Wild Aces

by Marni Mann

  My eyes burst open, my hands keeping him close. “I don’t care about any of that other stuff. I want you to kiss me, Cody. Really kiss me.”

  I felt his breath against my nose and his warmth on my cheeks, and I waited while his eyes teased and his mouth tickled mine. I didn’t know how long it took, but he finally gave me that soft, sweet kiss. It was worth the wait.

  “Brea…”

  I shook my head, my throat suddenly so tight and so dry. “Yes. Sorry.” I glanced at the doorstep he was standing on. Whatever proof he was talking about would have to wait. I needed a break from his face. “Come in.” I walked into the living room and heard him close the door before he followed me. “The kitchen is this way. Do you want anything?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  I poured myself some wine and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted more. Then I pulled one of the beers off the shelf and turned around. “You sure, Co—”

  “Trapper.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re not convinced.” He took the beer from me and set it behind him. He then reached for my hands and held them between his.

  I still couldn’t look at him. “I…”

  Him holding my hands was messing with my head. So was him being this close. It felt so familiar yet so foreign at the same time. It made no sense…but none of this did.

  “I can’t do this.” I tried to wiggle away, but he wouldn’t let me.

  He stiffened his grip. “Before I came here, I found Cody’s obituary. That’s when I saw what he looked like and found out that you two dated. Can you imagine how I felt when I saw there was someone out there who looked identical to me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look at me, Brea.”

  I shook my head while I continued to stare at my feet. He stilled it by holding my chin. More contact. More of his heat. I glanced up, about to tell him to let me go, and that was when I saw his other hand. It was now pointing at his eyebrow.

  “Cody didn’t have this scar.”

  I squinted while I gazed at the deep line that ran across the top of his eyebrow. How had I missed it earlier? I must have been too confused, too emotional, too crazed to notice it.

  “No,” I said, “he didn’t.”

  “I wasn’t even a year old when I got it. It took ten stitches to close it.” He turned me, so my full body faced him. “And this one.” He pointed at a small dent underneath his chin. That scar was thicker and much shorter than the one above his eyebrow. “And this one…” He dipped his head and parted his hair, showing me the deep scar on his skull. “I have plenty more if you want me to show them to you.”

  Cody didn’t have any scars on his head or face, but it wasn’t just the scars that I was noticing now.

  “You don’t sound like him.” I’d known that all along, as I would have picked up on Cody’s voice at the party and the times Trapper and I’d talked on the phone.

  “Because I’m not him, Brea.”

  I let that thought settle while I took the time to really stare at his eyes. They were deeper than Cody’s, a much darker gray, rich like a storm, where Cody’s were more like an overcast day.

  “Your eyes aren’t the same color as his.”

  “I want to show you something else.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Trapper Montgomery,” he said as he typed his name onto the screen.

  Trapper Montgomery, I repeated in my head.

  His name was listed at the top of the page. Underneath was a breakdown of each year with a hefty dollar amount next to each one.

  “What is this?”

  “My poker earnings for the last seven years.”

  I looked at his face again. “Poker earnings?”

  “I’m a professional poker player, and I have been for years. I tour the circuit. That’s why I was in Vegas.”

  Professional poker player, I repeated in my head. Tour the circuit. That was what he’d meant about working with numbers.

  “Are you starting to believe me?”

  “You could have made that website before you came over here. Your earnings and ranking honestly prove nothing.”

  He touched the screen again, and it broke it down even further, showing only that year and the tournaments he’d played at. The most recent had just been posted yesterday from a casino in Vegas.

  “I’m going to prove it to you, so I want you to remember the name of the hotel.”

  I read it from the page. “The V. Okay.”

  He pulled up a second screen, typing the hotel’s name into the search bar. The phone number immediately popped up. He turned it on speakerphone as it rang.

  “The V Hotel and Casino,” a woman said. “How can I assist you?”

  “Can you tell me who won yesterday’s tournament?”

  “That would be Trapper Montgomery, sir. Anything else I can assist you with?”

  He hung up, putting his phone away. “That was me. Trapper Montgomery.”

  Was I starting to believe him? It was unlikely that search engine had provided a fake number and the woman answering had been preplanned.

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe it was you.”

  “Trapper Montgomery…say it.”

  “Trapper.”

  The scars stared back at me. So did his dark gray eyes, and that deep voice echoed in my head. He gripped me with so much strength, so much more than Cody ever used.

  “Trapper Montgomery,” I said.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “No way.”

  “You’ve trusted me enough to let me in your house. Now, trust me when I say I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I had just gotten to a place where I could look at him without shaking, and now, he wanted to take away my sight.

  “Trapper—”

  “Close them.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Ten seconds—that’s all you get.” I closed them and took a deep breath.

  His scent filled my nose, and I immediately compared it to Cody’s. Trapper’s reminded me of the fall; Cody’s was clean like spring.

  He placed my hands on his face. “Keep them there, so you know how close I am.”

  His scruff scratched the pads of my fingers. Cody’s job required him to always be clean-shaven. Another difference.

  Trapper’s hands dropped to my sides, slowly rising to my ribs and back down to my hips. My gasp was quiet, but I knew he’d heard it.

  “Does my touch feel like his?”

  It was much rougher than Cody’s, his fingers more dominant as they pressed into my skin—not in a painful way, but in a way that demanded an answer.

  “No,” I said, “not even a little.”

  I barely had time to speak the last word before his lips pressed against my neck. It was such a sensitive spot, right under my chin and halfway between my collarbone. When I tried to move away, he stopped me, his mouth lifting and dropping again on my neck. I didn’t try to fight it when he kissed me a third time. Or a fourth.

  “Does my mouth feel like his?”

  When my eyes were open, their mouths looked identical. But closed, they felt nothing alike. Not in pressure or softness or the way they moved.

  “No,” I finally said, “it doesn’t.”

  “Open your eyes, Brea.”

  I did, connecting with his immediately. They had so much power and intensity. There was such a difference between them, and it caused everything inside me to tighten.

  “I’m not him.”

  “Then who are you? And who was he?”

  “We need to figure that out.” He took my hand, making sure I had my wine and led me into the living room.

  We sat on the couch and faced each other.

  “Like I said earlier, I didn’t know Cody existed before tonight. I know nothing about him, other than what’s in his obituary.”

  The realization of what this meant suddenly hit me. All those long dark nights when I’d clung to my pillow and prayed
to whoever was listening that I just wanted Cody to come back. And now, he had—in some form anyway. And I had the chance to say everything I’d wanted—things I hadn’t been able to because he was taken so unexpectedly—to someone who looked exactly like him, who I believed actually was him. Now, that moment was gone. No, it had never really been. And those thoughts were stuck in my head yet again as I stared at his face. But it wasn’t his face. It was Trapper’s.

  Could I ever get used to this?

  “I want to ask you some questions about him, but I understand if it’s too painful. I just want to piece some of this together and come up with an answer.”

  I didn’t know what I was capable of handling. But things couldn’t possibly hurt worse than they already did. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  He hesitated. I could tell he was trying to be considerate of how he asked. “How did he die?”

  The question was like another slap in the face, reminding me that he really had been taken from me. And then I was slapped with the guilt—for calling Trapper a liar, for leaving him in the alley when I had thought he was really Cody, for not explaining why I was taking off. This day stung almost as much as the one Trapper was asking me to describe.

  “He was stopped at a red light. There were two kids playing in the road. Cody put on his flashers and got out of his car to move them onto the sidewalk. A car blew through the intersection. It was a girl who was texting as she drove. She didn’t see him. He pushed the kids out of the way and…” It was hard to say it out loud again.

  “Jesus.” He rested his fingers on mine.

  It was a surprisingly soft touch, and I didn’t expect it. But I liked it.

  “What about his parents?”

  The only people I discussed Cody with were Frankie and my parents. And now, talking about him with a stranger who looked just like him was about the weirdest thing I’d ever done.

  “They live in Connecticut. His mom is a CPA; his dad is an attorney. He had a pretty normal childhood.”

  “No brothers or sisters?”

  “Just him.”

  “As far as you know.” His voice was as soft as his touch.

  “Yes,” I said, unable to disagree. “Your birthday is…July twelfth, isn’t it?”

  He just stared off into the kitchen. “Yeah. It is. Fuck.” He ran his hand through his hair. “He was adopted then.”

  I nodded. “As a baby. That would mean that…”

  “I was adopted, too, yeah. But things worked out a little differently for me.”

  When he laughed, I took it to mean there were more differences between their lives than likenesses.

  The conclusion was as obvious as it was crazy. “You’re twins.”

  “It looks that way.”

  Silence settled between us. I watched his hand as it moved to the back of the couch. His fingers were longer than Cody’s, and his nails were square, not round.

  “I can ask Cody’s parents if they know anything,” I said. “And I have a hacker friend who can help dig up information, if you want him to.”

  “All right.” His voice was still so soft.

  He played with the long silver chain that hung from his neck, a pair of dog tags dangling from it. He now stared at his clunky black boot as he bounced it over his knee. And his hair was messy, sticking up in places where his hands had run through it. Cody, on the other hand, would have come over in a sweatshirt and a baseball hat. He didn’t even wear a watch. His hair was never this long. Boots weren’t his thing.

  I didn’t have to convince myself that Trapper wasn’t him. The proof was there; he was right. But it wasn’t just the scars that changed my mind. Their faces might have been identical, but their demeanors were nothing alike.

  “I’ll help you figure this out,” I said. “For you and for him.”

  Trapper’s eyes bore into mine and told a story that wasn’t anything like Cody’s. Cody’s smile radiated happiness. He was summer, laughter. He was law-abiding and affluent, dependable and extremely conservative. He was long, deep soul-bearing hugs, honesty and compassion. And he died a hero. Trapper didn’t have Cody’s warmth. As little as I knew about him, that much was clear. He was masks and mystery and willing to take a risk with someone he didn’t even know. He was dark nights of phone sex and gambling, a gravelly voice that could make me wet from afar. He was everything Cody wasn’t. They were opposite sides of the same wheel.

  And, somehow, I had fallen for them both.

  Trapper

  I could feel Brea’s eyes on the side of my face as I stared at my boot. My leg was bouncing. My heart was thumping. I didn’t lose my cool too often. In poker, if I let nerves get control of me, it’d be game suicide. But they were fucking me up now, and the feeling wasn’t anything I wanted to get used to.

  It was all because of this…my brother.

  The truth about our lives sliced us down the middle. While I was a kid, getting the shit beaten out of me by the people who were supposed to be watching me, my other half was being tucked in tightly by those who loved him. While I was told I was worthless and tried so hard not to turn into a piece of trash, he was being praised and filled with self-esteem. He had cake on his birthday, and his clothes probably smelled like a spring meadow. I went to bed with a stomach that growled and ached from hunger pains. Clothes that never fit and reeked of filth. The only thing that made any of this better was knowing he had been taken care of…saved, adopted, protected. He’d been normal—whatever the hell that was. And when he died, he died saving kids. A real hero.

  But what had all the torture turned me into?

  I could read eyes expertly and figure out when someone was lying. I could make a hand out of two cards, and I knew when to fold. And what I did at the compound was my way of getting revenge against all the motherfuckers who laid their hands on me, who spit in my face and told me I was nothing but a waste of good cum.

  There was a reason Cody and I had ended up in different places, and Brea and I would find that out. I didn’t want my past dug up, I didn’t want it to be staring back at me through her gorgeous fucking eyes, but that was what was going to happen. As I looked at her now, I saw so much confusion. And what she saw was someone she used to love, someone who had been ripped away from her.

  He’d been ripped away from me, too. Only I never even knew he existed.

  This had to be hell for her. I’d only known about him for a few hours, and it was already hell for me. Learning the truth about whatever had gone down all those years ago was only going to make it worse. I wouldn’t be able to change it or fix the memories that haunted me. I couldn’t bring Cody back. But I needed some answers. We both did.

  I leaned forward and ground my fingers together. “My plan was to fucking devour you tonight, not have anything like this happen. I’m sorry it all went down.”

  When she put her hand on top of mine, I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to know why she was touching me. If it was something she needed to do, I wouldn’t stop her. But I didn’t want to act on anything too fast and regret it once my thoughts cleared.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry, too. Together, we can figure it all out.”

  I finally looked. Her hair had fallen into her eyes, and I had to stop myself from tucking it behind her ears.

  “Why?”

  “Cody would have wanted me to. If he had known you existed, he would have figured it out himself.”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  Her fingers tightened around my wrist. “The shock of what happened tonight is still really fresh. When I opened my eyes, the last person I expected to see was him.”

  But it was me she’d gotten when I took off that goddamn mask while her past had been shared with someone who had my face. That added so many layers to what was already the most fucked-up hand…one that never should have been dealt in the first place.

  I related everything back to poker. It was a language I understood, and it was how I made sense of things by figuring out probabilities and t
aking risks based on possible outcomes. The chances of getting a royal flush were less than one percent; I’d never gotten one in all the years I’d been playing. What were the odds of having an identical twin and that we had been separated and hadn’t known about each other? That we’d shared the same city, maybe even the same part of town, and we’d never run into each other? Now, those were some fucking odds.

  He’d been kept away from me.

  And that was unforgivable.

  “Where are you going?” Brea asked when I stood from the couch and headed for the door.

  “I don’t know.” But I knew staying here would only make me feel shittier about this situation.

  Brea kept me inside my head. I needed to be out of it even if it was just for tonight.

  “I need some time.” I turned and walked toward the door.

  “Trapper, wait.”

  Saying those words was the worst thing she could have done. I wanted to kiss her, and I wanted to apologize. I wanted her to forget me, so she wouldn’t ever have to feel the pain from seeing my face again. I wanted to hide from my pain, too. I’d spent years shoving it in the back of my mind, and now, it was threatening to spill out. She deserved better than that.

  She stood behind me, and I held the doorframe with both hands. It was the safest place for me to be, just far enough away from her face and body to stop anything from happening. Then I felt her fingertips on my back, and I walked outside and down the front steps. All of this was too fucking much.

  “Try and get some sleep,” I said without turning around. If I looked at her, something would happen that we’d both regret.

  “That’s it?” she said. “That’s all you’re going to say to me?”

  I could hear how much it was hurting her.

  Fuck.

  “Trapper…”

  She wanted me to turn around. She wanted an answer. So, I looked over my shoulder and saw her clinging to the side of the door. I wanted to bury my dick inside her, and I wanted us to forget everything we’d learned tonight. But my cock couldn’t make that happen, and my presence only made this more painful.