by Lindsey Hart
His hands flew, all the joy in the world entering his heart, filling it so full it felt like it would burst. I promise I will always try. We’ll go one day at a time, writing our story.
“Well then.” Effie reached up and slowly wrapped her hands around his neck.
He loved the warmth of her touch, craved the feel of her body next to his, all soft and warm and feminine against his hard-male edges. She was like that to his heart too, soft and warm and bright in all the way she needed it most. He loved her softness, her spirit, her soul. He loved the delicate blush that played over the curve of her cheeks.
“In that case, I guess I can’t refuse. I do miss Ted and Cora and everyone else…”
Jordan didn’t give her a chance to finish. He bent his head and showered her face with kisses. He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her cheeks and finally he claimed her mouth, kissing the breath from her lungs, kissing her with everything he had. He poured out his heart and soul and once again she mended him, kissing him right back, making him whole.
The End
SCARS OF LOVE
Available in the kindle store HERE
Forbidden Love … to heal all Scars
Della
I’m in love with my twin sister’s fiancé.
Don’t worry … I have not told anyone … not even after seeing him go through the year-long painful recovery after a devastating accident left him burned, scarred and bitter.
I thought my sister Evie would always be there for him.
But I was wrong! She did not hesitate to walk out on him at a time that he needed her the most.
So, what did I do … I switched places with her.
I told Evie that we would keep the pretense only till he gets his life back on track. And then I would slowly break off the relationship.
At least that had been the plan … until he touched me …
Preview
CHAPTER 1
Della
Early morning sunlight streamed through the huge, double pane window that backed Della Johnson’s queen-sized bed. It bathed the brass frame in twinkling, stunning beauty. The little glass prism perched on the antique washstand that served as a night table threw a rainbow over the right corner of the white bedsheets.
This is what days off are for. Staying in bed. Watching the sun. Della produced her arms from the cave of blankets, reached into the air, and stretched the kinks of the night out. Her motion produced a thousand small tiny dust mites which glittered and shimmered, far prettier than they deserved to be, in the sunshine’s rays.
After a long work week, Saturdays were almost sacred. Do nothing all morning. Yoga in the afternoon, if she felt like it. If she couldn’t get motivated to head to a class, at least she could tune into a podcast on her phone, do ten minutes of it and call it a day.
Sundays were for errands. They were for grocery shopping and laundry, cleaning, cooking and worrying about the upcoming week. Not Saturday. No, Saturdays were a break from the grinding machine Della put herself through all week.
The abrupt slam of her apartment’s front door shattered all illusions of a peaceful morning. What the hell. It could be only one of two people busting into the apartment so early in the morning. Early, meant ten, wasn’t early at all, but people knew to stay the hell out on her days off.
Della weighed the odds, trying to guess by the rustle coming from down the hall, who the intruder was. Not her father. He always knocked first. That left her mother or her twin sister.
She pulled open the top drawer of the highboy, antique dresser, and chose a pair of grey leggings. Ripping off her pajama pants, Della slipped them on and followed up with a black tunic.
Since the noise hadn’t escalated into someone tidying the kitchen, it was a pretty good tell that it wasn’t her mother breaking and entering. That left Eve. Her identical twin sister.
Sure enough, a minute later, the bedroom door cracked open and Eve stuck her head in. “Oh good. You’re awake.”
“I am now,” Della responded, tone only half as grouchy as she intended.
“You know, normal people get up at like seven or eight. Even on the weekend.”
Della shrugged. “Guess I’m not normal then. Anyway, normal people knock and wait for the door to be answered.”
Normally Eve would have grinned. It shocked Della to see tears well up in her sister’s light blue eyes. Her lips, a natural hue of pale pink without any addition of gloss or lipstick, trembled.
“Evie?” Della moved across the room to wrap her sister in a tight hug. If anyone chanced to look in the window, it might have given them a start, seeing two of the exact same person wrapping their arms around one another.
“I just can’t do it anymore.” Evie pulled out of the hug. She stumbled across the room and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. Huge tears flooded Evie’s eyes and spilled down her porcelain cheeks. They dripped off her dainty jawbone and landed on her pink blazer.
Della didn’t stop to wonder who the hell wore a blazer on a Saturday morning when they had nowhere to go but their sister’s apartment. She joined Evie on the bed, sitting as close as possible. She turned and took Evie’s hand in her own. It was unnaturally cold and limp, as though the life had gone out of her sister.
“Can’t do what anymore?” Della prodded gently. Her heart sunk into her stomach. She already knew what Evie was going to say.
“I can’t stay with him anymore. He’s… impossible. Since coming home last month, he’s… a total stranger. I thought maybe once he got out of the hospital that he’d be different. You know- be thankful that he’s alive, but it’s the same thing every single day. He won’t leave the house. He’s so bitter, it’s impossible to get through to him. I just… can’t.”
Della raised a hand and gently caressed her sister’s fine, flaxen blonde hair. “I know sweetheart. None of us thought it was going to be an easy road. You just have to hang in there. You’re stronger than you know. You’ve been the one to see him through all of this. You’ve been basically living at the hospital for months. No one would ever blame you for being angry or emotional. You just have to-”
“No!” Evie pulled away. Her normally pale blue eyes darkened with the intensity of her anger. “This isn’t just me going through a rough patch or having some doubts. I’m done. Done. I was done before the accident. I was going to tell him and then it happened. I couldn’t just leave him. Everyone would have judged me. They would have said I was jumping ship instead of standing by the man I was supposed to love. They would have judged me and ridiculed me and said the worst things imaginable.”
“I…” Della was frozen in shock. She finally realized she was sitting there, mouth hanging open, staring. She snapped her mouth shut and glanced away. Her throat felt bone dry. It was hard to even swallow let alone form words. Finally, she glanced back at her sister. The tears had stopped. Evie sat, back ramrod straight. She stared forward, seeing absolutely nothing at all. “Are you sure?” Della finally whispered.
“Yes.” Evie didn’t look at her. “Yes, I’m sure. I- it’s just that… if I leave him now, I’m scared of what will happen. He’s so- fragile. Like one wrong move would send him over the edge. Into… I don’t even know. I don’t want to think about it. Sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to do something to harm himself.”
“No! He wouldn’t! Not after nearly a year of lying in a hospital bed, healing from all those skin grafts. He wouldn’t have gone through all that pain just to… uh- well…”
“I don’t know. He had people watching him in the hospital. He didn’t have a choice there. Although, maybe you’re right. Maybe he wouldn’t actively do something to harm himself. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. He’s just- lost. We all are. I’m afraid that if I leave, that if I’m no longer there to support him then he wouldn’t have a life at all. He already doesn’t leave the house. He doesn’t see other people. He’s walled himself away because he can. He has the insurance money and he doesn’t ever need to leave. I do
everything for him. Grocery shopping, driving him when he does have to go to the hospital, whatever it takes, Evie’s there to do it. Anyway, I think without me there, he would just give up.”
“You said though- that you were considering leaving before the accident?” Della’s throat closed up even tighter. She struggled to choke the words out. Her stomach churned violently. The only thing harder than seeing her sister with Thomas every single day was imagining a time when Evie and Thomas weren’t together.
Then I wouldn’t see him at all.
Evie hung her head. “Yes. We were fighting all the time. About everything. I didn’t want to go through with the wedding. I was going to tell him and then…”
“Then the accident happened.”
“Yes. And like I said, I couldn’t walk away. People would have called me a coward. I couldn’t live it down. I made a promise to myself that I would see him through this, see him well and happy and then I would leave. It might be excusable then. He’s changed. I’ve changed. Nothing is the same.”
“It would still be shocking.”
“I can see you’re shocked.”
Della blinked. “Of course, I’m shocked. I never thought you were unhappy! I’m your sister and you never told me once!” The sting of those words cut deep. It was true. She and Evie had shared everything right from the time they were in the same womb. They played all those stupid identical twin tricks on everyone growing up, even on their own parents. Even now it was impossible for people to tell them apart if they didn’t want them to.
If we don’t want them to. Of course!
“Oh no. You’re thinking of something awful. I can just tell. You get this look on your face when you have these ideas. Like the time you thought me filling in for you at your lifeguard shift would be perfectly acceptable.”
“Hey, that was fine. Nothing happened.”
“Someone could have drowned.”
“No one ever drowns.”
“No one ever rolls their car over and burns alive and survives.”
The moment of levity faded at Evie’s words. Thomas Porter had been through hell. Literally. The flames from that vehicle seared up his right side, over his leg, his chest, his neck and swirled over his cheek. Mercifully, most of his face had been spared.
“I have an idea,” Della whispered. This time there was no humor in her tone. “It’s not a good one, but it might be a solution, at least for the next few months.”
“What’s that?” Evie leaned forward, obviously interested despite herself.
“We switch lives.”
CHAPTER 2
Della
“Come on! That’s insane!” Evie jumped off the bed and began to pace distractedly in the four-foot area in the small room.
“It’s not really that bad of an idea,” Della protested. Her stomach cramped hard. This was the worst possible time, the worst possible way, but it was a way and she had to take it if she could. “It would just be for a couple of months.” She edged off the bed, stalked to her sister and gripped her hand firmly, stopping the pacing. “A couple of months to try and help Thomas. To see him through the worst of this period. Until, well, until he can be trusted to be on his own.”
“I didn’t mean that he can’t be trusted,” Evie sighed. “It’s hard to explain.” Tears filled her eyes again, but she blinked rapidly to keep them at bay. “I just mean, he’s trying to kill himself. He doesn’t want to live. He drinks himself into a stupor. He just sits and stares out the window for hours at a time and I know he’s somewhere else. He… I don’t think he’d do anything to actually harm himself, but I mean, isn’t not wanting to live the same thing as wanting to die?”
Della didn’t know. Her heart ached. Ached for her sister and for the man she’d loved, secretly, for over five years. She’d been the first one to see him. To laugh and smile and talk with him at that party. They’d been friends for months before Thomas met her sister. That was it. The minute he saw Evie, Della’s heart was shattered. She’d been a good sister. Thomas had just been a friend. If he wanted to see Evie, it was fair game. She’d been the supportive, happy sister the entire time she watched Evie and Thomas fall in love. All the while she’d been left to wonder what it was that she didn’t have that Evie did. There had to be something because they were identical. What was so wrong with her personality that Thomas couldn’t love her?
“I don’t know,” Della finally whispered. She shook her head, aware that Evie was staring at her strangely. She forced that same blank mask she’d carefully put on for years back over her face. “It could work. I could pretend to be you. Go home. Make sure Thomas is fine and then when he can actually be rational and listen, explain why we can’t be together. Unless… unless you can last a couple more months?”
“I can’t.” Evie hung her head. “I just… can’t.”
Della didn’t get it. She would have done anything, anything, to be the one who lived with Thomas Porter. To be the one who wore his ring and resided in his heart. He’d lived through hell and clearly, he still was. She wouldn’t just walk out on him. She would stand with him, beside him, the same way she’d often sat in for her sister at the hospital.
“So, let me do it. He wouldn’t ever find out. We look exactly the same. Sound the same. I know everything about you and you know everything about me. You aren’t working so we wouldn’t have to worry about me flubbing up your job and being discovered that way. And we both worked at the lighting store before you decided to jump ship and leave me.”
“I didn’t leave you. I just saw an opportunity and took it.”
“Yes. I know. I know you always hated selling lamps and ceiling fans, but you know it! That’s the whole point. We could really do this!”
Evie’s blue eyes locked on Della’s face. They were filled with disbelief, but there was also a small flicker of hope. Hope that she could find a way out, out of the nightmare that was everything Della had ever wanted.
“You would really do that? You really think it could work?”
“I know it’s not a good plan. I know all of the hundred reasons why we shouldn’t do it, but if it means making sure Thomas is going to be okay rather than just walking out on him and having all these fears and regrets, then isn’t it worth it?”
“The problem is, I don’t think it’s just going to take a couple months. I can’t get through to him. I just kept hoping things would be different when he left the hospital. That he’d want to get back to living instead of just lying in a bed all day, but it’s like he lost his spirit in that accident. Like the fire just burned up his heart and everything we might have had. He’s not the same. He’s never going to be the same.”
“I’ll get through to him.” Della squeezed her sister’s hand, a little too hard. Evie gasped.
“How? How could you get through to him when I’ve done everything I possibly can?”
“I don’t know.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “That’s the problem. I don’t know either. This is bad. It could end badly if someone finds out what we’ve done. If Thomas finds out.”
“He won’t. I promise. We’ve had so much practice with this over the years. We’ve done this a thousand times. We fooled our own parents for over two weeks.”
“That was years ago. We were just kids.”
“We were fourteen. It’s not so different now.”
“No. Now it’s just fifteen years later and I’m engaged to the guy and we’ve just lost a year of our lives living through the worst hell anyone possibly could. This isn’t a joke, Della. This is someone’s life.”
“I know,” Della whispered hoarsely. “Believe me, I know. Thomas is my friend. He’s been my friend for years. I was the one who sat beside his hospital bed when you couldn’t be there. I would never want to hurt him. That’s exactly why I suggested this. To make sure he doesn’t get hurt.”
“I… I don’t know what to do.” Evie turned towards Della and wrapped her arms around her. She rested her head on Della’s shoulder. �
��You have no idea what this year was really like for me. How I wanted to leave before the accident. How I kept hoping that something will change, inside me, or with Thomas, but nothing does.” She laughed bitterly, a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “No, that’s not true. Everything changed. Everything just kept getting worse. Sometimes I can barely stand to be there at all. The times I said I couldn’t make it to the hospital- it was because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to hear his screams of pain anymore or sit there and hold his hand and tell him everything was going to be alright when I felt so dead inside.”
Della shivered. She’d never heard her sister talk like that before. Not once, in the entire year Thomas had been in that hospital, had Evie ever said anything like that.
“Stay here then,” Della whispered into her sister’s hair. Her arms tightened around Evie’s shoulders and for the first time, she realized how frail her sister felt. “Don’t go back home. Do my makeup and give me your clothes and I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll stay and I’ll keep staying until we can just go back to being us again. You’ll see. One day, when all this is behind us, we’ll look back and be glad we did this. I’ll get through to Thomas. I’ll make sure he’s okay. We’ll all be okay. I promise.”
“And what happens if we’re not?” Evie whispered into Della’s shoulder. “What happens if this all goes to hell?”
From the sounds of it, we’re already there, every single one of us. “It won’t. I promise, it won’t.”
Evie shuddered violently. She began to tremble and there was no stopping it. Della knew she had won.
The morning had started off so normal, so sweet and filled with promise and innocence and then her sister had walked in and suddenly, everything Della had ever wanted was on offer. The man she loved could be hers, if only for a short time. She would be the one to help him heal, to walk through the worst of it beside him. It was all she had ever dreamed of.
