Ronnie’s right. I never wanted Verity. Being identical twins you’d expect they’d be similar, in their case, they couldn’t have been more different than if they were complete strangers. Sometimes I thought they practically were strangers, just living in the same house and sharing the same DNA. Where my woman is sweet, kind, compassionate, patient, loving and all sunshine; her sister is pure darkness. Bitter, greedy, manipulative, and self-centred. Verity may be beautiful on the outside, but her inside was ugly it overshadowed her beauty. Spend enough time around them you began to notice the subtle differences in their appearances too. If I’d been sober, not high as fuck that day, I would have known instantly the woman riding my dick wasn’t mine, but her sister. I still curse myself daily for getting fucked up enough I didn’t realise and put a stop to it.
Ronnie has delicate, soft as hell, porcelain skin with a smattering of freckles across her chest that are almost unnoticeable, but I’ve worshipped every inch of her, so I can probably tell you by heart exactly how many there are. She has a tiny birth mark on the inside of her left thigh in the shape of a strawberry that I’ve licked, kissed, and caressed as I thrust inside her body. The most noticeable difference of all is the paintbrush tattoo on Ronnie’s hipbone though.
The brush is done in black outline, and the grey shading makes up the majority of the piece. The brushes bristles are stained with moss green coloured paint with the tip of the brush starting at the beginning of the word, so that the brush flows with the curve of her shapely hip. Ronnie got it on her eighteenth birthday, and I’d been blown away by it. She rendered me speechless, humbling me with what she’d done. When she uncovered her new addition I spent the next three hours making love to her, worshipping her amazing body, and showing her all the things I couldn’t say with words.
In moss green ink, to match my eyes she told me, Ronnie had the word NATE tattooed in stylised calligraphy resembling paint brush strokes. Not only was the colour of ink an almost identical match to my eyes, it complimented her flawless skin and stunning deep red hair perfectly. Four weeks later, Ronnie left my life, and I’d been fucking torn apart inside. I’m sure my external appearance wasn’t much better at the time, either. Some small part of me was glad she had my name inked on her skin before all that shit happened. She’d have to take me with her whether she wanted to or not. I’d always be a part of her, she would have to remember me and that thought alone gave me some small measure of peace. It’s funny how shit like that happens. People have told me, if you get a girl’s name tattooed, it’s the beginning of the end, I never believed in that shit. Maybe they’d been right. Maybe it had been an omen.
Snapping me out of my memories that have nowhere to go but downhill, Ronnie continues. “Things changed when I was on my own, going to college, and getting an apartment by myself. My perspective on life got a little skewed for a while there. I thought I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t……”
Shaking my head emphatically, I stop her. She can’t really believe that shit can she? There was never once that she wasn’t enough for me. Fuck that. She was and still is everything to me. “No. Don’t say that shit. You were always more than enough, it was only ever you. You were too good for ME, Ronnie. You always have been. I felt like the luckiest son of a bitch alive that you wanted anything to do with me. It was me that wasn’t enough for you, Baby.”
I hang my head back in my hands. The fact she ever thought she wasn’t enough for me, perfect for me, is almost too much to bear. “You didn’t let me finish Nate,” she says with her mouth pulled into a tight frown. “I felt like that for a while. After a few months, I realised it wasn’t about me at all. It might have killed me to see you with her, but you’d always had demons chasing you, things in your life you needed to escape from. I knew you weren’t all there that day. I looked into your eyes and they were so vacant. I’d never seen you like that, and you’d definitely never been like that WITH me. It was like you were looking through me, but not seeing me. My sister looked smug, like she’d won the lottery, so I knew something wasn’t right. I learned to accept you probably had little to no knowledge of what was going on.” I nod at her statement because I abso-fucking-lutely agree. I had no idea what the fuck was happening that day until about five minutes after she left. “I could forgive you quickly because of how much I loved you. That was the easy part. Accepting what happened took longer, a lot longer because my heart and my head weren’t in sync. Saying that, I made the decision that I’d never give my heart to anyone, ever again. That includes you.” I intake a huge lungful of air. That fucking kills, but what she says next hurts even more. “Part of me will always love the boy that needed me as a friend. The boy that made me laugh all the time, and part of me will always love the man that taught me how to love, but that’s where it ends for me. I can’t open my heart up to that kind of pain ever again.”
I can’t believe it and I won’t accept it. I know I hurt her. Fuck, I hurt both of us, but I fucking love this woman with everything in me. Hearing Ronnie tell me she’ll never give her heart to anyone, including me again, causes the familiar feeling of gut wrenching, soul searing pain. If she thinks for a second I’ll give up on winning her back, she’s fucking mistaken. I heard everything she said, every single fucking thing. What she doesn’t realise is that I’m not that twenty-three-year-old idiot anymore and I’m going to do everything in my power to get her back. Even if that means fighting dirty. I understand what Cage was saying now about Kendall being made for him, because I feel the same way about Ronnie. It isn’t going to be easy, I get that, but I don’t want easy. I want to work for it, find a way to redeem myself in her eyes possibly.
Standing, I make my way to the door to get lunch started, when I turn back I look her square in the eyes. “Sunshine, you might not be ready to give me that big, beautiful heart of yours back just yet, but I fucking promise you Ronnie, now you’re back in my life, I’m not fucking letting you go this time. You’re MINE. You can fight it. You can try and run, Baby, but trust me when I say, I’ll fucking hunt you down, and bring you back where you belong if I have to. No matter how far you go, or for how long, I’ll find you and bring you back.” I don’t give her a chance to answer. At this point, it doesn’t matter what she says, or how much she argues with me; everything I said was true. I will find her no matter where she goes, no matter how hard she tries to hide. I’m a thirty-two year old man now, and that’s my woman lying in my bed. She’s mine to protect. Mine to love, and mine to fight for.
CHAPTER TWO
Veronica
Sixteen Years ago… Veronica is eleven, and Nate is sixteen
It’s not fair. I hate having to share my birthday with Verity. Hate, hate, HATE, it. I mean; I know we’re twins and all, and that’s all well and good, but why my Mom and Dad insist on having a joint party for us every year, I will never know. It’s like a circus and I hate every second of it. I DON’T like being the centre of attention, not at all. I’m not like Verity who soaks up the attention like a sponge, she practically demands it, and doesn’t stop at anything to get it. I would rather sit on the window seat in my room reading a book, or listening to my music by myself, than have to entertain people. But no…
We have to have this stupid party. They aren’t even my friends, and I don’t really have any to be honest. Other than Carmella, my best friend since kindergarten and Nate, I don’t have anyone close enough to me to invite, and that in itself is embarrassing.
I met Carmella during recess on the playground of the kindergarten we went to. She was so little I thought she had walked over from the day care centre next door. It had happened before. A teacher forgetting to latch the gate properly, and one of the little kids escaping to come and play on the bigger play equipment over here. Carmella only looked about three or four, instead of the five she needed to be to be in kindergarten. She had long dark hair in pig tails, darker toned skin that looked like the caramel fudge my mom makes, big brown eyes, and the happiest smile I’d ever seen. It made me autom
atically want to smile back at her, it still does. She came up to me asking if we could play together. Of course, I said yes. She was all alone, and so little, who could say no to her? Not me that’s for sure.
Carmella just moved to Patterson and told me it was her first day at school here, that’s obviously why I’d never seen her before. It was that simple, like everything is when you’re that young; we played, drank our juice boxes and we’ve been friends ever since. Being one of only two people, other than my parents, that could tell Verity and I apart, Carmella and I became joined at the hip doing everything together. I had sleepovers at her house, her parents were so cool. They were both musicians and we had karaoke and dance parties in the living room. She came over to my house so we could do our homework, read magazines, and giggle about boys. Our parents took us to the county fairs, movies, swimming, pretty much everywhere together.
The best thing about Carmella was she hated Verity on sight. It’s not a nice thing to say, that you like that your best friend hates your twin, but in this case it’s true. It’s nice having someone that saw how horrible Verity really is. Verity is a vicious, nasty piece of work. Not just to me, but to everyone, she just happens to be especially bitchy to me. She’s selfish, makes fun of people behind their backs, calls me names, and plays pranks on me all the time, that aren’t in the least bit funny. For example; last week she put crazy glue in my conditioner. Mom had to take me to the hairdresser and have seven inches cut off my hair to get it out. I cried for days after that because I couldn’t believe she would do something like that to me. Actually, that’s a lie. It wasn’t unbelievable, it was just the first time she’d done something so permanent. Food dye in my conditioner, Saran Wrap on the toilet, oil on the tiles in my bathroom, sure she’d done all of that, and some of it more than once. But all that stuff was superficial. This was my hair, it would take ages to grow back.
What was really weird, was how my parents reacted to her behaviour. They would ground her or take away her TV privileges, but it was like they’d given up on disciplining her almost altogether. If they banned her from TV for two weeks and found her watching it the day after, they let it go, walking away shaking their heads. Verity was getting to the point where she was pretty much out of control. I have no idea what they’re going to do with her if she gets any worse. My parents’ lack of consequences for Verity’s crappy attitude always made me feel like they loved her more than me. I know deep down it wasn’t true, but that’s how I felt. I was only eleven, after all.
The only person Verity’s remotely nice to is Nate.
Nate moved in across the street from us about two years ago. He’s five years older than me, but he quickly became my best friend, other than Carmella that is. Nate listens to me when I whine about Verity. He makes me laugh when I’m sad because all the kids tease me about my hair or my freckles. He’s just always there for me, and I love him for that. About a month ago, when I came home from school upset because Bobby Donaldson called me a ‘spotty red headed freak,’ Nate gave me a big hug, and told me I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. At the time, I just laughed at him because, come on, let’s face it, Verity looks the exactly same. He’d seen both of us plenty of times so, how could that be true? He said Verity wasn’t even as close to as pretty as I was, and that I should believe him because he’d never lie to me. In fact, promised he never would. At that, I took him at his word because it was true, Nate had never lied to me. EVER. It wasn’t be until three years later he broke that promise…
The birthday party today is going to be painful. I can’t wait until the days over, so much so, I almost wished it would rain. The party being outside will mean my parents will have to cancel it, because there’s no way we can fit fifty to sixty people inside our house all at once.
This morning, we opened our gifts together in the living room. It’s tradition for us to get up, stay in our pyjamas, drink hot chocolate, and do presents as a family. The whole morning is usually just an extension of the Verity show, so I tended to open my gifts quickly leaving them to it. Verity laughed and made fun of my present, just like I knew she would. I don’t know why I bother expecting anything different from her. You would think over the years this has been going on for, her making fun of me and my choices, that I’d learn and not be as disappointed or hurt by her asshole-ness. Clearly not.
Our parents started letting us chose what we want for our birthdays, a few years ago, when Verity had a tantrum, professing to hate everything they brought her. It got to the point where she made such a fuss that Mom and Dad took her out that afternoon and replaced everything with more expensive gifts. See… selfish, ungrateful, nasty bitch!
The ONLY thing I asked for this year is a skateboard. I desperately want Nate to teach me how to do tricks like he does, he’s so good that he makes it look like magic when he rides. I love watching him practice in the afternoons out on street in front of our houses, or down at the local park. When I asked if he’ll teach me, he gave me a huge dimpled smile telling me of course he would. So, my parents got me the skateboard I chose, and it’s perfect. They also purchased all the safety gear to go with it, which I’m not overly impressed with. I don’t want to wear it because I think I’ll look stupid, Nate never wears all that stuff anyway, so why should I? My parents’ tell me that unless I wear the kneepads and helmet, they won’t let me ride. What choice do I have? I put on the safety gear, and try on my new accessory to go with it, humiliation. Yep, fits perfectly.
This year, Verity gets a new CD player, hairdryer, makeup, and a few gift cards to her favourite clothing stores. I know what my parents brought her would have cost a lot more than what they spent on me, I don’t care about that though. I know the only reason they do it is because my sister will have an epic tantrum if she doesn’t get what she wants. Just as I said before, stupid, selfish bitch.
Later in the morning my dad comes into my room to hand me an envelope. I look at him strangely, because this is STRANGE. He just nods at me to open it, with a big smile on his face. I gasp and get up throwing my arms around his waist when I see what’s inside. Mom and dad gave me $100 to buy the books I’ve been saving for by doing extra chores around the house. I have $62.72 saved, but still needed $84 more to get all the ones I wanted. Leaning down my dad kisses me on the head and hugs me back, all while I whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” to him.
He just replied by saying, “Love you, Little Bear. Let’s just keep this between us. Your sister doesn’t need to know about it, okay?” I nod and squeeze him tightly again. Patting my back he leaves and I set about hiding my windfall from Verity.
It’s sad I have to hide it from her. She shouldn’t be in my room to begin with, let alone taking my things, but she’s snuck into my room and stolen money I’ve saved before, so now I knew better. I hide it, rolled up in a sock, inside a boot in the back of my cupboard. She’ll never look there, and she’ll definitely never try to borrow my boots. Verity only ever wears sandals and platform wedge thingys. Everything’s always about appearance with her, and my boots are apparently, “Hideous and more suited to a boy.” Whatever!
Walking out the back door where the party’s set up, I see Verity’s friends arriving. They’re all exactly the same as her; mean, bitchy, girls that hang on my sister’s every word, following her around like the sheep. I swear they’re scared of her. That, or she has something on them she can use to manipulate them. That’s the only reason I can come up with for why they’re so nasty, and willing to do her bidding all the time.
Unfortunately Carmella can’t come today. Her parents have a job helping to produce a record for a local band in Dallas that will last the next three days. My mom said she could stay with us, but Carmella’s mom, Daisy, said she’ll be visiting with her grandma while they’re working. Since Carmella’s grandma hadn’t seen Carmella in months, she had to go. Sighing, I look around at all the balloons, tables overflowing with food, past the pool filled with floating beds and balls, through the streamers and peop
le gathering; to find Nate looking at me with a big, goofy smile on his face.
I run toward him dodging people as I go, and give him a big hug like always. I’ve been hugging Nate since I did it to thank him the first day I met him on the curb in front of my house, two years ago. He had been so nice to me, staying until he was sure I’d stopped crying and made sure I’d be okay. Hugging Nate quickly became one of my favourite things to do. He’s so tall and strong. He has these big arms that wrap around me making me feel like I’m in the safest place in the world. When I met him that day, I knew nothing about him other than; his name was Nate, he moved into Ms. Williams’ old house, and he looked about fourteen or fifteen. There’s one other thing I knew for sure. Nate was a kind, sweet boy, but he looked sad and lost at the same time. His eyes were never carefree and no matter how hard he tried, he never looked truly happy.
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