Faith had gone from smiling up at me to staring up at me with tears in her eyes—right when I mentioned having children. We’d never talked about it before, and I felt like kicking my own ass for bringing it up on the night things had finally felt like they were getting back to normal with us. I tugged her hand down. “Shit. I’m sorry, I—”

“No. God, no,” she cried. “You’re not the one who needs to apologize, Dillon. I am.”

She looked completely devastated, and it freaked me the fuck out. I couldn’t imagine anything she might have done that would warrant such a severe reaction. “What for?”

“Just hold on a second. I need to show something to you for this to all make sense.”

Not knowing what to think, I dropped down onto one of the patio chairs and waited for her to come back outside. She was only gone for a minute or two before she came back with an envelope crumpled in her fist. “I’m not sure how to tell you. Even if I could, I’m not sure I could even get the words out. But if you read this, you’ll understand.”

Her hand trembled as she handed the envelope to me. I glanced down and was surprised to see it was addressed to my parents and the address in the corner was for the transplant center at the hospital. “What is this? Some kind of charity thing for my parents?”

It could have been something like that since they donated to a lot of hospital causes. They got thank you letters and invitations to events all the time. But with Faith’s reaction to whatever was inside, I knew that wasn’t what it was. The way she shook her head and looked at me with red-rimmed eyes only confirmed it. I flipped the flap of the envelope open and pulled out two sheets of paper. One was type-written and on hospital letterhead. The other was lined paper with what looked like Faith’s handwriting on it.

“Read the one from them first,” she whispered.

I looked up and the tears were spilling down her cheeks. Dropping my hand holding the letters into my lap, I focused on her. “I don’t know what these say, but you have to know it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it’s not going to change my feelings for you, Faith. I love you. Today. Tomorrow. Always.”

Her head dropped low, and her shoulders shook. “Please, Dillon. You’re killing me here. Just read the letters.”

I took a deep breath before unfolding the letter from the hospital first. Then I quickly scanned the note Faith had written and the connection between the two hit me. It had only taken a couple of minutes before I began to question everything I thought I knew about my brother’s death.

“This isn’t possible,” I mumbled, not understanding how Declan’s name could be listed on the letter from the hospital. “He died in the crash, and that was a month before your transplant. There’s no way you could’ve gotten a kidney from him. Not with that much time in between. There has to have been some kind of mistake.”

I read the letters again, convinced that it couldn’t be true. If what I was reading was right, then my parents had been lying to me ever since I woke up from my coma.

“As much as I wish differently, there wasn’t a mistake. After I had agreed to move in with you and finished my last final exam, I decided to let go of some of the emotional baggage I’ve been carrying for years. You’ve made me so happy—changed me for the better. I wanted to give thanks to the family who lost a loved one and offered me a second chance. The transplant center couldn’t give me the name, but they offered to forward a letter from me to my donor’s family. That letter.”

My hands were shaking as I stared down at the note she’d sent to her donor family. It was crazy to think her love for me had inspired her to write it. The way she’d talked about how hopeless she’d felt back then. How well her life had turned out since the transplant. That she’d fallen in love with me.

It would’ve been fucking amazing to read this if it hadn’t been accompanied by the letter from the transplant center. The one that explained what they were forwarding and why. If it wasn’t a mistake, that letter was black and white proof that Declan was her kidney donor. “My parents didn’t say anything about donating Declan’s organs, but I can see them doing something like that. It would be just like them to try to help people during the worst time of our lives. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a mistake of some kind. Maybe they messed up and forwarded your note to the wrong family.”

“That’s what I was hoping, too.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she shook her head. “But I called and asked the receptionist to double-check if it was mailed to the wrong family in error. She’s the one who sent it. She couldn’t confirm the name of the family it was supposed to go to, but she was able to tell me there wasn’t a mistake.”

“Fuck,” I groaned. “This is really happening.”

“It is.”

It wasn’t just the contents of the letter that I didn’t understand. It was how Faith got it, too. “If they mailed this to my parents, how the hell did you end up with it? Do they know? Did they give it to you and not even tell me about it?”

I never would’ve thought they’d do something like that, but I also never expected they’d lie to me about when Declan died.

“No, your parents haven’t seen the letters.” She took a shuddering breath before continuing. “I saw it when your mom asked me to grab the mail one day, and I just panicked. The coincidence was too much. The envelope was from the same transplant center where I’d gotten my operation and came so soon after I sent them my letter.”

“So you just took it?” I asked, shocked by her answer.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I grabbed it and took off, stopping not too far from their house to read it. It wasn’t until I got home that I even thought about how wrong what I’d just done was.”

“This is so fucked up,” I muttered. “That was a huge violation of my parents’ privacy. It could have been something else, something not connected to you. And it’s also a crime, Faith. You can’t just go around stealing other people’s mail.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Fuck!” I swore. My mind was reeling. There was so much wrong with this shit storm, and I was busy obsessing over something stupid like her stealing a piece of mail instead of focusing on the worst of it—what’d been inside the envelope in the first place.

My gaze dropped to her side, right to where I knew her shirt hid the scar from her surgery. “You have Declan’s kidney inside you.”

She nodded jerkily. “I do.”

If you had asked me an hour ago if there was anything Faith could tell me that would make me look at her differently or love her any less, I would have said fuck no. But knowing she was standing before me—alive because Declan had died—wasn’t something I could have conceived in my wildest imagination. He’d been the other half of me. His death had been more shattering to me than the injuries I’d suffered in the crash that took his life.

Faith had been the one to drag me out of that darkness. She quickly became the most important thing in my life, and I loved her with all my heart.

But right now I was angry.

And confused.

And more than a little freaked out at the idea of a part of my brother living inside her. She’d filled the emptiness inside me as corny as that sounded. I’d thought it was because she was perfect for me; like my mom was for my dad. That fate had finally taken pity on me and decided to put me out of my misery and gave me someone to love. That it was all happenstance.

Only I didn’t know what the fuck to think anymore. A piece of my twin lived inside her. Maybe the instant pull I’d felt when I first saw her wasn't Faith at all. Maybe it was my connection to my brother.

“Fuck,” I groaned again.

If I tried to talk it out with Faith feeling the way I did at the moment, things were going to get ugly. I was too pissed and confused to watch my words, and I was likely to take my anger out on her. Even with my mind reeling, I didn’t want to say things to her I could never take back. I couldn’t stand the idea that I might hurt her in a way she could never forgive.

“I need to go.” I stood up and strode into the house, grabbing my keys from the hook by the door.

“Dillon, no!” she cried. “Don’t go. I get that you probably don’t know what to think. Neither do I. But we love each other, and we’re supposed to face the hard stuff together. Right?”

I paused at the door, knowing in my head that she was right. It was hypocritical of me to force her to open up to me in the past only to walk away right now. But I knew I needed time. Time that maybe she’d already had considering how distant she’d been with me lately.

“When did you find the letter?” I continued on before giving her a chance to answer. “How long have you known about this?”

Her silence was damning.

“How fucking long, Faith?” I yelled. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was about a week ago. The day you went shopping with my mom, right? That’s when you stopped sleeping well. When you started to pull away from me. But it couldn’t have been that long because that would mean you’ve kept this from me all this time.”

“Dillon,” she sighed. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“So all those times I asked you what was bothering you, and you said you were fine? You were just lying to me?”

“I needed time to figure it all out in my head,” she tried to explain.

“Yeah, time to figure things out sounds pretty damn good to me,” I growled. “And you’re going to give to me what you took for yourself.”

“Okay,” she agreed, starting to cry openly. “I guess I deserve that.”

“Don’t push me right now, Faith. Don’t try to make me feel guilty for being angry. This wasn’t something small you chose not to share with me. It’s really fucking huge.”

“It’s not my fault!” she argued. “I didn’t know what to do. How to tell you. I was scared.”

“Declan was important to me. You knew that and you chose to keep this a secret for an entire week,” I countered.

“I’m sorry.” She looked so fucking sad. But as much as it killed me to see her like that, I couldn’t let it sway me from what I needed to do. Before I could work through things with us, I needed to figure out my own damn self.

“So am I,” I replied before walking out the door with no idea when I would return.