by J. S. Scott
I didn’t want to join that club.
I’d deal with my disappointment alone.
I had known the deal when I’d signed up for intimacy with Eli. But maybe in my heart I had hoped that it would change.
“Hey, Eli,” a male voice called out.
I looked to see who was trying to get Eli’s attention, and saw a guy around Eli’s age approaching us.
The blond man didn’t look nearly as elegant and aloof as Eli. In fact, he kind of reminded me of a carefree beach bum who just happened upon the party and dropped in for a drink.
My eyes went from the male who had just stopped in front of us, to the grim expression on Eli’s face. It was obvious to me that Eli wasn’t happy to see this particular guest.
“Joel,” Eli acknowledged curtly.
I could feel the tension between the two males facing each other, but I couldn’t figure out the cause.
“I just stopped by to give these to you,” Joel told Eli as he held out a large manila envelope.
I waited for several heartbeats, stressful moments that kept ticking like a clock.
Eli made no move to accept the man’s offering.
But the giver of the envelope also didn’t seem like he was going to slink away.
Without thinking, I reached out and snatched the package from Joel’s hand because I could see the tortured expression on Eli’s face, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Thanks,” I said abruptly, willing to do almost anything to vanquish the tormented look in Eli’s eyes.
Joel turned, smiled sadly at me, and then quickly retreated into the crowd.
“What’s in this?” I asked Eli. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t really know what it is, and I don’t care,” Eli said in an agitated tone. “Leave it. Throw it away. I don’t give a fuck.”
I fingered the envelope, and I couldn’t help but notice that it was lightweight, but the contents felt like very substantial cardboard or a similar material. “Can I open it?”
I sensed that it wouldn’t be wise to just trash the contents.
I took the complete silence from Eli as permission, and I slowly opened the envelope.
Surprised, I glanced at the photos that appeared to be of Eli.
Eli mountain climbing.
Eli fishing.
Eli skydiving.
By the time I flipped to the last picture, I was wondering why I never saw him smile the way he was doing in all of the photos.
I frowned as I viewed the last one.
Two men were standing side by side, and they were mirror images of each other.
One was Eli without his tribal tattoo.
And the other was Eli with the markings he had now.
“I don’t understand,” I said to myself as I traced the marks with my finger. “Are these both you?”
I recognized Eli’s grin, but it wasn’t on the face of the man with the tat.
Was the image some kind of double-image photography?
“Are they both you?” I mumbled again.
My escort finally broke his silence as he turned his hardened expression to the photo I was holding.
“No, they aren’t both me,” he said harshly. “This is me.” He tapped the picture of the man without the tats.
“Then who is this?” I asked as I pointed to the other guy.
I was seriously confused. The two guys were identical, but I’d been able to recognize Eli’s smile.
“The other man is my brother, Austin,” he said in a low, dangerous tone. “He was my identical twin.”
“Where is he now?” I asked in a tremulous voice.
“Dead. He died almost four years ago,” Eli said in a raspy voice.
I nearly dropped the envelope as I hurriedly returned the pictures to the envelope, my heart squeezing like it was in a vise as I took Eli’s hand and led him toward the exit.
CHAPTER 22
JADE
My heart was still racing even after Eli had silently driven us back to his place.
I couldn’t seem to catch my breath as we walked inside his modern beach house. “Tell me what happened, Eli. Please.”
Maybe most of the people at the cocktail party hadn’t seen or felt the pain I could sense coming from Eli. I hurt because I knew that he hurt. I wasn’t sure why it was happening, but I could experience his emotional pain, and feel it like it was my own.
Maybe it was because I knew what it was like to be bonded to a twin, and I couldn’t even imagine living through the death of my sister.
I followed Eli as he shrugged out of his black tuxedo jacket, dropped it on the dining-room chair as he passed through, and proceeded to the living room to fix himself a drink.
He didn’t bother to even take ice from the bar. He just turned up a tumbler and poured a significant amount of Scotch into the glass.
I reached around him and got into the fridge to pour myself a glass of wine, then sat on the couch.
“I don’t talk about Austin,” he said with a growl. “Never.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief as he sat across from me in a chair. I kicked off the heels I was wearing and drew my legs up in front of me. “How can you not talk about it?” I asked, desperately hoping he’d tell me what happened.
It was pretty plain to me that Eli was haunted. I could see the lost look in his eyes even now.
He gulped down half of the glass of fine whisky before he answered roughly, “It happened four years ago. Joel was Austin’s best friend. He was a photographer, so he apparently thought I’d want the pictures. End of story.”
I could hear the warning in his voice, but I wasn’t going to stop pushing. I knew in my heart that he needed to talk about his twin. Everything made sense to me now. He still needed to accept his brother’s death, no matter how painful it might be to get there. “How did he die? He must have been young.”
“Young and stupid,” he replied sharply.
Eli looked up at me and continued, “Austin and I were close, just as tight as you and Brooke are now. But shit happened after we went away to different colleges.”
He gulped down the rest of his drink and went to get another. I took a sip of my wine and waited. I’d sit on the couch the whole night if that’s how long it took Eli to tell me everything.
He sat back down, his glass filled almost to the rim this time. “If you want the whole damn story, I’ll tell it,” he said huskily. “And then I never want to talk about it again.”
I nodded, but didn’t say a word.
“Austin was sixteen minutes older than I was, and he was the heir apparent to my father’s businesses and fortune. Not that I wouldn’t get my share, but it was always assumed he’d be living this life, not me. And I didn’t give a damn. I never wanted this. I never wanted the attention. My dream as a kid had always been space technology, and I happily went away to Caltech to get my PhD. I didn’t really want to run the family business, so I was glad that Austin was prepared to go off to Harvard and get his business degree.”
“Did you get your degree?” I asked breathlessly, stunned by the fact that Eli had wanted to be a real rocket scientist. And maybe I was a bit in awe since Caltech was so damn hard to get into.
He nodded right before he took another gulp of his drink and kept talking. “I’d just finished my PhD when Austin died.”
“I’m so sorry,” I answered in a rush. “What happened?”
“Austin and I were always different. He was always in the limelight because he was a lot more social than I was. There wasn’t anything Austin wouldn’t do to get attention. And I idolized him because I was the shier kid. I was the quiet reader, and Austin was always the sports fanatic, an interest that my dad shared. So the two of them spent a lot of time together watching games and participating in different sports events.”
“Did you feel left out?” I queried softly.
He shook his head. “No. My dad made sure we did other things together. I know that he loved me just as much as he
loved Austin. But my brother was always the bright light, and I was pretty much the science geek.”
Eli was like me.
It was pretty hard to imagine him being socially awkward, but it was possible that he’d grown into the role that he occupied today.
“You’re not a geek anymore,” I reassured him.
He shrugged. “Like I said, I didn’t care. I was more than happy to sit back and let Austin be the outgoing brother. I was content with my own fate. In fact, it was what I desperately wanted.”
“Were you close in college?” Obviously, they weren’t together, but that didn’t mean they didn’t talk. And since money wasn’t an issue, they could be together as much as they wanted when class was out.
“We were at first,” he answered. “But after the first year or two, Austin got pretty wild. He started to fail out of his classes, and every time he called me, he was wasted. He ran with a crazy, rich crowd at Harvard. Drinking, women, drugs, and partying became his major, and no matter how many times I talked to him about it, nothing changed. My parents would send him to rehab, he’d go back to campus, and sooner or later, he’d fall off the wagon again. After five years on the East Coast, my dad just brought him back to California. I think he figured he could straighten him out if he was at home.”
“But he didn’t get better?” I asked.
“Sometimes he did,” Eli said hoarsely. “Hell, there were times we thought he was going to straighten out. Maybe that was the hard part. We’d all start to feel optimistic, and then we’d get slammed over the head again when he disappeared. We knew he was on a binge. But he eventually came home again.”
Until one day he didn’t.
I already knew the story had an unhappy ending, but I waited to hear how his brother had died.
“I got to San Diego as much as I could,” Eli explained. “But it wasn’t enough. Near the end, Austin was doing some stupid shit. Almost like he had a death wish. It was never me who liked to go mountain climbing, to race cars, and to take up any extreme challenge that came my way. I had some hobbies, but after I’d worked that damn hard in college, I wanted to do something with my education.”
“So those things were never your idea?”
No wonder the Eli I knew and the one who did all things crazy had never seemed to jibe.
“Not my thing,” he admitted. “I guess I could always think of something better to do. My free time was at a premium. Not that Austin didn’t ask, but I was usually busy with my studies. Now I guess I do them to keep his memory alive.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “It isn’t your fault, Eli,” I said firmly.
When he’d said his visits home weren’t enough, I knew he was blaming himself.
“I was his twin brother, for fuck’s sake,” he cursed, and then downed a little more of his drink. “I should have been there more, even if I had to do all his crazy shit along with him. It’s fucked up that I only started seriously pursuing those things after he died.”
Actually, it wasn’t so crazy. Eli had been feeling the pain of being cut off from his twin, and he’d wanted to somehow find a way to keep Austin alive. He’d done that by twisting himself into his brother.
He nodded to the envelope in my hand as he explained, “That picture of the two of us at one of his auto races was the last time we were ever together. It was the summer after I’d finished my doctorate. He gave me hell all the time about being boring and not living my life. We’d started to spend more time together, and I was fucking determined to get his ass straightened out, even if I had to climb mountains and learn to hang glide.”
I felt my eyes well up with tears. I tried to keep them in check. I knew it wasn’t the end of the story. But it was killing me to think about Eli trying so hard to get close to his brother but being unable to save Austin.
I watched as Eli drained his glass and slammed it on the end table next to him. “My brother used to tell me to keep the crazy going. It was pretty much his motto in life. ‘Keep the crazy going, bro.’ It was the last thing he said to me the day before he died.”
My heart sank. Eli had obviously taken his brother’s words to heart, and he’d spun himself into a man he really wasn’t to keep the memory of his brother alive.
The tattooed arm.
The crazy stunts.
The extreme challenges.
Taking over his father’s company.
Everything Eli had done since he’d lost his identical twin revolved around making himself into two men. His brother, and himself.
In some ways, I got why he was doing it. Lord knew I would have done anything I could to deny the fact that I’d lost Brooke. But I couldn’t really imagine it because I hadn’t had to live through it like Eli had.
“You don’t have to be Austin,” I told him gently. “I think you can honor his memory without turning into a version of both of you.”
Eli glared at me. “He asked for it. He wanted me to keep the crazy going.”
If my sister had asked something specific of me, maybe I would have done the same thing. But I think it was time that Eli stopped trying to be anybody except himself.
The tears let loose, and I let them fall. My heart was aching, and it was the only way I could lessen the pain. “I don’t think he meant it that way. How did he die?”
“Austin loved the property that you wanted to buy from me. It was a perfect party spot. Nobody around. No cops to bust him for illegal drugs. No problems with any excessive noise from his crazy party friends, like Joel and the rest of the gang from college. Joel and a few other guys were from California, so the party didn’t end when my dad pulled Austin back home. Only the location had changed.”
My heart was in my throat, but I forced two words from my mouth. “What happened?”
“Another party out on the family property. To this day, we aren’t quite sure what happened. Joel and Austin’s other buddies had passed out. They found him at the bottom of a cliff the next morning. Austin fell and broke his neck.”
I stifled a sob by biting my lip.
Eli finally looked me directly in the eyes as he finished. “You want to know why I won’t sell you that useless piece of land? Maybe because it’s not useless to me. My brother died there, Jade. He spent his last moments teetering on a ledge, probably high and completely drunk, before he fell to his death. But I can’t let go of the property, because my brother spent his last moments on Earth there. I hate the damn place, but I can’t fucking let it go.”
The reason why he’d freaked out when he saw me on the edge of the rappelling cliff made sense to me now. He had been terrified, and it was because he’d already lost somebody he cared about to a reckless fall. And just like he’d done with his brother, he blamed himself for my accident.
I gave up trying to pretend that my heart wasn’t breaking for Eli. I stumbled to my feet, walked over to him, and dropped into his lap so I could wrap my arms around his shuddering body.
He lowered his head, and I put mine on top of his. I comforted the most ballsy man I knew while he wept.
CHAPTER 23
JADE
I had no idea whether Eli would have let himself be vulnerable if he hadn’t downed a significant amount of whisky, but it really didn’t matter.
Somehow, I knew he needed to grieve, and to sort out the jumble of emotions he’d held inside for too damn long.
My tears flowed, most of them being absorbed by Eli’s white shirt, while I held on to him like my life depended on it.
I squeaked as he finally composed himself and rose with my body cradled in his arms. “What are you doing?” I asked in a surprised tone.
He lowered me to my feet slowly, and then proceeded to dry the tears that were still pouring down my cheeks. When he was done, he palmed the side of my face, stroking a thumb down my cheek as he said huskily, “I’m about to find out where the zipper of this dress is hidden.”
My heart skittered as I saw his eyes turn smoky and dark. “I
know where it is,” I informed him in a breathless voice.
Deep inside, I probably knew that it wasn’t a good idea to be physically intimate with Eli, but I’d waited so long for him that I wasn’t going to say no.
With Eli, I was either all in or all out. There was no halfway with this man.
“Then I suggest you tell me where it is before I ruin this dress,” he warned.
His large hands sank into my hair, causing the clip to fall out and my confined locks to tumble to my shoulders.
“Better,” he said with satisfaction, just before his mouth came down hard on mine.
I was lost from the moment our lips touched.
I was done not giving Eli everything I had to give. I was in love with him, and as scary as those emotions might be, I wasn’t going to run away.
I wanted him too damn much.
Yes, I’d probably eventually lose him, because that was our deal. But I was going to see exactly how it felt to be with somebody I loved.
My arms snaked around his neck, and my fingers found their way into the coarse strands of his hair.
I whimpered against his mouth, my body demanding so much more.
“Eli,” I moaned as he released my lips.
I let my head fall back, savoring the feel of his hungry kiss on the sensitive skin of my neck.
Every sensible thought I had flew out of my brain as Eli permeated every cell in my body.
I had no control, nor did I want it. All I wanted was to let myself drown in Eli’s hot, sensual touch.
He bit down gently on the skin of my neck, and then rolled his tongue over the sting. The erotic sensation sent me completely over the edge.
I tried to wedge my arms between us to get the shirt off his body.
I need to touch him. I have to touch him.
My movements were so frantic that Eli stepped back and took off his shirt before dumping it onto the floor.
My mouth went dry. Eli Stone was probably the most perfectly built man on the planet, and for the moment, he was mine.
I moved forward and ran my hands down his muscular chest, my fingers nearly burning from the scorching heat of his silken skin. He was throwing off warmth like a furnace, and I was more than happy to let myself fall into that fire.
