Above The Surface

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Irritation had me squinting at him. “It isn’t shit.”

  “You’re right, sweetheart, it isn’t shit.” His snarl had the hairs at the back of my neck pricking to attention. And I wasn’t surprised when he moved me backward, not stopping until I was pinned against the wall. “Not much of a fucking curse, is it, when the only reason I’m here, safe, and out of harm’s way from my bastard of a brother’s intentions is because I’m with you. I might be in a jail cell if it weren’t because of us—because of this.”

  My eyes flared wide at that. “I-I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “No, I can see you didn’t, but I have.” His hands grabbed mine, and he threaded our fingers together. “We are not your parents. We are Thea and Adam. We are not cursed.”

  He stared at me with eyes that were stormy. Overwhelmed with fear for his boy and outright shocked at how this was going down, and I knew he was right.

  Life hurled shit at everyone.

  But our link had saved him.

  We were here together because of the bond.

  If I’d ignored it, turned him away, and he’d gone on the flight he was supposed to take, he’d be in Boston again. A warrant for his arrest out on him.

  My bottom lip quivered as I came to terms with that, then I whispered, “We are not my parents. We are Thea and Adam. We are not cursed.”

  He gulped, and his eyes closed, denying me the sight of his raw pain and the thread of relief that ran through it like a vein of gold running through a rock.

  I reached up on tiptoe and did the only thing I could. I kissed him.

  Gently.

  I slipped my arms around his waist and held him to me before I whispered against his chest, “Let’s go bring Freddie home.”

  And that was what we did.

  Together.

  ADAM

  When I saw my brother’s smirk, I wasn’t sure what the hell was the matter with him.

  I’d always known he was a psycho, even if he’d hidden it from the rest of the world, but to see him smiling as he listened to the jury declare him guilty for his crimes, I truly wondered if he should be in prison for the rest of his life or some kind of psychiatric ward.

  He was unhinged.

  Something I’d always known too, but I was at a loss. I knew my father and mother were too, Mom more than Dad. She was devastated, to the point where we couldn’t mention the case or his name, and she hadn’t left the house in months. I knew, point blank, Dad had hired the new nurse not to keep an eye on her, but for suicide watch. She was days away from doing something stupid—we all knew that.

  I hadn’t spoken to her, not because I was cruel, but because I genuinely had nothing to say.

  I figured she was just as unhinged for not seeing the signs. Cain was crazy. Simple. For her to be so close to him, for her to fail to see that, blew my ever loving mind.

  All the while the jury condemned him, he stood there, grinning at me. Our eyes connected. United.

  Two faces, so alike that I’d have been screwed if I hadn’t been in Australia with Thea, two hearts that had formed at the same time within our mother’s body, and yet, we were so different.

  So distant.

  We’d never been close.

  We’d come into being closer than two people could ever be, but there was a chasm between us, a chasm, at the moment, I was grateful for.

  I smiled back at him when the jury’s declaration was complete, when the judge passed his sentence. His faltered when he learned how long he’d be in jail—until we were both very, very old men—and I carried on smiling when he was taken away.

  There was nothing to be amused about.

  Nothing.

  At all.

  But with Cain, it was a show of strength. A smack to the face. A punch to the jaw.

  Thea tightened her hand around mine, and she murmured, “It’s over.”

  “It isn’t,” I countered. “Won’t be until he’s dead, but if we had a curse, Thea, then it’s been sent away for a long ass time.”

  She pressed her lips to mine, and I sighed into the kiss.

  My father smacked my knee a second later, and muttered, “Thank God that’s over. Now I have to break the news to your mother.”

  “She won’t want to hear it,” I said dismissively.

  “No, she won’t. But that’s all the more reason why she should have to.”

  She should have heard everything. Every last miserable part of this trial.

  I’d loathed Maria with a passion that would have sent me away for the rest of my life, because it would have been easy to pin that on me. But as much as I’d hated her, I hadn’t wanted her dead. I’d just wanted my freedom.

  Cain? He’d wanted his son and he’d wanted to hurt me—so he’d decided to kill two birds with one stone. Maria was just a pawn in that, just as she’d been ever since she’d gotten pregnant with Cain’s kid and I’d had to marry her. Turned out, Cain had been in contact with Maria ever since he’d been released—the dumb fuck was even the father of her unborn child. I hadn’t known about it because I hadn’t given a fuck about who Maria consorted with.

  But when I’d thrown the divorce notice at her, Maria, being the sly bitch she was, had decided to play games.

  And one thing I’d learned in twenty-four years of having a psycho for a brother, you didn’t play games with a nutcase.

  “Marry me, or I’ll never let you see Freddie.”

  I could still hear Cain as he used that reasoning for taking Maria down—uncaring that he was taking two lives as he did so.

  I wasn’t even sure why he was interested in Freddie. He was a selfish asshole with no interest in anyone other than himself, but then it had all started to make sense when the prosecution had looked into his background.

  That trust fund of grandfather’s?

  The one we earned when we graduated high school?

  There was a caveat.

  If we didn’t graduate, and didn’t have the right to the trust at eighteen, then had a child, and were living in poverty, we were to be granted half the trust to help raise the child as a Ramsden deserved to be raised.

  That was why he wanted Freddie.

  As usual, he only saw dollar signs.

  The defense, though my mom had insisted on an expensive team—goddamn her—had little to back them up. Unsurprisingly, the prosecution had mauled them, and the jury had only taken forty minutes to deliberate the verdict my twin deserved.

  The court began to clear once Cain was taken down with a final sick and twisted smile for me—even though he’d lost and I’d won this insane war he’d started—and we waited, because we were at the front, for the back to empty.

  I knew waiting wouldn’t stop what was about to happen. The wave of press had been insane ever since my return from Australia months before.

  The case had stunned the nation.

  One twin plotting the other twin’s demise?

  It belonged in a bad soap opera. But it went deeper than Cain’s instinctive and soul deep hatred of me.

  A part of me wondered if, like Thea had once told me, every gift came with a curse... I wondered if it counterbalanced the so-called Kinkade curse. Because she sure as hell counteracted the connection I should have had with my twin.

  She was the only thing that made this bearable.

  We were going to be seeing a lot more of courtrooms in the future too. While Thea, Freddie, and I had transferred to California so she could complete her degree in accounting—just the thought of her as an accountant always made me want to laugh because it just wasn’t her—we’d be flying back and forth across the country as soon as the team of defense lawyers we’d hired went to work on liberating Genevieve from her prison sentence.

  I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but Thea was willing to blow millions to make it happen. I’d seen her bank statement in the aftermath of all the sponsorship deals she had going on—she could well afford it—and while, in this country, money sometimes spoke louder than
justice, I wasn’t sure if it would in this case.

  But we were going to try.

  Just as we were going to have to avoid Genevieve’s doomsday premonitions when she found out who we were to one another.

  She might think we were cursed, but I knew otherwise.

  We were blessed.

  Thea was my jílo, and I was hers.

  The thought dragged me from the miserable moment, and I tugged at the ring I’d placed on Thea’s finger the day after we’d found Freddie in the family’s vacation home in Winthrop, where Cain, ever myopic, had gone to ground. Swiveling the ring around, I rubbed the emerald before I muttered, “I’m ready to go home.”

  She nodded tiredly, giving me a wan smile before she tipped her head back and reached up to kiss me. A simple connection, yet somehow so complex. Even as it recharged my batteries, she whispered, “Me too.”

  Because she knew what I meant.

  She was my home, and I was beyond ready to be alone with her, away from prying eyes, away from cameras and reporters who wanted to know all the sordid details.

  So, we’d go home, and we’d be away from those eyes and the flashes and the gossips, sticking together like glue, united against the world.

  And that was how it would be, for as long as we both would live, because my curse was in jail, my blessing slept in the same bed as me, and unlike my brother, I was no fool.

  I knew what I had, and I’d spend the rest of my life proving to her that, to me, there was no greater gift than having Theodosia Kinkade at my side.

  Curses be damned.

  THEA

  A squeal hit my ears the second I made it out of the locker room, and I laughed when Freddie hurled himself at me, his hands coming around my knees as he did a little happy dance.

  Before I crouched down, I removed the gold medal from around my neck and plunked it over his head. His eyes grew big as I dropped down to a crouch and hauled him into me for a hug.

  His squeals of excitement made me laugh some more, and I squeezed him back as hard as he squeezed me. Over his shoulder, I saw his dad and I bit my lip at the sight of him with the baby sling on his shoulder. Something about that, that whole image of the sexy dad, shit, it made me so glad he was mine and that, later on, I could show him exactly whom he belonged to.

  Again and again.

  He grinned at me, one hand on the back of Ally’s head as he began to move faster, forcing the crowds to part so he could come to us.

  “You did it! Momma, you did it! Again!”

  Freddie’s excitement had me pulling back to grin at him, and I plucked the gold medal and let it clatter against the other six around his neck. He insisted on wearing them for every race, and the press insisted on finding him in the crowd—he was getting to be the poster child of Olympic swimming, and he wasn’t even taking part. He was already the U.S. Swim Team’s unofficial mascot, getting fist bumps from athletes every time he came into the stadium.

  “I told you she would,” Adam drawled, having finally reached us, but his excitement and pleasure was clear in his eyes.

  I stood up straight and let him haul me into his side. In my ear, he muttered, “Well done, babe. You rocked it out there.”

  Grinning up at him, I joked, “I did, didn’t I?”

  “How do you feel about rocking my world later?”

  I pretended to ponder that for a second. “I think world rocking can be achieved.” He winked at me and I chuckled, feeling so fucking happy I was sure I could burst.

  Staring into the little sling at the tiny knit cap that topped my daughter’s dark bronze locks, and cupping the back of Freddie’s head as he cuddled both mine and Adam’s legs, I wondered how it was that this tiny little universe of mine could be so perfect.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d earned it, or even if I deserved it, but I was glad for it.

  So damn glad.

  Sighing as Adam tucked me into his arms, I enjoyed it for about a second before Ally squeaked her outrage—she didn’t like sharing her daddy.

  I pulled back to snort at her, then rubbed her head before I pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and whispered in her ear the name I’d whispered in it the day I’d given birth to her, “Draba.” It meant ‘charm,’ and even though I knew Adam and I didn’t need the extra help, I figured it was always good to count your blessings, and protect the future from itself.

  Just in case.

  She cooed at the name, and I smiled, before I tugged at the little knit cap she wore which was about four years in the making. Not because it had taken so long to make, but because the gesture behind it had.

  My mother, while no longer imprisoned, had never tried to be close to me, and when she learned Adam and I were together, she’d gone out of her way to never contact me.

  Until Ally.

  Until I’d done a stupid interview in a stupid magazine to get the stupid press off my back.

  Ally was short for Allegria.

  My nanny’s name.

  Maybe, in time, she’d get the nickname of Leggy too, and though it would probably give Adam a heart attack, I was okay with that. I liked the idea of another Leggy roaming around.

  I also liked the idea of another Vinnie roaming around too. I figured both old ladies would be in heaven, rocking things up about now.

  “Where is he?” I questioned, staring up at Adam.

  “Dad’s hoarding him, as usual,” he grumbled, twisting around to peer over his shoulder. I stood on tiptoes and just saw Robert through the crowd.

  He strode toward us, a blue sling on his chest, and I grinned at him when he gave me two thumbs up. The second he was near, he congratulated me, but though I darted onto tiptoe to kiss his cheek, I gave my son more attention, whispering his name in his ear too, “Kham.” It meant the sun in my language, and that was because he brightened every day now he was in it.

  Both babies responded to their names with smiles, like they knew I was sharing a secret with them, a secret that was only for us until they elected to give it to their chosen partner.

  Would they have jílos?

  Would they have to strive like Adam and I had? I wasn’t sure if I wanted that for them, but I prayed they’d be blessed as we had with a love so pure, so strong, that it could survive psychopaths and years of misery.

  Now, with my family altogether, my universe was complete, and I sighed happily, more happier now than I’d been back in the water.

  Which was really saying something.

  Sure, there were always shadows to spoil things. Mom was still certain we were cursed, though we’d been together four years, and although she loved the kids, we were graced with doomsday looks every time she visited. It saddened me that I was glad those visits were rare.

  Anna, after Cain’s sentencing, was pretty much catatonic—existing from Valium to Valium, while never leaving her house. To be fair, I wasn’t too upset about that. The bitch. Adam had finally told me everything, from how she’d forced him to marry Maria or she’d take away my grants, to how she’d slapped him and hit him—not once, but often over his childhood.

  And though Cain’s specter and Maria’s death would always affect Freddie—he still had some nightmares about being stolen away from his bed by a man who looked like his dad but who, Freddie declared, he’d known wasn’t—I knew we were exactly what he needed. A normal family.

  Well, as normal as we got.

  “I don’t know how it’s possible that you’re as fast now as you were before,” Robert muttered in disbelief as he bounced Vinnie, who’d started to grumble. “I mean, you had kids. You’re older.”

  “My father, the charmer,” Adam interjected dryly.

  Snorting, I shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

  Adam rolled his eyes at our personal play on words, making me smirk at him.

  “What? It is!”

  “Freddie, show me the good stuff,” Robert said, and my son trudged over to him, but he kept his arm over his chest so Robert couldn’t see the medals.

  Both gra
ndfather and grandson were a little grabby handed with the medals. It was fortunate I had enough for everyone to wear if they wanted to.

  As Freddie and Robert bickered over my pretty hardware, I turned to Adam and saw he was watching me. There was heat, as always, in his eyes. But more than that, there was love and need and affection and… just everything.

  A universe of feeling in that one glance.

  We’d come a long way to make it here, and every day with three kids, a pro-athletic career, and a real estate company wasn’t exactly peaceful, but we made it work and we were happy.

  “What do you think?” Adam asked quietly. “Have you decided?”

  I bit my lip as I thought back to the water, and I thought about how it felt to race, and to take part in something as crazy as this, but also something as thrilling.

  I’d been talking about retiring. The twins took a lot of energy, Freddie’s aptitude for the water was like his bio father’s—not that he knew and ever would know Cain was his bio dad—and we knew he’d want to start racing like me when he could. Life was kind of crazy, but…

  I pulled a sheepish face at him, and his eyes flashed with laughter. “You owe me five hundred bucks.”

  “You don’t have to crow!” I grumbled, shoving him in the side. Not hard, but hell, from Ally’s squawk, you’d think I triggered an earthquake.

  “I totally have to crow. I knew you wouldn’t be ready—”

  “What’s this?” Robert demanded, breaking into our bickering.

  Adam slipped his arm around my shoulder and pressed a kiss to my temple. “Thea thought she might be ready to retire after the games.”

  Robert arched a brow. “Why? After that performance—”

  “It’s a lot of pressure,” I muttered, “and I’d like to end on a high.” But when I looked around the complex, and peered out the window and saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and knew that in a couple of months we’d be heading around the globe for more competitions… I knew I wasn’t ready for it to end.

  We homeschooled Freddie because we didn’t want him tainted by a place like Rosemore, which was one of the top schools in Boston, and with the twins being so young, it meant we could be on the move with no real issue. Maybe, in time, we’d find schools that fit our kids and our needs, but still, in the here? The now?