“That’s such a sweet thing to say.” Elaine squeezed my shoulder as they joined us.
“We’re happy to have you with us,” his dad said.
“Thank you, Mr. Montgomery.”
“Call me Lloyd, please.”
I hadn’t hesitated when I’d met Elaine and she’d told me the same thing. His request wasn’t any different—it even made more sense for him to make the offer because I wasn’t a complete stranger to him like I’d been with Elaine back when we’d had lunch in August. I was friends with his wife. I was...whatever word someone would use to describe what was happening between Dillon and me.
But it didn’t feel as natural using Mr. Montgomery’s first name. Probably because I’d never had any positive male role models in my life, except for the doctors who’d saved it. So I paused for what felt like a moment too long before replying, “Thank you, Lloyd.”
Dillon stepped closer, his hand going to the small of my back. I took comfort in the gesture. Settled into his touch. Appreciated how he must’ve made the move because he’d sensed my discomfort and wanted to do something to ease it.
Elaine smiled, her eyes darting down to the small amount of space between us. “Why don’t you give Faith a little tour while your dad and I go check on how dinner is doing in the kitchen?”
I felt the muscles in Dillon’s arm tense and turned to look up at him. His dark eyes were wide, and he was shaking his head. “Do you think that’s a good idea? Because I don’t.”
“You set fire to one turkey, and they judge your cooking skills forever,” Lloyd muttered, tugging on Elaine’s hand as they walked away.
“Do you like Chinese?” Dillon asked oddly.
“I heard that!” Lloyd yelled, making Elaine giggle.
“I feel like I missed something.” I cocked my head to the side, giving Dillon a questioning look that wrinkled my brow. “Your dad set fire to a turkey?”
“And a big section of the backyard,” he laughed. “C’mon, I’ll start the tour there so I can show you.”
He kept his hand on my back while he guided me through several rooms and led me through a set of French doors which opened to a stone paved patio that was even bigger than the front porch. We walked to the top of the steps that led down to the lawn, and Dillon pointed to the left. “Do you see the line in the grass there? Where the green changes to a slightly lighter shade?”
I held a hand to my forehead to block the glare from the sun and narrowed my eyes while I focused on the area he was pointing at. “Maybe?”
“It’s hard to spot because my dad had the landscapers change out the sod three times until they got as close a match as possible,” he explained.
“Your dad set fire to a turkey…on the lawn?” I still felt like I was missing a big part of the story.
“Yup. It was a deep-fried turkey disaster.”
“Oh!” I nodded. “That actually makes sense. I’ve never had deep-fried turkey before, but I could see how something could go wrong with all that hot oil.”
“Especially when my dad’s the one doing the cooking,” Dillon laughed. His hand slid from the small of my back to grab my hand. His fingers laced through mine, and he tugged me back into the house. “My mom never lets him help in the kitchen.”
“And yet she let him use a deep fryer on the lawn to cook the Thanksgiving turkey?”
“Yup.” He stopped in front of a stone fireplace and pointed at one of the photos on the mantle. It was of his parents on their wedding day, staring into each other’s eyes as though they were the only two people in the world. “She loves him too much to say no when he really wants something, and he was dying to fry that turkey.”
“That’s”—I swallowed down a lump in my throat while I tried to find the perfect word—“incredible.”
“I’ll deny it if you tell them I said this, but I have to agree. My parents are definitely incredible.”
“I’ll keep your secret,” I promised as I took in the rest of the pictures on the mantle. It took a moment before it registered that I was seeing double. Literally. “Wait. You have a twin?”
Dillon’s fingers tightened around mine. “I did.”
“Did?” I tore my gaze away from the photos of Dillon with a mirror image of himself and found him staring at the one of them standing side-by-side in football uniforms. He was holding perfectly still, the muscle in his jaw jumping and his eyes filled with despair.
“That car accident I was in my senior year? The one that landed me in the hospital? He died in the crash. On impact, but at least that means he didn’t suffer, right?”
Oh, shit. No wonder Elaine had sounded like she was about to cry when we’d talked about Dillon’s problems. She’d lost a son.
Dillon’s brother.
Even worse...his identical twin.
I’d been a total bitch, judging him the way I initially had. Without bothering to look for what lay beneath the surface of his seemingly perfect life. If it had cost me the chance to stand by his side while he told me his story, I never would have known what I was missing. Even though I was starting to wonder if I would’ve felt the loss anyway.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” The words sounded hollow, just like they did whenever anyone said them to me about my past. But I meant them. So very much. And I hoped he heard the sincerity in my voice.
He looked away from the photo and sighed. “We don’t talk about him often. Even though it’s been a few years, the loss is still too fresh. It hurts so fucking much.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“But you can,” he disagreed. “I think that’s part of it.”
“Part of what?”
“Why the pull between us is so damn strong.” I gasped at his admission, and he tugged me closer with a determined gleam in his eyes. “Don’t even try to pretend it doesn’t exist, Faith. Not when we’re both feeling it. And definitely not when you’re the first person I’ve opened up to about Declan.”
“I—”
Shit. He was right. I couldn’t deny it. Not in a moment where it felt like he was baring his soul to me. The least I could do was be honest with him and own up to the fact that I was starting to have feelings for him. “Yes, I feel it too.”
“You climbed into my SUV, and it was like I’d been hit by a lightning bolt.” His hand slid around my back to rest just above the swell of my ass. “You haven’t told me much about your childhood, but I figured you had to have experienced your own loss if you ended up in foster care.”
“My mom. When I was twelve.” My gaze slid up to the picture of Dillon and his brother, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders with huge grins on their identical faces. “But it wasn’t much of a loss because she wasn’t much of a mother to me in the first place.”
Dillon’s gaze followed mine. “Declan and I were identical in looks, but he was my better half in so many ways. He always got straight A’s, without really trying. Didn’t break any rules. No drinking, not even when we were at parties. He never tried smoking pot because he didn’t want to risk getting kicked off the football team. He played first line for offense and defense.”
About halfway through his recitation about his brother, I shifted my focus from the photos to Dillon’s face. His despair was etched there, in the lines bracketing his mouth and the pallor in his complexion. “He sounds amazing.”
“Declan was the best.”
My eyes filled with tears at how profound his loss had been. I sniffled, drawing Dillon’s attention away from the mantle.
“Look at my tough girl, crying for me.” He lifted the hand at his side to swipe at my cheeks while the other pressed me closer to his body.
“Don’t expect to see it again any time soon,” I warned. “The last time I cried was almost four years ago when I found out I was getting a new kidney.”
“Four years ago, this coming February,” he murmured. “That’s the last time I cried; when I woke up from a four-week coma and found out Declan had died in the accident.
”
Whoa. Talk about a major coincidence. Four years ago, this coming February, was when I had my transplant.
11
Faith
“February seventh,” I whispered. “That’s when I got my new kidney. It was the best day of my life.”
“The crash happened on January tenth, but I didn’t wake up until the day after you had your transplant.” His thumb swept across my cheek, and I shivered. “It was the worst moment of my life because that’s when my parents told me Declan had died. I’d missed his funeral and was stuck in a hospital bed, unable to believe he was really gone. Not until I was discharged, and they took me to his grave. That’s when it hit me. I’d spent my entire life, even before I was born, with Declan by my side...but he was gone, and I had to figure out how to move on by myself.”
I tilted my head to the side and rubbed my cheek against his palm. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” Dillon offered me a sad smile. “It’s kind of crazy to think we were both in the hospital at the same time, even though I was in a coma for most of my time there.”
I did a quick calculation in my head. “I left six days after you woke up.”
“I was at Southeast Memorial. You?”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Same hospital. Same time frame. “It’s such a small world.”
“Full of coincidences that led you here.” His head dipped lower. “To me.”
“When you put it like that, it kinda seems like we were meant to meet.”
He brushed his lips against mine. The gesture was gentle, our mouths barely touching. But it was still a kiss. And our first. I had no doubt it was a memory I’d never forget.
“More proof of that bond pulling us together,” he murmured against my lips.
The way we fit didn’t make any sense. It was too much. It was way too soon. But it felt real. And good. So I rose up on my toes and pressed my mouth against his to claim a second kiss. A longer and deeper one than the first.
It lasted until his mom called out and we jumped apart from each other. “Dillon! You’d better get your dad out of the kitchen, or we’re never going to eat!”
“She’s not kidding,” he chuckled. “I better get in there. You up for throwing the football a little bit with my dad and me?”
It wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do since I was the furthest thing from athletic, but I wasn’t going to say no to the offer. Not when it meant I got to spend time with Dillon, doing something that made him happy. “Sure. Sounds good to me.”
“C’mon.” He dropped another quick kiss on my lips before tugging on my hand to lead me into the kitchen. We stopped on the way to grab a football out of a closet off the hallway leading to the back of the house.
“Oh! You don’t have to head out there with the boys, Faith. You’re welcome to stay in here and help me instead,” Elaine offered.
“You trying to steal my girl, Mom?”
My cheeks filled with heat at Dillon calling me his girl. It only deepened when Elaine and Lloyd’s gazes dropped down to our hands, where our fingers were laced together. A huge grin split Elaine’s face, and Lloyd chuckled as he kissed her cheek.
“Maybe you should’ve let me be your helper, and then we wouldn’t have interrupted the kids.”
“Except then we wouldn’t have any dinner to eat because you would have found a way to ruin it all,” she teased.
“We could’ve had Chinese again.” He jumped out of the way when she picked up a towel from the counter and snapped it at him. “Okay. Okay. We’re going.”
Dillon opened the sliding glass door that led to the other side of the stone patio we’d been on earlier. As we walked outside, I heard Elaine mutter something along the lines of Chinese food being a worthy sacrifice. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but Dillon and Lloyd seemed to understand because they both burst into fits of laughter that lasted until we’d made it all the way down to the grass. Lloyd headed to the left, and Dillon and I went to the right.
“What’d I miss?” I asked Dillon when we were about fifty feet away from his dad.
“Thanksgiving dinner is my mom’s and my absolute favorite meal. We love all of it. The turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, cranberries, rolls, and pumpkin pie.” He flashed me an approving grin. “We both also love anything pumpkin flavored, so the cookies you made were the perfect thing to bring.”
“You haven’t even tried them yet,” I reminded him. “They could be awful.”
“They’re pumpkin flavored, and you made them for me.” He paused to throw the ball to his dad in a perfect spiral. “So I’m going to love them.”
“I actually made them for your mom since she’s the one who invited me.” His dad threw the ball our way, and Dillon caught it and tossed it back before reacting to my joke. Then he wrapped his arms around my torso and lifted me off my feet, twirling me around until I got dizzy. “Dillon!”
“What?” he asked after setting me back on the grass.
I clutched onto his arms to steady myself. “I was just teasing.”
“Pumpkin cookies are nothing to joke about. Not with me or my mom.”
“You guys sure are serious about your Thanksgiving meal,” I muttered as he caught the ball and threw it back to his dad again.
“That’s putting it mildly,” he laughed. “My mom’s love for turkey dinner is a sure sign of how happy my mom is about us being a couple. If I hadn’t already realized you had her stamp of approval before you got here, that would’ve clinched it.”
A couple? Stamp of approval? So much about his statement blew my mind, making me dizzier than the twirling had just moments ago. “What do you mean?”
“That comment, about Chinese food being worth the sacrifice?”
“Yeah?”
I wanted to stomp my foot when he paused again to catch the ball. “You want to throw it this time?”
“No, what I want is for you to explain about the Chinese food thing.”
He seemed to find my frustration amusing because he laughed while tossing the ball back to his dad.
“Dillon,” I growled.
“You’re cute when you’re irritated. Did you know that? I noticed it the first time we met.” I glared at him, making him laugh again before he finally answered, “My mom would’ve been willing to eat Chinese today, sacrificing her favorite meal, if it brought the two of us together.”
“Shut up! Really?” My gaze slid to the house, where I could see through the windows to where she was working in the kitchen. I respected Elaine a hell of a lot. It wasn’t just because of what she’d done for the foster kids at my school, either—although that would have been enough of a reason. But she was a genuinely nice person who cared about others and didn’t have a problem showing it. I hadn’t known a lot of people like Elaine in my life, and it made me appreciate those qualities in her more.
“Yeah, really. It’s why she tried so hard to make sure we met.” Dillon caught the ball again and nodded when his dad said he was going inside to check to see how much longer it’d be before Elaine needed help setting the table. “See, even Dad is in on it now that he knows what my mom was trying to do.”
It was hard for me to believe that Elaine was trying to pair me off with her son. At least she’d gotten to know me, so it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. But Dillon’s dad? We’d just met today. I couldn’t imagine how much Elaine had to have raved about me for him to be okay with his son dating a foster kid with nothing to her name. “Maybe he’s just really excited about dinner.”
“No, I don’t think so.” He tossed the ball at the bottom of the steps leading up the stone patio and gripped both of my hands once his were free. “My dad’s a sharp guy. He probably clocked our body language the whole time we were out here and decided we could do with a little bit of alone time before dinner is ready.”
“What? No!” My eyes went wide, and my cheeks filled with heat. “Do you really think so?”
“Is it so hard to beli
eve?”
“But he’s your dad.” My voice dropped a notch, like they could hear me from inside the house.
“Yeah, but it’s not like we’re teenagers who need a chaperone twenty-four seven.” He yanked me closer. “Or that we could get into too much trouble out here anyway.”
“This is so weird.”
“Which part?”
“All of it!” I felt his chest shake with laughter and nudged him in the shin with my shoe.
“Ouch!” He gave me an exaggerated wince.
“Oh, please,” I snorted. “I barely touched you.”
“I already told you how much I like it when you’re irritated.” His eyes were filled with humor, but they also held a thread of heat. “If you keep it up, I’ll be tempted to put the time my dad gave us to good use.”
And if they hadn’t been inside with a clear view of us, I might’ve been coaxed into finding out exactly how we would’ve passed that time. It was crazy! The pull between us was strong enough to get me to act completely out of character. It was turning me boy crazy for the first time in my life—but only when it came to one, specific guy. Dillon Montgomery...who was grinning down at me and making those butterflies take flight yet again.
“You’re impossible.”
The heat in his eyes ratcheted up a notch. “Impossibly attracted to you.”
“You’re quick with the perfect lines, slick.” Really damn smooth while I still felt awkward and nervous around him. It was understandable since I didn’t have much dating experience. Seeing my mom with so many strange men when I was young had given me a skewed perspective on romantic relationships. Coupled with my not-so-great experiences in foster care, my illness, and the scars from my transplant, and I’d gotten in the habit of avoiding potential relationships for the most part. But Dillon had snuck in there; tricking me into our first date. Blindsiding me by calling us a couple. Making me feel things I didn’t expect. “Should I be worried?”
The Fortuity Duet Page 9