by Portia Moore
I’m not exactly surprised to see Hillary in a t-shirt on the couch, holding a bowl of cereal, and we regard each other awkwardly from across the room for a moment. I’m not about to be distracted by it. I have more important things to worry about and discuss with Blue right now.
“I’m…just going to go shower,” Hillary says, getting up from the couch and disappearing into the kitchen.
“What’s going on, man?” Blue asks, sitting down onto the couch. I glare at him.
“Cal is fucking with my head, that’s what,” I snap. “I had dinner at his place last night. Lauren invited me, and just before I left, he decided to ask me if I’d talked to Megan. And then when I said no, he had the fucking gall to insinuate that I shouldn’t just be walking away, asking me if I’d considered what Alana might want, not Megan.”
“You said he’s an asshole, right?” Blue asks logically. “Maybe he was rubbing it in a little.”
“I said it didn’t matter what Alana wants, because Megan is marrying Kam and pregnant with his kid, and Cal just laughed in my fucking face and said ‘Is she?’ in this sarcastic fucking tone of voice.” I’m red-faced by the end, but Blue doesn’t look all that surprised.
Blue shrugs. “Yeah, that’s weird man. But you said how Cal is. He’s probably just fucking with you.”
“I thought of that, but what reason does he have to do that?”
“He’s an asshole, man. You know it. We all know it. Maybe he’s all twisted up in the head and gets off on fucking up other people’s lives since he’s settled down and can’t fuck up his own anymore.” Blue is looking directly at me, and I can see the disappointment in his eyes. “You’re going back down the rabbit hole, dude,” he says quietly, and I know he’s right.
“Could you just go talk to Megan?” I ask, my voice quieter now. “Just so you can see if you think anything is off.”
“I haven’t told her I lied to her about Alana,” Blue cautions.
I nod. “I know. Just…I need you to do this. Please.”
Blue lets out a sigh. “Alright,” he relents. “I’ll do it. But,” he says sharply, “I want you to promise that if things are how Megan says they are, you’re gonna be done with Alana. For good. You’ll try to move on?”
I take a deep breath. I was trying. I was trying my fucking hardest to let her go, to move on, to envision a different future for myself, and all it took was two words to pull me back, to remind me of how badly I wanted everything with her. When Megan told me she was getting married, that was a knife through my heart. But her being pregnant decimated me. It’s what made me try to let Alana go. But if there isn’t a baby, that changes everything.
“Alright,” I agree.
Megan
Helen will be here any minute, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I’ve been dreading the appointment today, not sure what she’s going to say after the text that I sent her. Will she be upset? Disappointed? I don’t think it’s going to be good, whatever it is. I know that she doesn’t think I’m handling this well, but I have to protect myself. I have to protect my baby.
I’m glad that at least this appointment is just the two of us. We have a lot to work out, Helen and I, about how to move forward before Kam joins in on the appointment again. I fidget in place as I wait, drumming my fingers on the couch, tapping my foot, feeling like a prisoner waiting for their execution as I listen for Helen’s footsteps, the sound of the door opening.
It doesn’t matter if she disagrees, I tell myself firmly. My mind is made up. I’m not going to let anyone else run my life anymore. I’m going to be the one in control, the one who decides what happens. I’m not going to be passive any longer.
When Helen comes in, whatever feelings she might privately have are hidden, as always. Her face is clear and pleasant, and she greets me warmly before she sits down—no judgment, contempt, or annoyance in her expression. It drives me crazy sometimes, even though I know it’s her job to stay calm, to remain mostly neutral. Just for once, I’d love to see her actually show how she really feels.
“How are you doing?” she asks gently.
“I’m good,” I tell her, shrugging. “I had a hard time sleeping. But otherwise, I’m fine.”
“How was dinner with Kam’s family?”
“It started out good,” I say hesitantly. “I apologized for what happened when I blacked out and told them how much I love Kam, and Kam told them about the pregnancy.” I see Helen’s eyes widen with surprise at that, but she says nothing as I continue. “Kam’s mom dragged me off to look at baby pictures, and she was thrilled…but his sister was upset.” I bite my lip, trying to stay calm as I remember the conversation. “She said that she’s afraid I’ll hurt Kam again, that Alana will reappear and run off with the baby, that I’m not in control of what happens. She said if…if I really loved Kam, I would have left him.” I can’t stop the tears welling up in my eyes now. Just the idea of losing Kam makes my heart ache. “So that’s why I canceled the appointment,” I say, looking up at her defiantly. “I’m choosing my future. And that future is with Kam.”
Helen is quiet for a moment. And then, calmly, “Do you think that future is fair to either Alana or Ian?”
“I’m making the best choice for my baby,” I say firmly.
Helen lets out a small sigh. “Megan, the best choice for the baby is for you to feel better, to be whole—and that means including Alana.”
I take a deep, shaky breath, trying to keep my emotions under control. “I disagree,” I say flatly, and leave it at that.
“Megan, you haven’t even made an effort to include Alana, or work out a compromise,” Helen reminds me gently. “You don’t know yet what the possibilities are.”
“There isn’t anything to compromise over!” I blurt out, more sharply than I meant to, but I can feel myself getting angry—I’m so tired of this, so sick of this back and forth, this insistence that I share my body with someone else. I feel like a child, pulled this way and that, no one trusting me to know what is best for myself. “My whole life has been a series of compromises with Alana in control, and I’m tired of it,” I say flatly. “I’m not going to let the threat of Alana control me anymore.”
Helen gives me a minute to finish, sitting quietly as I talk. When there’s been silence for a few moments, she looks at me. “Megan, there’s someone I’d like to introduce you to if that’s okay with you.”
I immediately feel my whole body tense, on alert for whatever is about to happen. “Do I have a choice?” I ask tightly.
Helen smiles at me. “You always have a choice,” she says gently.
“Fine…sure.”
Helen picks up the phone to speak to her assistant. “You can send in Mr. Scott,” she says pleasantly, and then hangs up the phone, watching my face as I look at her curiously.
A moment later, Cal walks in, and I look at him and then back at Helen, completely confused. “I don’t understand,” I say, my stomach full of anxious nerves all over again, but Cal just smiles and sits down beside me. I don’t return the smile. Our last conversation is still fresh, and I’m more irritated than anything that he’s intruding on my appointment.
“I’d like you to meet Christopher,” Helen says.
I stare at her, completely floored. “What?” I manage, almost speechless, but Helen gives me a reassuring smile.
“I wanted Chris to come today because I think it might help you to understand better why integration is so important if you speak with someone who has gone through the same thing.”
Cal—Chris?—sits there quietly, and it gives me the opportunity to really look at him for the first time since he walked in. I can see a few small differences from the man that I know—he seems more relaxed, and his clothes are different from what I’m used to. Cal is polished, a man with money who likes to show it, and now he’s wearing faded blue jeans and a soft t-shirt that looks like it’s been through plenty of washes, with a denim shirt thrown over that. His hair is messier, not as
groomed like Cal’s is. And when I look closer, I see that the most obvious thing is that his eyes aren’t Cal’s pale grey, but a soft shade of green instead.
Chris clears his throat. “It’s nice to meet you, Megan. Officially.” He gives me another of those smiles, and I can see some of Cal’s charm in it, but it’s easy, more open than I’ve seen.
I glance back at Helen. This has to be some kind of joke, a trick or manipulation, I think. But deep down, I know that it isn’t. This is real, and I don’t know how to deal with it, how to reconcile this all in my head.
I have a plan! I want to scream, but no one seems to think my plan is the right way to handle this.
“I know this can be strange and overwhelming,” Chris says gently, and my head snaps back around to look at him. “But I understand the place you’re in right now. I’ve been there.”
I try to pull myself together, to get some order to my racing thoughts. “Helen, can you leave the room, please?” I ask, still looking at Cal/Chris.
“Megan, I don’t think…”
“Please,” I say tightly.
“Alright,” Helen relents, standing up. “Take all the time you need.”
Once she’s gone, I feel a little better, less like I’m being ganged up on, but I still feel awkward as I look at the man across from me…this man who is my brother Cal, but also somehow not. He’s different, like me.
“I know you must have a ton of questions,” Chris says, his face and voice clearly saying that I should ask them. It’s the clearest sign yet that he’s not Cal, who would never be so forthcoming. “I know—”
I interrupt him, my heart racing, as I ask him the question that’s been on my mind nonstop since the hospital. “If Cal is the alter, then why is he the one who is around most of the time?”
Chris smiles calmly at me. “I’m around just as much as Cal is,” he assures me. “That’s the thing, Megan—integration is about compromising, not about one person winning.” His eyes flick down to my stomach and back up, and his voice is gentle as he continues. “From what I understand, you and Alana now have someone to compromise for.”
Tears spring to my eyes at that, as the old familiar fear that I have whenever I think of Alana starts to flood through me. “You don’t know what she’s like,” I say helplessly. “She almost got me killed. I don’t trust her! I don’t trust her with my pregnancy or with my baby, and she’s definitely never going to let me be happy with Kam.” Tears drip down my cheeks as I look at him. “You don’t understand.”
“Trust me, I do,” Chris insists. “Megan, Cal was just as difficult as it sounds like Alana is. We had two separate lives for a long time. I didn’t know who Lauren was until she showed up on my doorstep with a daughter she claimed was mine, while I was engaged to another woman that I was in love with.”
I feel my blood run cold. Chris was engaged? But he’s with Lauren now. And Lauren was Cal’s. So that means…The parallels are too much to ignore. The idea of losing Kam fills me with fear, and I want to cover my ears, to tell him to stop, to shut up. But I don’t. I let him speak because another small part of me knows that what he’s saying is important, that it’s something I need to know.
“But the woman I was with wasn’t the one for me,” Chris continues. “And I fell in love with Lauren, too. Lauren was our bridge, our reason for compromise, along with our daughter.”
“Caylen,” I whisper.
He nods. “This baby can be your bridge with Alana, Megan. It’s not easy. I’m not going to lie to you. I felt so out of control, so lost for a long time. It was hard for me to come to terms with what I had, who I was. I used to look at Cal as the enemy too, the one who was threatening my life, but that was never really the case. I understand that now. All of that—it’s all me. Chris, Cal, Collin—those are all different facets of myself, parts making up a whole.” He pauses, looking at me intensely. “Megan, the only way for you to have any hope of a life that isn’t fragmented, that isn’t chaotic and broken up into pieces, is for you to come to terms with the other part of yourself.”
“Who is Collin?” I ask curiously. I’ve never heard him mentioned.
“That’s a story for another time,” he says with a light sigh, and my stomach drops as I think of the implications. Three. Chris, Cal…now Collin? He has a third person, another alter. What if I developed another one, too? Alana is hard enough; the idea is terrifying. Or what if I have another already, and I don’t even know it?
It’s too much. It’s too overwhelming, and I cover my face with my hands for a moment, trying to get myself back under control, composed again. “I’m getting married,” I say finally when I drop my hands back into my lap. “And I don’t know if my fiancé could really accept Alana. She’s not…she’s so different from me. I don’t think he could love her. And to be honest…” My mouth twists as I think about it. “From what I know of Alana, I don’t know how I could not be jealous. She’s like…she’s this wild girl. She worked in a strip club, for God’s sake!” I try to lower my voice, slightly shocked at my own outburst, but Chris doesn’t look perturbed. “It almost feels like he would be cheating on me if he did want her. Because she’s this wild, crazy, sexy alter ego, and I’m just a normal, Midwestern girl.”
“Maybe it’s because you haven’t accepted Alana,” Chris says gently. “She’s a part of you, Megan. You have those things in you, even if they’re not conscious. You can bring the two parts of you together if you’re willing.”
“Alana is in love with someone else,” I say flatly. “Do you know about Ian?”
He nods.
“I don’t know if she’ll give him up,” I tell him helplessly. “How can we build a life together when what we want is so different? She married someone else. She and Ian didn’t divorce. She might fight for him because Kam isn’t what she wants any more than Alana is what he wants.”
“You have to talk to Alana,” he insists gently. “I know this sucks. I really, really do. But trying to banish her won’t work. She’ll fight her way back to the surface eventually. Neither one of you can beat the other, and considering that you’re pregnant—you have to make things right with Alana.” He smiles at me, trying to reassure me. “It’s the only hope you have at providing a good life for my little niece or nephew.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, but there are so many what-if scenarios. What if it goes wrong? What if Alana doesn’t want the baby at all? What if she does? What if she fights and won’t compromise?
“I’m scared,” I whisper, meeting his eyes. Green eyes, not grey. Not Cal’s eyes, Chris’s.
He reaches out cautiously to hug me, and after a moment’s hesitation, I let him. He wraps his arms around me, and the hug is soothing. For a moment, I feel protected and safe, like my big brother has come to help me.
“I like you a lot better than Cal,” I tell him, laughing through my tears as I sniff them back.
He laughs too, pulling away from me as he looks down at my face. “I am Cal,” he says gently. “We’re one and the same, regardless of what you call me.”
“I think I’ll call you Chris,” I tell him through a sniff. He chuckles.
“Okay,” he says.
And I try to believe everything will be okay.
16
Kam
I thought finding out everything there was to know about Ian and Alana would make me feel better once it was all laid out in front of me, but now that I’m here, it doesn’t. I’m sitting at the dining room table with my father, pictures everywhere, staring at all of them. There are pictures of Ian, pictures of Alana, pictures of Alana and Ian together. The pictures of Ian are one thing—it’s confusing to see him, this rangy, roguish-looking blond with an arrogant grin and a cocky look that I want to punch directly off of his fucking smirking face—no, it doesn’t just make me jealous. It makes me fucking furious. Because this man had his hands on my fiance, his mouth on her, his dick inside of her. I was supposed to be the first, the only. It meant something to me, to Me
gan, that I was the first, that she was innocent and sweet and trusting the first time, and that no one else had ever touched her. But all it took was this guy showing up, and now I know all of that was just an illusion. It wasn’t Megan’s fault, sure, but it still fucking hurts like a punch to the gut.
And then there’s the pictures of Alana. Pictures pulled from his Instagram of her standing on a beach, windblown and careless, snapped in a moment of reckless joy. Her on a balcony I don’t recognize, staring off into the city. Her balcony? His? The home they shared? The thought rips through me, the idea of them sharing a home, a bed, a life.
A picture of them on their wedding day, Alana in a casual wedding dress in a Vegas chapel. It wasn’t a drunk spur-of-the-moment thing, that’s for sure. She’s glowing. It’s clear that she meant to be there, that she’s happy, and so are they. More pictures from his social media, pictures of them on their honeymoon, in Mexico. It’s like looking at Megan’s twin—if I didn’t know they were the same person, that’s exactly who I’d think she was, because the expression on this girl’s face, the sarcastic glint in her eye, that’s not my Megan. The way she dresses, her demeanor—it’s all different.
But I know they’re the same. That’s Megan in the pictures as sure as it’s Alana, and as I stare at the mess of them scattered across the table with my father, I want to flip it over, hurl them all into the wall. I’ve never felt so unhinged in my life. I’ve always prided myself as calm, reasonable, understanding. But this is testing it.
There are other things too. Drivers’ licenses, school IDs, every document that my father could find. Before I saw all of this, Ian Hudson wasn’t real to me, just some shadowy figure that threatened my future with Megan, something amorphous and insubstantial. And Alana—well, she was a problem, not a person. Something to be figured out, medicated, tolerated. But looking at all of this, I know now she isn’t something I can ignore, she isn’t someone that I can pretend doesn’t exist. She’s real, and she had a life. A whole life that Megan was never aware of.