit on the couch the whole night if that’s how long it took Eli to tell me everything.
He sat back down, his glass filled almost to the rim this time. “If you want the whole damn story, I’ll tell it,” he said huskily. “And then I never want to talk about it again.”
I nodded, but didn’t say a word.
“Austin was sixteen minutes older than I was, and he was the heir apparent to my father’s businesses and fortune. Not that I wouldn’t get my share, but it was always assumed he’d be living this life, not me. And I didn’t give a damn. I never wanted this. I never wanted the attention. My dream as a kid had always been space technology, and I happily went away to Caltech to get my PhD. I didn’t really want to run the family business, so I was glad that Austin was prepared to go off to Harvard and get his business degree.”
“Did you get your degree?” I asked breathlessly, stunned by the fact that Eli had wanted to be a real rocket scientist. And maybe I was a bit in awe since Caltech was so damn hard to get into.
He nodded right before he took another gulp of his drink and kept talking. “I’d just finished my PhD when Austin died.”
“I’m so sorry,” I answered in a rush. “What happened?”
“Austin and I were always different. He was always in the limelight because he was a lot more social than I was. There wasn’t anything Austin wouldn’t do to get attention. And I idolized him because I was the shier kid. I was the quiet reader, and Austin was always the sports fanatic, an interest that my dad shared. So the two of them spent a lot of time together watching games and participating in different sports events.”
“Did you feel left out?” I queried softly.
He shook his head. “No. My dad made sure we did other things together. I know that he loved me just as much as he loved Austin. But my brother was always the bright light, and I was pretty much the science geek.”
Eli was like me.
It was pretty hard to imagine him being socially awkward, but it was possible that he’d grown into the role that he occupied today.
“You’re not a geek anymore,” I reassured him.
He shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t care. I was more than happy to sit back and let Austin be the outgoing brother. I was content with my own fate. In fact, it was what I desperately wanted.”
“Were you close in college?” Obviously, they weren’t together, but that didn’t mean they didn’t talk. And since money wasn’t an issue, they could be together as much as they wanted when class was out.
“We were at first,” he answered. “But after the first year or two, Austin got pretty wild. He started to fail out of his classes, and every time he called me, he was wasted. He ran with a crazy, rich crowd at Harvard. Drinking, women, drugs, and partying became his major, and no matter how many times I talked to him about it, nothing changed. My parents would send him to rehab, he’d go back to campus, and sooner or later, he’d fall off the wagon again. After five years on the East Coast, my dad just brought him back to California. I think he figured he could straighten him out if he was at home.”
“But he didn’t get better?” I asked.
“Sometimes he did,” Eli said hoarsely. “Hell, there were times we thought he was going to straighten out. Maybe that was the hard part. We’d all start to feel optimistic, and then we’d get slammed over the head again when he disappeared. We knew he was on a binge. But he eventually came home again.”
Until one day he didn’t.
I already knew the story had an unhappy ending, but I waited to hear how his brother had died.
“I got to San Diego as much as I could,” Eli explained. “But it wasn’t enough. Near the end, Austin was doing some stupid shit. Almost like he had a death wish. It was never me who liked to go mountain climbing, to race cars, and to take up any extreme challenge that came my way. I had some hobbies, but after I’d worked that damn hard in college, I wanted to do something with my education.”
“So those things were never your idea?”
No wonder the Eli I knew and the one who did all things crazy had never seemed to jibe.
“Not my thing,” he admitted. “I guess I could always think of something better to do. My free time was at a premium. Not that Austin didn’t ask, but I was usually busy with my studies. Now I guess I do them to keep his memory alive.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “It isn’t your fault, Eli,” I said firmly.
When he’d said his visits home weren’t enough, I knew he was blaming himself.
“I was his twin brother, for fuck’s sake,” he cursed, and then downed a little more of his drink. “I should have been there more, even if I had to do all his crazy shit along with him. It’s fucked up that I only started seriously pursuing those things after he died.”
Actually, it wasn’t so crazy. Eli had been feeling the pain of being cut off from his twin, and he’d wanted to somehow find a way to keep Austin alive. He’d done that by twisting himself into his brother.
He nodded to the envelope in my hand as he explained, “That picture of the two of us at one of his auto races was the last time we were ever together. It was the summer after I’d finished my doctorate. He gave me hell all the time about being boring and not living my life. We’d started to spend more time together, and I was fucking determined to get his ass straightened out, even if I had to climb mountains and learn to hang glide.”
I felt my eyes well up with tears. I tried to keep them in check. I knew it wasn’t the end of the story. But it was killing me to think about Eli trying so hard to get close to his brother but being unable to save Austin.
I watched as Eli drained his glass and slammed it on the end table next to him. “My brother used to tell me to keep the crazy going. It was pretty much his motto in life. ‘Keep the crazy going, bro.’ It was the last thing he said to me the day before he died.”
My heart sank. Eli had obviously taken his brother’s words to heart, and he’d spun himself into a man he really wasn’t to keep the memory of his brother alive.
The tattooed arm.
The crazy stunts.
The extreme challenges.
Taking over his father’s company.
Everything Eli had done since he’d lost his identical twin revolved around making himself into two men. His brother, and himself.
In some ways, I got why he was doing it. Lord knew I would have done anything I could to deny the fact that I’d lost Brooke. But I couldn’t really imagine it because I hadn’t had to live through it like Eli had.
“You don’t have to be Austin,” I told him gently. “I think you can honor his memory without turning into a version of both of you.”
Eli glared at me. “He asked for it. He wanted me to keep the crazy going.”
If my sister had asked something specific of me, maybe I would have done the same thing. But I think it was time that Eli stopped trying to be anybody except himself.
The tears let loose, and I let them fall. My heart was aching, and it was the only way I could lessen the pain. “I don’t think he meant it that way. How did he die?”
“Austin loved the property that you wanted to buy from me. It was a perfect party spot. Nobody around. No cops to bust him for illegal drugs. No problems with any excessive noise from his crazy party friends, like Joel and the rest of the gang from college. Joel and a few other guys were from California, so the party didn’t end when my dad pulled Austin back home. Only the location had changed.”
My heart was in my throat, but I forced two words from my mouth. “What happened?”
“Another party out on the family property. To this day, we aren’t quite sure what happened. Joel and Austin’s other buddies had passed out. They found him at the bottom of a cliff the next morning. Austin fell and broke his neck.”
I stifled a sob by biting my lip.
Eli finally looked me directly in the eyes as he finished. “You want to know why I won’t sell you that useless piece of land? Maybe because it’s not useless to me. My brother died there, Jade. He spent his last moments teetering on a ledge, probably high and completely drunk, before he fell to his death. But I can’t let go of the property, because my brother spent his last moments on Earth there. I hate the damn place, but I can’t fucking let it go.”
The reason why he’d freaked out when he saw me on the edge of the rappelling cliff made sense to me now. He had been terrified, and it was because he’d already lost somebody he cared about to a reckless fall. And just like he’d done with his brother, he blamed himself for my accident.
I gave up trying to pretend that my heart wasn’t breaking for Eli. I stumbled to my feet, walked over to him, and dropped into his lap so I could wrap my arms around his shuddering body.
He lowered his head, and I put mine on top of his. I comforted the most ballsy man I knew while he wept.