Luka’s beautiful features contract with the pain of his memories. “It’s complicated. It goes back in time. I was the firstborn, always the bigger and the heavier. I was the stronger one, no matter how you looked at it.
“It started with me barging out of our mother’s womb ahead of Julian, pulling my umbilical cord tight around his neck on the way. He was slow to come out. By the time they got him, his face was blue. He was so deprived of oxygen he was minutes, maybe seconds away from dying.”
I lean backward. The sting of my vertebrae connecting with the headboard is a fleeting distraction.
“I guess the way we were born set the pace for us. He was always slower and weaker than me. Julian was introverted too, while I was not.”
I puff air out through my nose. “You were the same size, though?”
“Eventually he grew into himself, so yes.” Luka’s eyes glide to me. “You must have seen photos of us from when we were little.”
I nod. Then I shake my head. “I think I’ve only seen individual photos. Or with something separating you in the middle.”
“Makes sense. Julian didn’t like the pictures of us together. We had the same face and features, even hair, up until our late teens, but we were imbalanced.”
He lifts his shoulders, and despite their size, they seem helpless when they fall again. “I started instigating accidents when we were four. First, it was on the slide at the playground. I ran back up, tossed myself down over and over again, shouting for him to join me. When he finally did, I pushed him before he was ready and he landed on his face. It was just a busted lip and a few scrapes that time, but he wasn’t happy.”
He stares at his hands, head bobbing slowly.
“There were so many incidents like that. One happened during a swimming lesson. I was a better swimmer than he was, and in the worst possible moment, I slapped his floating device away and watched him drown.”
“What? You didn’t do it on purpose though, right?”
“I have no idea what my plan was.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “You know how Julian always joked around, and I thought he did this time too. I laughed while he ‘play-fought’ under the surface. Until the instructor hauled him out of the pool and started knocking water out of him.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“Yep. Mama learned of it, and she doesn’t forget easily. Next came the fire.”
“The what?”
“No. I’m ahead of myself. Tons if shit happened in between that. Me using the strong branches to climb up a tree and making him take the harder path up on the backside. I sat there and watched him fall to the ground. He broke his arm that time.”
“Geez. But that’s still just a sibling thing.”
“Well, yeah. But let’s just say Mama didn’t let the incidents go.” Luka rolls his eyes as I brush a hand down his cheek. “Not that I blame her. Maybe I’d do the same thing?”
“Do what?”
“She had a notebook for each of us, with good and bad things we did, her way of keeping score, you know.”
I grimace, pursing my lips. “A diary for each of you?”
“Not exactly. She only jotted down what we called the goods and bads. Ha, if you opened my book from the front, you’d find all my infractions written down in her neat handwriting, with a column to the right indicating the date and my punishment. If you flipped it open from the back, you’d find my goods with a column for whether or not they merited a reward.”
“Wow, that sounds incredibly harsh. And you both had these books?”
“Sure. I remember envying Julian his.”
“Less infractions?”
“Definitely. If you opened his book from the front, it started with the good things he’d done. You’d have to turn it and start from the back if you wanted to read his measly little crimes. Pretty sure the biggest one was to steal a cigarette from Papa at twelve. He really got in trouble over that one. For once, he was the one who had to sit still in a corner of the kitchen, on that hard step stool, and listen to Mama solemnly read out loud every infraction he’d ever made. In his case, it was a short list. Mine used to take a while.” He flashes a short grin.
“Wow, Luka. That’s freaking child abuse.”
He frowns, really looking at me. “My little Mama? No, no. She couldn’t hurt a fly. She never laid hand on us.”
“Good,” I say, because what does it matter in hindsight that abuse comes in many forms?
“Anyway. The fire was the worst thing I ever did to my brother. That’s when I could have killed him. We lived in an apartment complex that gave to a cluster of trees. We had a treehouse there, one we kept working on over the years. We’d tear down parts of it and reconstruct with new materials. You know, kids’ stuff.” He sits up, steeling himself, hands clasping each other in his lap.
“I often came up with shit I wanted to test out. Julian was damn good at backing me up too, and we had a stash of stuff from the house squirreled away for our games. We were thirteen at the time it happened. I don’t remember who got the idea, but I was definitely the one lighting the aerosol can, throwing it into the treehouse, and shouting, ‘Run!’”
“Oh my god. So Julian’s skateboard rash...?”
“...were burns.” Luka’s chin trembles. He sucks in a sob and swallows. “He didn’t get out fast enough. He was on the ground, writhing with pain by the time I came back with our father, who rushed him to the ER. Julian was in the ICU for weeks.”
“I’m so sorry, Luka.” I lean forward and put my arms around him. Back shaking, he’s turned away from me, so I climb around and seat myself in his lap. I duck against his hunched form, nudging my nose into his mane of white-white hair.
“It’s part of growing up to make mistakes, you know. What happened to Julian in that treehouse was absolutely gruesome, but you didn’t mean to hurt him. Your mom and the books of goods and bads, though? That was intentional, and I just want to...” I shake my head. But then I don’t know what I’d do to her, because I’ll never forget the devastation on her face on the day of Julian’s funeral.
“His pain was so brutal, Geneva, they kept him hopped up on painkillers.” His head is too heavy and he leans his brow into the crook of my shoulder.
I want to rock Luka in my arms. I leave all my weight against one side of his body, then shift it over to the other. Slowly, he catches on and begins to move with me.
“Mama stopped reading from our books after the accident, but I know she kept taking notes. Sometimes, I want to look for it, dig until I find mine. She must have filled it up from the front now that Julian is dead.”
“Oh Luka. You were trying to even the scores of goods and bads?”
“Yeah.” His breath warms my skin through the fabric. “I wish I’d had time.”
We sleep entwined. We forgot the A/C, so when I wake up, the ceiling fan is a mild breeze caressing skin that’s as damp as we were in the jungle.
I kiss his lips, the line of his jaw, and down his neck. He deserves my love, this bittersweet, complicated man with his guilt of could-be-fratricide. He and I, we know guilt, and I slide my leg between his thighs and eliminate the void between us.
“Geneva?” He sighs my name like I’m relief.
I wonder if he knows he’s mine too.
“Yes, baby. I’m here.”
We’re different this morning. My muscles are relieved of tension and my heart is light as if I’ve made a good choice. In the kitchen, I empty out seven-o’-clock coffee and start a new batch; Luka’s seminar doesn’t begin in days yet, and I’m supposed to be writing.
The Queen is empty. It’s just Luka and me here. We’re in a cool, spacious, comfortable place, and there are no dark edges separating us. The coffee gurgles. There’s a smile on my face that comes out of nowhere, and when Luka notices, his eyes brighten to sunrise amber.
“You’re so beautiful. Do you know how I love you?”
“I love you too. I used to hate your guts, did you know?” I commit the kind of wink that makes boyfriends smirk. Mine pulls me against his hips, and I shake my head in an effort to remain focused. “We’re not doing that, baby. I’ve got work to do.”
“But what if I need you?”
“Every fifteen minutes?” I giggle, but Luka’s mask of suffering doesn’t change. Oh. He’s cute.
“‘Crazy in love.’ Ever heard that expression?”
“Read it, I think?” I slide into mock-pensive features.
“Aww, she’s so hard-hearted.” He jerks me to him with his half-assed sad-face lingering. “She’ll break my gut, and—”
“Gut?” I laugh. “I’d hate to break someone’s gut. What a mess.”
“You’d have to tidy it up yourself,” he hums. “All the intestines everywhere, ya know. Blood and bile.” He kisses me. “Just a general out-splashing of gore.”
“Gah, you’re gross.” I grin while he squeezes me and slides to the floor using the front of my body as support. Nothing surprises me with Luka anymore, not when he tips his head back and lifts my t-shirt. He sucks kisses to my bare stomach and settles on his knees, firm, big, and crushing my thighs against him so he can breathe warm air through my shorts.
“Is this gross?” He angles a simmering stare at me.
“M-m-no.”
He nibbles, finds my— How does he find my clit through...?
Ah.
I jut toward him. I do and I don’t regret my choice of a thong and thin cotton shorts. Savage, my twin devours me and makes me whimper.
“We just did this,” I whisper.
“It won’t be the same. We’re alone, love of my life.” He flows upward until he stands, gaze warm on my face. He turns me, bends me over the island. My brain urges, Geneva, come on. Start on your article, while my body submits to the pleasures he gives.
“Geez. You...”
He groans happily. Cock like granite, he rubs down from the small of my back and wedges between my legs. “Do you know how good you feel inside?”
I want to crack a joke, because of course I don’t, but with this man, all I want is to dissolve in the bliss of us.
“Just for a little bit,” he pants, rolling my shorts down enough for our skin to touch. I struggle for air, shutting my eyes, and he moves like a pro, like a rider of mechanical bulls, like a stripper, an MMA fighter—I. Just need him in me.
“’Kay, coffee. Can. Wait.”
“You’re fucking it.”
I curve backward, meeting him as he enters me with a sigh. Never as full, never as fulfilled as with this man.
“I’m it?” I ask, letting the thought sprout and inflate in my mind.
“Yeah. No one. No one is like you.”
A high-pitched sing-song screeches through the Queen. “Anybody ho-o-ome?”
My breath chokes on wrongness. Intense pleasure wants to numb me, but that’s Belen! She just shouted from the entrance, and she’s stomping our way. I need to pull away. Hide. It’s what people do when they’re in their most intimate act.
Luka doesn’t pull out of me. My heart jackhammers and speeds up. I can’t have Belen see me like this, but then he leans over my shoulder, covering my body with his. “Trust me. Okay?”
“No, we can’t!”
“She’s not your kind of people. Trust that I’m doing the right thing.”
I hyperventilate. No. I can’t. Just...
“I love you like a crazy person loves another, with every fiber in him, and for me, with you, that’s not even new. Please trust me.”
I do. I do trust him; in all these years, Luka has done nothing to hurt me, and now... now... “Okay.”
My acquiescence sounds like the wind, but he hears me and brushes his lips to the nape of my neck. I contract at the sensation.
“God.” Quietly, he exhales, feeling me around him.
The floorboards creak, but I keep my eyes closed, sensing when she stops and leans her body against the doorframe.
“Hey, Luka. What’s up? You busy or something?”
His frame sinks over me, hands tugging the front of my shorts up, hiding where his touch just was. He slopes his arms along the naked, naked sides of my thighs. “I am. You mind?”
“Hmm, sort of.” Belen chuckles like it’s no big deal to walk in on someone she’s obsessed with making love to another woman. “Isaias wants you at Lucid. Like now. He sent me. You know what that means? You haven’t met him yet, but it’s now or never. If you don’t react, he’ll cut you off.”
I’m dying. I want to sink my face into my hands. I don’t want anyone to mention Lucid again, and I don’t want Isaias, whoever he is, to want Luka anywhere.
I pull away slowly, enough for his body to lose contact with mine. I straighten and stare into her odious face. Flushed with heat and embarrassment, I’m still sure of what I want.
“Get the hell out of my house,” I grit out. “And leave my boyfriend the fuck alone.”
She arches a brow and sets her glare on Luka. “You let that bitch insult your bread and butter? You know I am that, right? Isaias digs me, and he’s making me Lucid’s new cover girl. Just so we’re clear: I’m trying to help you out.”