10 p.m., 26 Hours…
Gwen
According to August, the Blue-Eyed Raven was a Haight-Ashbury fixture, the sprawling bar once home to performing greats like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. In its heyday, smoke had curled through the three-hundred-seat supper club, guitar licks rippling in the hazy air, weed and booze plentiful. Women had danced with women. Couples had swapped spouses.
Another of Mary Hamilton’s shocking hangouts.
“Is it still popular?” I asked as I parked near the venue.
“Yes.”
“Have you played there?”
“No.”
“Do you want to play there?”
No answer.
I turned off the ignition but didn’t release the key. We’d taken my car, and August had kept his hand at the back of my neck during the drive, his thumb rubbing mindless circles. As nice as the contact had been, the mindless part had been the antithesis of nice. The closer we’d gotten to the club, the quieter he’d become. The louder I wanted to scream.
I opted for confrontation. “What happened to your let’s savor our seconds pact? Because the imposter in this car is freaking me out.”
This entire situation was a giant pile of freak out. I’d shut down on him in my apartment, kept yo-yoing between the consuming desire to touch him and continuing my Popsicle routine, freezing him out. I wanted to thaw, but defrosting could end with me as a gooey, blubbery mess.
August released my neck and massaged his chest like it pained him. Streetlamps and passing cars cast buttery slices of light through the darkness. One spilled through the windshield, emphasizing the broody angles of his face. Without a word to me, he undid his seat belt, pushed open his door, and slammed it shut behind him. My seat vibrated. I vibrated. I wanted to be vibrating with August’s hard length thrusting inside me, not because I was a defrosting Popsicle.
My mind kept replaying how he’d felt, how my body still sizzled and swelled with want. On the drive here, I’d almost slipped my hand between his thighs, over his thick denim, to cop a feel of his girth. Fear had kept me fisting the steering wheel.
I sat immobile now, the car key clutched in my hand. I debated turning the ignition and tearing off as he rounded toward my side. I could leave right now, forget this journal and August and everything that had the power to break me, but I played my Popsicle game.
He opened my door and poked his head inside. “Come out here. We need to talk.”
His no-nonsense tone brooked zero argument. The dominance of it was kind of sexy, but mostly scary. We need to talk only ever meant heavy subjects, and I had all the heavy I could handle.
Instead of complying, I said, “Beetlejuice.”
August snort-laughed. The sound calmed a fraction of my panic.
Beetlejuice had been our safe word. When he’d pinch my underarm skin to distract me from his Monopoly cheating? Beetlejuice. When I’d twist his nipple until he’d give me the remote control? Beetlejuice.
Blurting the word now was easier than facing his ominous we need to talk.
He straightened slightly, taking his face out of view. He leaned his forearm on the car roof. “You don’t need a safe word for this conversation.”
“Says you.” But I could hear the smirk in his voice. I also liked the view.
The way we were situated—his crotch at face level, me strapped into my seat—I could undo his belt buckle, slip his zipper down, and take his length into my mouth. I salivated.
He backed away and crooked his finger, beckoning me. “Stop looking like you want to lick me, Possum. We need to talk. It won’t be a nice talk, but we can’t go into that club before it happens.”
“That’s quite the sales pitch.” It was downright alarming. Unfortunately, I saw no other options.
I worked methodically, going through the steps of shoving the journal in my purse, leaving my car, and locking up extra slowly. Delay, delay, delay. A hot dog vendor was down the block, thick scents of charred meat teasing my nose. My belly rumbled. Our cheese and fruit earlier had only been a snack. I was hungry for food. I was hungry for August. I was not hungry to learn about the thing that wasn’t nice to discuss.
I moved to the sidewalk and anchored myself against the car. “Go ahead. Rip off the Band-Aid.”
His right hand was in his pocket. The fabric bulged rhythmically. He probably had a guitar pick in there. Whenever August was nervous or uneasy, he’d spin his pick restlessly. Like now. He gnawed on his bottom lip. “Finch manages the Blue-Eyed Raven.”
I pitched forward slightly. “Excuse me?”
“Exactly.”
Well, wasn’t that just my luck? The day I made love with the brother I’d always wanted, I had to stand in a building with him and the one I should never have fucked. Good times, Gwen Hamilton. “How is that even possible?”
“How is it possible I show up at your door the same day as your mother’s lost luggage?”
A slew of impossible impossibilities. I glanced toward the club, then to August, then at the inky sky. Nerves twisted my insides. I replayed Rachel’s comment earlier, how she’d thought her birthday wish had been touched with magic and that believing in the unbelievable had given her the push she’d needed to fulfill her resolution. My self-imposed sink-or-swim deadline was in twenty-six hours, and fate had been dumping a pile of life preservers on my head.
August was entwined in this search, for some reason. Now his brother was, too. Trying to figure out why would drain energy and time I didn’t have. The bigger issue was how seeing Finch would affect August now. The confrontation could shake the rickety suspension bridge we were navigating.
Maybe it already had.
Questions built in my throat until it burned. “Do you regret sleeping with me?”
He was on me in a heartbeat, his hands cradling my face. “No. Not for a second. Why would you think that?”
Relief flooded me, but barbs still chafed my windpipe. I hooked my thumbs through his belt loops. “The drive here—you were so…distracted? I mean, I get that seeing Finch now isn’t ideal, but he’s your brother. We can’t avoid him forever.” Which implied August and I had forever. Seconds, I reminded myself. This was nothing more than seconds and right now and enjoying the moment. I had a life here. A job. He was leaving. The barbs dug deeper.
He loosened his hold on me, enough that the scratch of his calluses became more pronounced. “The only regret I’ll ever have with you, Gwen, is taking too long to pull my head out of my ass to understand we’re bigger than what went down between us. This thing with Finch—my moodiness on our way here—is partly because of that, but there’s more to it. Stuff I didn’t want to discuss tonight.”
“What stuff?”
Spine rigid, his attention drifted over my head, to the club beyond. “You sure you want to hear this now?”
“We’re about to see Finch, so I think the answer to that is obvious.”
The muscles in his jaw shifted, working mercilessly. I kissed the clenched knot and he softened slightly. “I know you think Finch and I always got along, but things got tense between us during high school.” He tilted his head side-to-side, brushing his cheek against my lips. “It’s great having an identical twin, growing up with someone who’s literally a part of you. I wouldn’t trade our childhood for anything. But looking the same comes with expectations of acting the same, performing the same. It frustrated the hell out of Finch.”
He leaned back slightly, his eyes shifting from distracted to piercing. Like he’d forgotten I was in front of him. “You are so goddamn beautiful.”
My heart swelled three sizes. “Are you stalling?”
He stared at me until my pulse pounded in my ears. “I might need you to pinch me sporadically, because I keep thinking I’m dreaming. The fact that I can touch you, kiss you”—he planted a hard one on my lips—“floors me. So if I stop mid-sentence from time to time to tell you how gorgeous you are, that your green eyes remind me of the first breath of spring, you’ll have to deal with it.”
I pinched his upper arm, as requested. To lighten the mood. To shrink my heart back to its proper size. Any bigger and the effects would be irreversible. “I see where you get your lyrics from.”
“Many from you, Possum.”
Oh, dear Lord. “Let’s not discuss ‘Girl with the Black Heart.’”
He shrugged a shoulder, no apology in his open gaze. I didn’t want an apology. I’d deserved every biting word. “Back to the Finch issue,” I said, nudging August’s hip with mine.
He turned and planted his sexy behind against my car. I wanted to worship his ass. Bite the firm globes. Suck on the length of him until he shuddered and spilled into my mouth. God, even here, minutes from facing Finch and searching for my father, I could do little more than fantasize about August.
He drew me into his chest. “Finch started acting out end of our junior year. He was pissed I was chosen to captain our soccer team. He started smoking weed regularly. His grades dropped, like really dropped, and every time our folks celebrated something I did, he’d withdraw more. Not with his friends. He’d put on his Finch smile and pretend all was roses, but at home he’d barely look at me. It got worse the start of our senior year. You and I had stopped speaking, but I knew he still spent time with you, so I…” His arm tightened around my shoulder. “I asked him for a favor.”
“Am I going to like this favor?”
“Unlikely.”
Not that it mattered. He’d forgiven my unforgivable WTF. There were no grudges left to hold, not now, all these years later. I squeezed his waist, telling him I’d support him. I was here for him, the way I wished I’d been for the past nine years.
He exhaled a harsh breath. “I asked him to watch out for you. Spend time with you. Being cut off from you messed me up, but I was worried. Figured something else was going on. I had to make sure you were okay.”
The weight of his arm slung over my shoulder suddenly turned crushing, and I fought the urge to shrug him off. It took every ounce of my control not to whirl on August and tell him I hadn’t been his charity case. I hadn’t been a helpless pet. As sweet as his gestures often had been, that was how I’d sometimes felt. That I’d been a problem for him to solve. A project he needed to ace, like everything else in his life.
Even now, I felt like I was seventeen again, shrinking smaller as Kayla Morgan told me August had pitied me. That I dragged him down. Long buried insecurities clawed to the surface, and I nearly screamed.
I wasn’t that girl anymore. I jumped out of airplanes, for Christ’s sake.
I was no longer a teenager who believed she was unlovable because her mother had sneered at her, called her unwanted. Stupid. I didn’t walk through life trying to make as little noise as possible, avoiding friendships, commitments, believing myself unworthy. Yet here I was, anxiety-riddled self-doubt resurfacing.
I needed to get a grip.
I slowed my overactive lungs. I replayed his explanation, how he’d been worried about me back then. There had been no hidden agenda. He may have approached our relationship from a hero perspective, wanting to be the savior, but based on all we’d admitted to each other today, asking Finch to keep an eye on me had been out of desperation, not pity.
All because I’d cut him from my life.
I nestled deeper into August’s side instead of pulling away. I was that woman now. A nestler, not a runner. “Did Finch show interest in me back then? Is that why he agreed?”
“He never said, but he knew exactly how I felt about you.”
“Which made what we did even worse,” I mumbled, still sick about it all.
“It did make it worse, but it wasn’t the only reason.” He looped a lock of my hair around his finger and twirled it. A guitar pick. My hair. Always busying his fingers. “The night I asked Finch to look out for you, he agreed…but asked for a favor in return.” He twirled my hair faster. “He’d tanked his SATs and hadn’t told me or our parents. I didn’t know how bad his grades had gotten, either. He had one more chance to take the test in December of our senior year, and he needed that score.”
“What did that have to do with you?”
“He asked me to take the test for him.”
Oh.
Fuck.
Identical twins.
“And you did it?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice. I’d once asked August to help me buy a fake ID. Everyone did it. No biggie. He’d laced into me, saying it was stupid, not worth getting caught. He never colored outside the lines.
“And I did it.” He quit fiddling with my hair. His body became a block of cement. “I wore his preppy clothes and his glasses, and no one was the wiser. I nearly puked before the test. I did puke after. Barely slept for the next few months, sure someone would find out and I’d be expelled, lose my chance at my scholarship. Be kicked off the soccer team. I was a wreck.”
Shame winded me. “So you did this insane, massive favor for Finch.” For me, really. So his brother would watch out for me. “And Finch promised to be my shadow, knowing how you felt about me. Then…that night happened?”
“That about sums it up.”
If he weren’t holding me up, I’d sink to my haunches and bury my face in my hands. August’s requested favor explained Finch’s increased attentiveness toward the end of high school, into college. Finch would drag me out for coffee, force me to meet him at the library for study sessions. But his words to me that fateful night—I’ve wanted you so long—hadn’t been the words of a brother doing a brother a favor. Especially considering what August had done for him.
“I didn’t think I could feel worse about what went down, but this is definitely worse.” Profoundly worse. Shove me in a cell and toss away the key worse.
August spun me quickly, pulled me tight against his chest. “I didn’t tell you to guilt you, but Finch and I never recovered from that night. We speak as needed, but we’re only civil. Not because of what you did. Because my brother betrayed me. I put my future on the line for him, and he fucked me over.”
It all made sense now, how furious August had been that night. The vicious punch to Finch’s face. “I’m so sorry.”
“No.” His tone turned vehement. “Don’t apologize. I’m done playing the victim. There’s no changing the past, and I don’t want you spending these next couple days feeling badly. I forgave you. Not just with words. There’s no anger left. We’re too important. Our time together is too important.”
Our seconds. This finite slice of time. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Oh, honey. I’ll take care of you. Of us. Don’t worry. I’ll make this work.” He kissed me, sweet and slow.
Kissing was one solution. A mighty fine one. The rest was August taking charge, always trying to solve my problems. He didn’t know my life here, what I could and couldn’t do. He hadn’t even asked what I wanted to do. But his lips were addictive, coaxing mine into action. I kissed him back harder, the two of us moving against each other with such devastating need. His lips were soft yet firm. His body was all firm.
“I plan to fuck you blind tonight,” he said against my lips. “Taste every inch of you. Have you come on my tongue and fingers. You don’t even know.”
My body sure as hell knew. “I’m so wet. You make me so wet.”
“Jesus, Gwen.” His mouth was on my neck, licking and sucking. “I’ll never get enough of you.”
Not in two days he wouldn’t. But I might lose my heart.
That sobering notion had me abruptly ending our PDA. I heard a whistle, but wasn’t sure it was directed at us, not that I cared. What I did care about was not falling to pieces over this man, who had to get on an airplane in one and a half days.
I needed to feel him inside me again. I wouldn’t deny myself that. But my feelings for him were already ten-foot swells, ready to drag me under. I had to keep an emotional distance, not do stupid things like wish I wasn’t on the pill.
Following the journal’s clues was the perfect distraction. The breather I needed. Which meant facing Finch. “You still okay to come in the club with me?”
“I’m not leaving your side until I get on that plane.”
He wasn’t making my emotional armor easy to wear. “Even when I have to pee?”
“You’ve peed next to me before.”
I had. Our tenth-grade graduation had been a raucous affair. Someone had organized a field party, and I’d drunk my weight in peach schnapps. August had stood sentry while I’d squatted in the grass. He’d later held my hair back while I’d puked. The best friend a girl could have.
“Okay,” I said, tugging him toward the club.
He tugged me back. His hooded eyes drank me in, dropping to my neck. His pupils flared. “I gave you a hickey.”
I touched my feverish skin and laughed. “Are we sixteen?”
“It means you’re mine,” he replied, his voice thick.
My voice got stuck. I couldn’t be his. Not with his itinerary. Being his meant losing myself, and the last time that happened, after my WTF, I’d tripped so far down a rabbit hole, I’d gotten lost in the bramble. “When we’re inside,” I said, deflecting, “holler if you need to leave.”
He considered me a moment, stared so intently I looked away. “I’ll use our safe word,” he said.
Nothing about my feelings for him felt safe.
August
I led the way to the club, still high from kissing Gwen. From touching Gwen. From marking Gwen’s skin. Unfortunately, the way she’d disconnected her lips from mine and her subject change just now hinted at her worry. She was holding herself back, keeping a piece of her heart protected. I’d quit trying to guard mine. She was everything to me, the center of my best childhood memories, the reason I wrote music. She had all of me, and I’d have all of her before my plane took off. As long as this search for her father didn’t backfire.
And Finch didn’t ruin things again.
A bouncer was at the club door. He had a neck thicker than a tree trunk, bald head, tattooed neck. His black suit was definitely purchased at a big and tall shop. He saluted me, as though we knew each other. “You shaved, Mr. Cruz.”
I kept Gwen’s hand firmly in mine and offered him a tight smile. “Wrong Mr. Cruz. I came to see my brother.” No point avoiding that particular elephant.
He grinned, displaying two gold teeth. “Oh…right. Sure. Go on in. Hope to catch you on stage later.”
I’d wanted to play the Blue-Eyed Raven stage for years. It drew mid-sized bands these days, and bigger acts wanting an intimate setting. The sound system was killer, the audience filled with music devotees. Finch had managed the venue the past five years, bringing it back to life after it had dropped off the radar. He’d never asked me to play. I’d never offered. Our ongoing stalemate.
I led Gwen to the semi-circular bar cradling the patron-filled tables, most enjoying some sort of dessert. Between sets, likely.
She pressed closer to my side. “It’s sexy in here.”
“You’re sexy.”
Even in the sultry lighting, her eyes sparkled. “Trouble,” she mumbled.
She scanned the instrument-filled stage—piano, bass, a couple horns, and one hot-as-hell Fender. The walls and ceilings had been remodeled, the moldings giving the room an art deco vibe. Blues tunes drifted from speakers. Servers wore twenties-inspired dresses and suits. Yeah, I’d always wanted to play this club, and it would probably never happen.
Never loosening my hold on Gwen’s hand, I nodded to the bartender. “Is Finch in?”
The woman did a double-take. “You’re August Cruz.”
“I am.” Although people like that ballerina occasionally recognized me, I mostly flew under the radar when outside Europe. Not where my brother worked.
She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head. The feather in her bobbed hair caught the light. “I’d always hoped you’d play here. I love ‘Girl with a Black Heart.’”
From my angle, I could see Gwen roll her eyes, and I had to muffle my laugh. What had happened between us wasn’t amusing. Writing that song hadn’t been, either. But man, if we couldn’t laugh about it now, find some humor in the darkness, we’d never make it. “It’s one of my favorites,” I said, dragging Gwen closer. “I used to act it out on a voodoo doll.”
“Hardy-har-har.” This from a glowering Gwen.
The waitress detailed a bad breakup of hers, a painful time the song had paralleled. I winked at Gwen, who mouthed, Not funny. But it kind of was.
“Shoot. Sorry.” The waitress waved a frazzled hand. “I’ve monopolized you. I’ll call up to Finch, tell him you’re here.”
Gwen watched the servers bussing tables, the animated patrons chatting. I watched Gwen. She’d always had this effortless beauty about her, but it was amplified now. Her shorter hair was wavy and loose, like she’d been at the beach, her casual bangs falling longer at the sides, framing her stunning face. Looking at her hurt in a visceral way. Tore at pieces of me. Except the hickey. That mark made me smile.
Then I spotted Finch, and my smile nose-dived.