CHAPTER 8
BROOKE
“I can’t wait to see you,” Jade said excitedly. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’m coming home next week,” I reminded her, trying to keep my voice calm on the phone so she didn’t know that I was hurting.
Jade sensed things with me, just like I could tell when something wasn’t quite right with her. Our twin bond was pretty strong, even though we weren’t identical.
I’d woken up this morning in a complete funk, and it hadn’t gone away. I had no idea why Liam had left, or when he had gone, but it was kind of a figurative slap in the face to see that he hadn’t even left a note.
Of course, he did still think I had a boyfriend.
“I know,” she answered. “I’m just glad you can finally come back.”
I desperately wanted to see her. “I’ll let you know when I’m coming in. Evan is lending me his jet. I can’t wait to see you. It seems like forever.”
Jade and I had never been apart this long, and not having her to talk to was killing me. Sure, we’d talked on the phone, but it wasn’t the same. We were sisters, twins, and we did everything from shopping to girls’ night together. She’d always been my best friend.
Maybe I’d really needed time alone. When I’d come to Amesport, I hadn’t been able to describe the pain and fear that I had to get through. And I hadn’t wanted to talk.
Now I was desperate to see my family.
“I can’t wait to find out what you’ve been up to for almost a year. I’ve heard so much about Amesport that I want to experience it for myself.”
“There isn’t exactly a lot of exciting news from here,” I warned her. “It’s pretty quiet until the summer.”
“I don’t care. I just really need to see you. I need to know you’re really okay.”
“I’m fine. Better,” I reassured her.
My gut instinct was screaming at me that something wasn’t quite right with Jade, but I couldn’t put a finger on what it was. “How are you doing on your project?”
Before I’d left, Jade had been working on a wildlife-conservation project as part of her graduate studies.
“My thesis is done,” she answered.
“That’s amazing,” I commented enthusiastically.
“It’s a relief,” she confessed.
“I thought you liked doing it,” I said, confused that my sister wasn’t glowing over the fact that she was finally out of school and could go to work full-time as a wildlife biologist.
“I did,” she said vaguely. “But I’m glad it’s over.”
“Are you still teaching?” I questioned.
In addition to her education as a wildlife scientist, Jade was an expert in primitive-wilderness survival. She’d gone from student to teacher several years ago.
“Not as much as I’d like, but I might have a television gig coming up in the future. The producers of that TV program about survivalists contacted me to see if I was interested in being on the show.”
“Jade,” I squealed. “That would be amazing!” I was so excited for her. She loved being a scientist, but her survivalist training was just as important to her, even though it was still a hobby.
She sighed. “I’m not sure I should do it. Who knows what weird stuff they do for television.”
“You have to do it,” I insisted. “If it isn’t what you signed up for, you can walk away.”
“I suppose.”
“Contact them. Please. I think you’d kick some major ass.” I didn’t know anybody as skilled as my sister.
“I’ll think about it. But you know what that show is like. If I get a lame-ass partner, I’ll be screwed.”
My sister and I had watched every episode of the program. I knew getting the right partner was everything. “Maybe you’ll get somebody hot,” I told her jokingly.
“More than likely, I’ll end up with a wannabe-alpha-male survivalist. You know how many of those they get on the show. Guys who want to play at being in the wild, but they don’t know a damn thing about how to survive.”
I was pretty sure that very few people were as serious as my sister about their skills, but I still wanted her to give it a try. “You might get lucky.”
She snorted. “I doubt it. So many people are getting into it because of the show, and they don’t really care that much about why they’re doing it. I do it because I want that connection with my ancestors. I want to know what it was like for them to cope in a world without cell phones, the Internet, and all of the other things we have at our fingertips now.”
“Then go kick some ass,” I advised.
“Like I said, I’ll think about it.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. It wasn’t like Jade to shy away from anything.
“I’m good,” she told me. “Maybe I’m just missing you.”
“I miss you, too,” I confessed. “How is everybody back home? How’s Owen doing?”
My youngest brother was gifted. He was barely twenty-five, and he was finished with med school. Right now, he was doing his residency.
“He’s excelling, as usual. He was home on break during the holidays, and he was so quiet. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he wouldn’t tell me what was bothering him,” Jade explained. “The only thing he mentioned was that he was having a hard time handling the human suffering of his job. But he’s good at it. He’s going to make an excellent physician.”
“I can see how that could happen. Owen’s always been the kindest one in the family. He’s wicked smart, but he wears his heart on his sleeve.”
“I know,” Jade agreed. “But I hope he never changes.”
Honestly, I didn’t want to see my little brother different because of his career choice. I could always count on him to be the voice of reason.
“Everybody else okay?” I probed.
“If you’re asking if our three older brothers are doing all right, I can report that they’re all still a pain in the ass. But they’re healthy for now. Until I kill them for trying to stick their noses in my business.”
I laughed, knowing that Jade could give as good as she got. She had no problem telling Noah, Seth, and Aiden when they were being intrusive.
Unfortunately, they were meddlesome almost all the time.
“Try to keep them in line,” I requested. “I’m sure they’ll have plenty of brotherly advice for me when I get home.”
I sighed. I spoke to all my brothers on the phone pretty often, and they were always full of advice.
“They’re worried about you, Brooke. We all are,” Jade said seriously.
I sighed again. “I know. But I’m coming home, and I’m doing better. I’m hoping things will get back to normal. It’s been a long year.”
“How are you going to leave your hot boss?” she teased.
I’d told Jade about Liam, and how I felt about him. She’d been the only person I could talk to about my insanely attractive boss.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe it’s a good thing I’m leaving.”
“Brooke! I know that voice. You’re holding out on me. You slept with him, didn’t you?”
God, sometimes I hated being so close to my sibling. “I did.”
“Spill it, sister. Tell me everything.”
I gave her the brief version of what happened with Liam. I wasn’t about to tell my sister that Liam had completely rocked my world to the point where I’d never be quite the same ever again. She’d be trying to convince me to marry him.
“So you’re just going to go?” Jade asked. “How can you do that when you’ve found your dream man?”
“You’re such a romantic,” I accused.
“I’m not. I know that not everybody has a happily ever after. But you didn’t settle for less than you deserved. You waited to find him.”
I rolled my eyes. My sister could be a little dramatic about relationships, which was weird to me. Jade was so pragmatic in most other areas of her life, but she took finding the right guy to extremes.
“He’s not the one,” I told her, knowing that I was lying. Liam was the right guy, but the circumstances were impossible.
“I don’t believe you,” she challenged. “What’s wrong?”
“He thinks I have a boyfriend, remember?”
“You haven’t told him that it was Noah?”
“No. He’ll hate me for lying to him.”
“Brooke, you have to tell him now. You slept with him. Do you really want him to think that he screwed a woman who was already taken?”
I hadn’t quite thought about how Liam would feel. I’d been too busy worrying about how to protect myself from the one man who could make me completely lose my composure. “It’s probably better that he thinks that. The alternative is knowing I lied to him. He hates liars.”
“You didn’t have a choice,” she argued. “He isn’t going to blame you. If this guy is everything you think he is, there’s no way he wouldn’t want to know the truth.”
Jade was probably right, but I didn’t want to make things difficult between Liam and me for the next two weeks. “We’ll see,” I said vaguely. “It depends on how things go when I see him. I haven’t talked to him since we slept together.”
“Oh, my God. This just happened, right?”
“Last night,” I confirmed, knowing it was useless to try to hide much from Jade. She’d just badger it out of me.
“Please don’t let this misunderstanding keep going,” she pleaded. “You should tell him the truth. If he’s a good man, he’ll get why you lied. He already knows you’re there for a reason. He has to have figured out that you were hiding who you were and why you were there.”
“I never told him why.”
“Just explain everything that happened. For God’s sake, you’ve been through hell. Now that you’re coming home, you have no reason to hide anything.”
Jade was right. I could tell Liam everything. “I’m afraid,” I admitted.
“You have no reason to be. It’s just your brain messing with you. You’ve been through a lot,” she said in a comforting tone. “Don’t you think you should at least try to let him know that you care about him? That you really didn’t want to lie to him?”
“What if he doesn’t understand, Jade?” I asked her.
“Then he’s a dick,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
“What if all of this was just about getting laid? A crazy physical thing.”
“Then he’s still a dick.”
I laughed. “I don’t know what he wants. I’m confused.”
“And you think he’s not? He thinks you already have a guy, so that would make you a cheater. Anything is better than that. Even a liar.”
Our conversation led to other subjects, but what Jade had told me still lurked in my brain. Would Liam take it better that I had lied? The boyfriend thing had always kept him at a distance.
What would happen if nobody was standing in his way? Would he be different?
After I hung up with Jade, I was still thinking about what I should do.
Should I take the risk of telling him the truth, or guard my heart so it wasn’t in pieces when I had to say good-bye?