Home was exactly as I remembered.

There was a stale comfort in the unchanged landscape but after living in the city for five years, the quiet, slow pace of my hometown was almost maddening.

I’d been home a week and I was itching to leave.

Tara sensed my restlessness.

After dinner, she joined me on the patio to kill a bottle of chardonnay.

“Care for some company?” she asked.

I smiled. “I never say no to wine.”

She smiled and poured two glasses, handing over mine. “You’re different,” Tara said as she sipped her wine. “More mature.”

I nodded. “Thanks. Life has a way of doing that to you.” Failure does, too. I cast an inquisitive smile her way. “Are you happy?”

“Most days.”

It was an honest answer. No one was happy 24/7 without meds. “The kids are great,” I said. “Doesn’t make me want any but…they are pretty cute.”

Tara chuckled. “Yep. Pretty great. I love being a mom.”

I sighed as I sipped my own wine. “How are we even related, much less twins?”

At that she laughed because I’m sure she’d wondered the same thing many times. She sobered and asked, “Mari, what really happened in New York? And don’t give me some bullshit answer about this new job that paid you a lot of money. Be straight with me for once. I promise, I won’t judge.”

She would judge but I wouldn’t hold it against her. Truth was, I wanted to talk to someone about Gage but I didn’t trust anyone to share those kinds of intimate details with. Trusting my twin was my only option.

I took a bracing sip for courage, then started with, “Well, it was sort of a job and it did pay a lot of money. It just wasn’t a consulting gig.”

“What was it?”

“To be honest, I don’t know.” Trying to unravel the events that led up to Gage and I fusing together in the most unlikely way…I didn’t know how to tell the story in a way that made sense. “But I fell in love with a man who had warned me from the beginning that our arrangement was temporary.”

God, that still hurt. When would this fucking pain end?

“What do you mean?”

I exhaled a long breath. “A man came into the bar and asked to buy me a drink; I refused. He came back the next night, bought out the bar and made me have a drink with him.”

“Oh my God, Mari…did you call the police? Did he hurt you?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. He was a gentleman—“

“Gentlemen don’t coerce women into having a drink with them when they’ve already been told no.”

Fair point. “Well, I agreed to the drink. And then he offered me a shit ton of money if I would spend the night with him. He warned me that it would be temporary and that when it ended, he expected no entanglements.”

“That’s awful.” Tara wrinkled her nose in disgust. “What a pig.”

“At first I thought so, too. But there was something about him that I found intriguing and so I said yes. Honestly, I thought it was a joke until the money showed up in my bank account.”

Tara hesitated but curiosity was eating her alive. “How much?”

“A ridiculous amount. A lot of zeroes.”

Tara swallowed, her eyes wide. “Then what happened?”

We fucked like monkeys, I came harder than I’ve ever in my life and somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the unavailable bastard. I grimaced, knowing Tara would fall over in a faint if I shared that much. Instead, I admitted, “I caught feelings. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was actually funny and good-looking. Even romantic.”

“Then why did he have to buy his company?”

“I don’t know. I guess he had issues. Doesn’t like to get close to people.”

“Talk about a commitment-phone.”

“You have no idea,” I agreed dryly. “Anyway, it truly turned out to be temporary and since I finally had the money to leave the city, I did. And here I am.”

Tara took a rushed drink of her wine, shaking her head. “You were, like, a high-end call girl for the night.” I thought I heard judgment in her tone until she said, “I’m so fucking jealous.”

I stared. “Jealous?”

Maybe it was the wine talking but Tara’s wistful expression was unlike any I’d ever seen on my sister. “I’m guessing the sex was fantastic.”

“It was,” I admitted, watching Tara with something akin to shock. “I came so many times…I lost count.”

Tara groaned with envy. “I miss orgasms.”

I blinked. Who are you and where is my sister? I recovered to ask tentatively, “Things okay with you and Ryan?”

“They’re fine. We have sex once a month or so. It’s okay, I guess.”

“You don’t cum?”

She shrugged. “Not with him.”

“Tara!”

“Oh, calm down, I’m not cheating on Ryan, I use a vibrator. Actually, I’ve burned through three already. Literally.” She glanced at her palm, showing me a small burn mark. “The last one caught fire. Scorched me pretty good. Could’ve caught the whole house on fire. Imagine trying to explain that to the fire department.”

“Holy shit,” I giggled, loving this side of my twin. “And Ryan has no idea that you’re not hitting that O?”

“Ryan was never a very enthusiastic lover,” Tara said with a sigh. “I didn’t marry him for that reason. Ryan is stable with a good, solid income. Our kids want for nothing. That matters more than having an orgasm during sex.”

“Honey, that sounds like the saddest justification I’ve ever heard. Have you tried talking to him?” Good God, was I channeling Dr. Phil or Dr. Ruth? The thought of Ryan giving it to my sister made me want to puke. Ryan just wasn’t sexy. At all.

Nothing like Gage.

I suppressed a shudder but Tara caught the subtle motion and called me out. “You’re thinking of sex with your money man right now! Oh my god, please tell me…what did he do? What made it so amazing?”

I laughed, shaking my head as I reached for the wine bottle. I was going to need more liquor for this conversation. “Okay, so…for one he was fucking dirty as hell…” and I proceeded to tell my sister in lurid detail how thoroughly Gage had fucked me, how I’d let him fuck me in the ass and how I’d loved it.

By the end, we’d finished off the wine and Tara’s eyes had glazed over. I wanted to laugh and say, “You’re welcome, Ryan,” because Tara looked like she was going to go upstairs and mount her husband whether he wanted her to or not.

But she paused a moment, all wistfulness gone from her expression as she said, “Connections like that are rare. I’m happy and sad that it happened for you. Happy because you got to experience it; sad because, in the end, it didn’t work out.” She leaned forward to grasp my face between her hands, holding my gaze. “But if you’re lucky enough to get a second chance…fucking take it. Otherwise, nothing in life or love, will ever measure up, ever again.” She punctuated her advice with a soft kiss on my lips before saying, “Goodnight, sissy,” and returning to the house.

Presumably to fuck the shit out of her stupid, clueless husband.

Tonight, I decided, I would sleep with earbuds.

The crickets chirped as the night wore on. The house settled into silence.

Was Tara right? Should I have taken Reece’s offer to call Gage that day? Would it have made a difference?

I’d been afraid of another rejection. I knew I couldn’t have taken another hit to my heart.

Was Gage okay?

What had Reece meant by “the anniversary?” Anniversary of what?

God, I hated mysteries. I wasn’t cut out for stories with huge holes in the fabric. Maybe that was my version of OCD. I had to patch the holes, had to know all the details before I could move on.

Even if the information was hurtful.

In a way, I was thankful I’d discovered Landon with his cock in someone else’s mouth — there’d been no room for misunderstanding or persuasive lies.

Cut and dry — he’d been cheating.

Made the decision-making process so much easier.

If I hadn’t caught him red-handed, Landon might’ve strung me along for a few more months.

I might’ve even married him.

I gagged at the thought.

So, yes, I truly believed an ugly truth was preferable to a pretty lie.

Landon’s betrayal didn’t hurt anymore — but Gage’s rejection…it still killed.

I could still see his cold expression, the dispassionate, disconnected way he’d offered to create a new “arrangement” that’d felt insulting at best and pitiful at worst.

Is there a greater humiliation than discovering that feelings aren’t shared mutually?

Now I questioned everything. I couldn’t stop the tingle in my belly when I thought of Gage, or the way my breath caught when I thought of his touch on my skin but I could refuse to wallow in the pain of his rejection.

I grabbed my empty wine glass, prepared to go to bed until I heard the tell-tale sounds of someone getting banged.

Roughly.

I choked on a bubble of laugher. Get it, girl. Make that accountant your bitch.

Sticking my earbuds in, I tuned out what was going on upstairs and blissed out to loud, obnoxious rap.