by Lily White
Ten years.
Ten fucking years since we’ve really spent time with her and we’re still both bowing at her feet.
So many people consider this girl weak, but they have no idea about the strength inside. She acts so damn prim and proper, so delicate and well-managed, so meek and mild until that temper blows, and then she’s snapping orders and shaking the walls down around her.
Damon and I both listen when she makes her demands.
And maybe that’s the problem.
Maybe that’s always been the problem.
Maybe I should snap my leash and finally stop listening.
“You should get out, too,” I tell her as I turn and walk over to my bed.
Dropping my weight on the mattress, I lean against the pillows and tuck my hands behind my head, my ankles crossed like I’m fully relaxed without a single fuck to give about walking in on the woman I love making out with my goddamned brother.
Rather than listening to me (not that I thought she would), Emily closes the door, turns to face me and folds her arms across her chest.
“That wasn’t how it looked.”
Oh, Jesus. Is she seriously giving me that tired line? I toss one right back at her.
“Right, because you two were just inspecting each other’s tonsils with your tongues. Perfectly normal.”
“He kissed me.”
A bark of laughter bursts from my chest. “I’ve heard that before, too, killer. A little over a week ago, in fact.”
Locking my eyes to hers, I decide to strike where it hurts.
“Did I kiss you, too? Was it just me fucking you a week ago? Is that what you tell yourself so your conscience is clear? I’m sure you had no part in what happened between us either. It was all me, right?”
The pink over her cheeks morphs into an angry red, the color so dark it matches her hair.
The thing about fighting with a queen that’s important to remember is that these bitches have claws that sink deep and hit their mark.
“And I guess you’re perfectly fine with hurting Damon even after being held back and forced to watch someone else abuse him. It wasn’t enough for you to see him get beaten. You have to be the same kind of monster that reminds him what it’s like.”
I’m on my feet again so fast I don’t remember jumping up from the bed.
By the time I finally comprehend I’ve moved, I’ve backed Emily against a wall, her defiant little chin tipped high and my head ducking down until we’re eye level.
“Don’t even pretend you know anything about that. Don’t say the first fucking word about it.”
“I know I’m right,” she argues, her eyes like knives stabbing me in the face. “I know you can’t help but hurt people when you get mad. There’s a reason people call you Violence.”
She has no idea.
Rather than yelling or threatening her, I grin instead, the look cold and emotionless.
“Yeah, sweetheart, there is a reason they call me that. But there’s other reasons, too. Would you like to strip off your clothes and find out about them? I’ll be more than happy to demonstrate.”
Planting a hand on the wall by her head, I run a hard look down her body and back up again, my grin widening in a dare.
Her pissed off glare doesn’t so much as twitch in response.
Such a queen.
Strong and fucking fearless.
“This isn’t working,” she snaps instead of acknowledging what I said.
“You’re damn right about that.”
“So then we should end this.”
No.
There’s no way in hell that’s happening.
It doesn’t matter how furious I am right now, there’s no way I’m letting her go again.
I push away from the wall and step back from her.
“In five weeks, we will.”
Throwing up her arms in frustration, she steps my direction and stops.
“Why? This is ridiculous, Ezra. It’s been one week, and already you and Damon are fighting.”
I step toward her.
“Well maybe if you’d make up your fucking mind about which one of us you want, this wouldn’t be such a fucking problem.”
She flinches at the words, her body going still before her stare locks to mine and a sweet smile splits her lips.
“Fine. I pick Damon.”
Oh, fuck that…
Pure rage filters through me at that bullshit answer.
“I think we both know that’s not your answer.”
“You’re right,” she says, her voice a bare whisper. “Because I pick neither of you. Just like before, and just like I plan to do again.”
Another lie.
I can see it written over her expression, can see it in the pain she’s fighting like hell to hide in her beautiful turquoise eyes.
“So you might as well let me walk away now since it won’t change the outcome.”
My jaw tics, her eyes flicking to the quick motion and back to mine.
“I can’t do that.”
“You have no choice. I can walk out of here right now and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
She gets quiet then, her gaze searching my face, this stare down heavy with everything we want to say but can’t bring ourselves to admit.
I love you, I don’t say.
I can’t stand you, is just another thought I keep to myself.
“This isn’t working,” Em finally argues as she turns to walk away. “I’m sorry, Ezra, but I’m leaving.”
She’s halfway to the door when I call out to her.
“That’s fine. But on your way out, why don’t you stop by Damon’s room and let him know about the promise you broke to me? Why don’t you tell him the truth about that for once?”
I’m shouting at this point, not giving a damn if Damon hears us.
He needs to hear us.
Needs to back the fuck off because this woman is mine and nobody else’s.
I know for a fact she’s never mentioned it to him. Damon has come up with every damn reason for why Emily left like she did, but not once has he blamed it on the promise she made me.
I’m not even sure why I’m suggesting it, but it stops her in place, her head falling forward before she slowly turns to look at me.
“Why would I do that? Why would I hurt him like that?”
Hurt him?
I know Damon has a thing for her. That’s pretty fucking obvious now. But hurt him?
She acts like she hasn’t been doing the same thing to me since the day she stopped answering my calls.
A flicker of a thought races through my mind, a voice whispering at the back of my head that I can’t hear clearly. Still, it’s there, but I’m too angry right now to take a second and listen to what it says.
“If you walk away from this, I’ll be the one to tell him.”
“Why?”
The skin between her eyes crinkles, the color from earlier absent from her face.
“Why would you do that to him?”
Interesting.
“Do what to him?”
She shakes her head without answering and sighs.
“Whatever. I give up. Five more weeks of pure hell. Are you planning on hurting me every day from now on the same way you’ve been hurting me this past week? Just let me know so I can prepare myself for the torture.”
Hurting her.
She says that like she hasn’t been hurting me this entire time.
Stepping close to her, I dip my head in the way I know drives her crazy. It always makes her eyes widen when we’re this close, her lips slightly parting as her pulses races that much faster.
“Have I hurt you?”
Emily’s eyes water, both sorrow and rage contained in her salty tears. Only one escapes to slip slowly down her cheek.
“Yes. Every day. Just by existing in this fucked up arrangement and refusing to walk away. You know exactly what you do to me.”
I grin at that, my eyes track
ing that tear until I lift my hand to catch it on my finger.
“You’ll have to forgive me then. It couldn’t be helped.”
Her eyes lock to mine, her lashes waterlogged.
“You can’t help hurting me?”
My grin widens.
“It just happens, especially when you’re so pretty when you cry.”
I flick the tear back at her and step away.
Emily fractures as my words hang between us.
I watch the pieces fall apart.
Watch her heart shatter.
Watch pain ebb and flow so violently in her eyes.
But then she does the one thing she’s always done.
She picks up all those broken pieces and stitches them back together, her eyes locking to mine with defiance and rage blazing behind them.
It makes me grin to see it.
“I’ll see you later, killer. It’s getting late. You should run home now so I can get some sleep.”
Cold fury rolls through her eyes. The same I have in me. The type a person feels when they’ve been sliced cleanly to the bone.
“I hate you,” she hisses.
Laughing softly at that, I round my shoulders.
“The feeling’s mutual.”
She stares at me a moment longer before her hands fist and relax, her indecision clear about whether to cut me off at the knees.
“Great. I’m glad we got that cleared up. I’ll see you later, I guess.”
Neither of us speak as she turns to walk across my room and leave, but before she opens the door, Emily pauses with her hand on the knob.
“I have to wonder if you’re doing this to me now as another bet with Mason.”
My body stills in place, disbelief filling my head. How the fuck does she know about that?
She glances over her shoulder at me and smiles, the expression not reaching her eyes.
“I sure hope I’m worth more than five bucks this time. I think you can afford it. I’d like to think my pain is at least worth ten now.”
Our stares dance together, the knife she just tossed firmly embedded in my chest.
“Have a good night, Ezra. Sweet dreams and all that.”
Opening the door before I can respond, Emily turns the corner and disappears down the hall.
Every instinct is telling me to run after her. Every thought is screaming for me to fall at her feet and explain about the reason I first talked to her when we were kids.
Yet I can’t take the first step in her direction. I can’t find my voice in time to scream out for her to stop.
I can’t do anything right when it comes to Emily.
So I punch a wall several times instead, plaster and dust raining down onto my feet.
Emily
The night of the bonfire meant everything to me.
Really, it wasn’t much, and I’m sure other women have experienced a moment like that several times in their lives.
It’s not like Ezra went down on a knee and proposed marriage or anything. It wasn’t like he stared up at me with hope and love behind his eyes while asking me to promise myself to him for the rest of our lives. But it was the closest thing I’d ever get to a moment like that.
He was asking me to be his alone. Admitting who I was to him and begging me to feel the same way. He was stripping the words from my heart and claiming them as his.
Ezra was giving me a moment I never thought I’d have. Not with the arranged marriage. Not with being promised to a man who didn’t want me.
The screwed-up part is I don’t think he knows how much it meant to me.
People have their futures to look forward to growing up, and although that future doesn’t look the same for everyone, there are still milestones we reach.
Getting your driver’s license for the first time, becoming an adult, graduating high school and college, getting married and having children. The list goes on and on, but for me, so many of those milestones were out of reach or without meaning.
At least until Ezra showed up and gave them to me anyway.
He gave me prom.
He gave me love.
He gave me filthy nights that I never could have imagined.
He gave me hope.
Regardless of my arranged marriage. Regardless of the bet I didn’t know about then. And in spite of the barriers between us.
I actually believed for just a few seconds that it might be possible for him to somehow change what my future looked like. I wanted to believe in him, if only for a few hours.
And I did. For a week, in fact, my feet practically walking on air while I deluded myself into believing that fate might not be written before you’re born. That, maybe, it’s possible to change direction and take life into your own hands.
A week later Ezra gave me something else I never thought possible.
He gave me a broken heart.
Not that it was his fault. Circumstances had been the cause of it.
Circumstances...and Damon.
“I need to talk to you about something...”
We were at school when he approached me that day, his eyes bright and his mouth a crooked line.
Something was nagging at him that wasn’t normal, but I didn’t think much about it at first.
Life was so chaotic at that time. We had less than two weeks left of school. Final exams were starting. Everybody was preparing for graduation and packing their things for the colleges they would go to.
Meanwhile, I was trying to decide how I wouldn’t lose my mind when Ezra left for Yale and I began my journey across the world.
I didn’t want to leave. Couldn’t stand the thought of that much distance between us, but I knew it was the only choice I had.
“Come with me. We’ll find somewhere private...”
Damon dragged me off, which wasn’t unusual for us. Not when I was sleeping with both twins, together and separate.
That was the rules of those six weeks.
I was allowed to experience anything I wanted.
Strings were meant to be entirely absent, too, but they’d somehow wrapped around my heart anyway, mostly tying me to the colder twin, the one who took my virginity, the one who was my first kiss, the one that somehow managed to pull me out of the endless fog overshadowing my life and showed me that, at least for a few years, I could have fun.
The one who fell in love with me, too, and made me believe in changing my fate.
At least, until all of it went to hell in an empty classroom, tucked away in a dark closet, with the mirror image of the boy I had given my heart to.
I don’t want this to end. And I know this is probably dumb to admit, but I think it’s also dumb not to say anything.
Damon had been so flustered, so nervous. His hair was a disheveled mess from running his hands through it, that big heart of his practically worn on his sleeve.
I love you, Red. And I can’t believe I’m even admitting this, but I’m panicking, you know? I feel like I’m losing you when school ends and I can’t stand it.
While he was pouring his heart out, most likely thinking I would be on board with how he felt, my heart was tearing apart and dropping to my feet.
Ezra and I both thought Damon was only in this to have fun. Neither of us had the first clue it meant more to him.
I almost told him the truth about what I’d promised Ezra. It was right there on the tip of my tongue. But then I saw the fading bruises on his skin. I remembered they were only days away from another bad weekend. I knew that telling Damon the truth would only drive a wedge between two brothers who needed each other to endure whatever was being done to them.
Don’t tell Ezra. He’d kick my ass for this. I don’t want him to feel like he’s being pushed out, and I need to decide how we can do this. But maybe after a few months of college, he’ll move on, and then it can just be us.
That was the moment when my feet stopped walking on air, and I was returned to the harsh reality of my life.
I had to give them both up
.
Had to break my promise.
Had to pretend that I didn’t care.
There was no other choice than to drive them both away just so I would know that, when they left, it would be together.
They needed to lean on each other more than they needed me. So I decided to break my own heart in order not to come between them.
I did a lot of things I’m not proud of to break things off with the twins, and I bear the scars of those decisions to this day.
After leaving the twins’ house, I have to pull over twice on my way home to keep from wrecking my car. I can’t see past the tears, can’t breathe past the pain, can’t function all while knowing I will see them again to let them rip me to shreds without meaning to.
At least, Damon doesn’t mean to, but I’m not sure I can say the same about Ezra. There’s a vein of cold cruelty in that man that I’ll never dig out. But I can’t claim I don’t deserve it.
I hurt them both in many ways. And then I just walked off like it meant nothing.
At this point, it might be easier to finally admit the truth to both of them. Just sit them down and confess that they both feel the same way for me, that I made my choice a long time ago, and that they need to figure out how to handle it.
But I’m still too damn afraid.
Afraid it might break them apart.
Afraid it might sever them permanently.
Afraid that I’ll never forgive myself for being the catalyst that causes a fracture in their bond.
Mostly, I’m afraid they’ll fight and that fight will lead to more bruises, more cuts, and more scars.
It would kill me to be the reason for another mark on either of their bodies.
Although, after what Ezra said to me tonight, I’m not sure he’s completely oblivious to how Damon feels. And the fact he was willing to hurt his brother because of me only shows me I was right to walk away from both of them.
Still, that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“Especially when you’re so pretty when you cry...”
The fucking bastard.
I know what you’re thinking, only because I’ve thought it myself. Tell the evil twin to fuck right off and stay with the loving one. It would be so easy, right?
Sure. Just be sure to let my heart know that, or convince my soul to let go. Because only one of them brings me to life.