I blinked trying to clear the tears from my eyes. They slid down my cheeks in hot streams as I threw myself into Jake’s arms. He wrapped himself around me, pulling me close. He smelled like Jake, my Jakey. The only family I had.

I pulled back for a second just to look at his face before burying my ear into his chest again as I squeezed him tight.

“Let’s go inside, Iz,” he said, gently walking me backward into my home and then closing the door behind him.

I leaned away from him. “You bastard, don’t toy with my emotions like that.” I punched him in the shoulder so he’d remember next time.

He let me go, and I reluctantly let him go too. “What are you doing here?”

Instead of crowding around the door, I led him into the kitchen and grabbed another coffee mug from the cabinet. He watched me, smiling. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head at the same time. “It’s just been a while since I’ve seen you. I missed you, Little Sis.”

I poured coffee in both mugs and then handed him the other. He never took cream or sugar, drinking it black like I did sometimes.

After he took a couple tentative sips, he backtracked to sit on the stool off my small kitchen bar. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you I was coming. You know they don’t let us talk about when we are traveling or where.”

“What if I was busy, or if you came on opening night?”

He smiled, and I wanted to touch the deep dimple in his cheeks. “Not a chance. I know you better than anyone, and I know your schedule. Opening night is a couple weeks away still. Besides, I’m not here for long. Only today. Then I have to get back to work.”

“Only today? The day’s almost gone. Why didn’t you come by this morning?”

He bit his lip, and I knew something was wrong. “What is it, Jake?”

When he sat the mug down and rubbed his hands across the tops of his thighs, and I knew something was really wrong. “Jake, you’re starting to scare me.”

“Maybe you should put that coffee down,” he said before he swiveled on the stool and gestured for me to take the other one.

Once I’d settled, I eyed him warily. He pushed my bag and things toward the other end of the counter, out of reach. “Jake, what did you do?”

He released a long heavy sigh and shifted toward me so our knees lined up. He was the same height as me so I could meet his eyes square on. They looked frightened.

“Jake, what did you do?” I asked again with a little more force.

Seconds passed in heavy silence. I didn’t recall him every giving me this look of apprehension and shame.

“You know that guy you asked me to look into?”

Dread began to build in my belly, but I held it with tight reigns, praying Jake didn’t kill him or worse.

“Well, I learned something about him. Then after I sent you his details, I saw that you deleted the email without even looking at the pdf file.”

“Yes, I deleted it. He told me everything I wanted to know.”

“He didn’t tell you everything, Izzy.”

“Okay, so what? We’ve known each other a very short time. I don’t expect to know all his secrets right off the bat. Especially since I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be with him. I wanted to keep things casual.”

“They didn’t look casual, Izzy.”

My mouth dropped open, and I clamped it shut once I realized. “Have you been spying on me?”

“I got on a plane after our conversation. I’ve been spying on Gray, not you.”

I wanted to slap him. My own twin brother, treating me like a child. “I’m a thirty-year-old woman for fuck’s sake. I don’t need you to rough up my boyfriend, or sex partners, for me.”

He flinched at the word sex partner, and I knew he would. I’d thrown it in there just to torture him. “What did you do, Jake? Besides betray my trust?”

I slid off the stool and began to pace alongside the bar. If I sat and looked at him the entire time he recounted his story, I might murder him. And the cleanup would be hell. The big question echoing in my head was why he felt the need for such a dramatic step. I’d had many boyfriends, and even sex partners, in the past. He’d never flown around the world, or wherever, to spy on them.

“Why did you do this?” I asked, not looking at his face, still pacing.

“I only did it because this guy is insane. And I’m not talking normal person insane, actual freaking certifiably insane. You didn’t read the report, and I was worried, so I came out to make sure you were alright.”

“By stalking the guy I was sleeping with. How does that tell you if I’m alright?”

He shifted off the stool and pulled a squished roll of white paper from his pocket. I snatched it out of his hand with a glower.

The papers had a bunch of test result numbers printed on them. I read as I paced back and forth, barely catching some of the scientific jargon underneath an assessment, “I don’t know what this says, Jake. Just explain it to me.”

He shifted forward, sliding both feet off the rungs of the stool onto the floor. “It means your boyfriend’s brain has reached its breaking point. He’s been hallucinating. All the crap about him thinking you’re the reincarnation of that girl he killed, none of it’s true. You don’t look anything like her. His mind is breaking, and he latched on to you as some sort of reality handle.”

I narrowed my eyes and stepped back from my brother. The one solid foundation I’d possessed my entire life seemed to be crumbling around the edges. It wasn’t all this crap about Gray that bothered me. It was him being in my city without telling me, without coming to me. Him lying about where he was and not calling. Him stalking the guy I was sleeping with. None of it made any damn sense.

I shoved the papers at his chest. “This doesn’t matter. I told you. He and I were seeing each other and now we are not. You’ve done a dumb ass thing for absolutely no reason. And now I’m mad at you.”

Damn him for being such a pig-headed male like all the rest of them. He was supposed to be the different one. The one I could count on. I grabbed my mug and refilled it with hot coffee to warm up the liquid that remained in my cup. Jake sat with his back to me, his head hanging down as he lined up the papers and rolled them back up to put in his pocket again.

When he finished, he spun around on the stool to face me again.

“What?” I asked. “Did you decide it’s time to tell me our dog Champ didn’t actually go to doggy heaven? Because guess what, I know that too.”

He rolled his eyes and propped his elbows on the counter top. “Stop being so dramatic.”

“I’m the dramatic one?” Anger threatened to turn the volume of my next tirade up a notch until I met his eyes. “Damn it, Jake. That’s not all, is it? You did more stupid crap you’re afraid to tell me about.”

He swallowed and stared down at his clasped hands. Avoiding eye contact, even better. “I sort of tased your boyfriend and then kidnapped him for questioning.”

If he’d told me that he spent his weekends skinny-dipping in the Baltic Ocean, I wouldn’t have been more shocked. Every time he’d threatened to kidnap and murder the men in my life, I’d taken it as a joke. Never had I ever considered he’d actually hurt one of them. Outside of the situation in which they hurt me first.

“Are you joking?” I asked, trying to remain calm. Voice steady and low. Just like when the actors were being fussy diva four-year-olds.

“No. I wish I was because I know how angry you are right now. I promise it wasn’t the plan at all. It sort of happened.”

I lurched around the counter and grabbed his shoulders tight, shaking him. He finally met my eyes. “You sort of brought a taser with you one day and sort of just kidnapped him?”

He slid his gaze away. “It was the morning you were sleeping at his place. I knocked on the door, we talked, and then he was in the trunk of my car passed out.”

I let him go and stepped back. “I don’t even know what to say to you right now. Where is he?”

He shrugged. “After we talked, I gave him some clothes and let him go. I presume he went to speak to the scientists he works with for his…problem. Or maybe he went to find proof of that girl.”

“Sibyl? What do you know about her?”

Sensing that he was gaining traction on safer ground, he kept going. “Like I said before. This girl he thinks was you in a past life, she is nothing like you, she doesn’t look like you or anything. Something is going on with his memories. They’re overlapping like seismic plates trying to create room. The resulting earthquakes are messing with his perception of his reality.”

I blinked. “How did you…”

He shrugged. “I made some calls and got the information. I didn’t want to risk leaving you alone with him.”

“So obviously, kidnapping is the way to go.” I went to my mug and turned my back to him while I sipped it. If Dorian wasn’t being held hostage, why didn’t he call? It took two full seconds for the rational part of my brain to catch up. Obviously, he was going through something serious right now. He didn’t need to call me while he handled something like that. In fact, I might have found it worse if he did.

“Iz?” Jake broached.

I didn’t turn. “I am not talking to you right now. Sit there and be quiet for a minute while I think.”

The smart man did as he was told.

I wished I had a way to get a hold of him to let him know I was here if he needed me. Sex or no sex, I did want to be friends with him. We had incredible chemistry, but also, he made me laugh and feel things that weren’t everyday life sort of feelings. Joy, lust that melted your bones. Everything with him felt deeper and more meaningful. I didn’t want to lose that, even if it went the platonic route.

I don’t know how long I stood facing my refrigerator, but eventually I turned to catch Jake leaning on his elbow on top of the counter.

“Is that it? Any other revelations to deliver? Are you undergoing a sex change next week or anything?”

He chuckled, and even mad at him, I reveled in the comfort of his laugh.

He said, “Not that I’m aware of, but if I do, I’ll be back to borrow your clothes.” He stood, and I let him hug me, wrapping his arms tight around my shoulders.

It seemed like both of the men I wanted in my life might drive me slowly insane. I thought back to Gray. If it was true and I’m not anything like Sibyl, would he still want me? Or did he only want me because he thought I was a second chance for him?

Jake felt the shift in my body. “What is it?” he asked.

I pulled back. “Nope. We aren’t talking about any of this, or I’m going to get pissed all over again. For now, you’re here, and we are going to spend an enjoyable evening before you head to some unidentifiable sandbox in God-knows-where.”

He jerked me in for another hug, my coffee sloshed down the side of my hand, and I didn’t care.

“Oh, he asked me to give you a letter.”

Jake pulled a folded envelope from his other pants pocket and handed it to me.

“You didn’t open it?”

He snorted. “I know you better than that. I want to keep my balls in place, thank you.”