Page 33 of Twins for the Enemy

His eyes search my face. I try to keep my expression blank, but it still feels like he’s picking out parts of my mind that I didn’t even know were there.

“This is about your father?” he says. “You said your father wasn’t nice.”

I release his wrist. “It doesn’t matter the reason. What matters is that he deservessome grace.”

He keeps looking at me. I want to close my eyes and give him less of a chance to find some part of me he hates, but I keep my eyes on him.

“Fine,” he says. “As long as you come back to the house and stay away from this side of the city.”

I look back at Neal’s apartment. I imagine him slowly losing his mind, wondering why Samson hasn’t shown up yet. It’s a dagger through the heart, but with his refusal to get help and how I remind him of things he’d rather forget, my presence seems more like a burden than a loving hand.

I nod once. He puts his hand on my shoulder and guides me over to his car.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

“It wasn’t hard to figure out where you’d gone,” he says. “If it isn’t obvious at this point, I’d go to the ends of the earth to find you.”

With the slight harshness in his voice, I know he means it as a threat, but as it sinks in, I realize it’sall I’ve wanted. Someone who will always find me. Someone who always wants to find me.

His hand lingers on mine as he helps me into the passenger seat of his car. I try to not let it matter to me, but it does. As he gets into the driver’s seat, he drives with one hand on the wheel and the other hand on the center console, an inch away from mine.

He doesn’t need to go to the ends of the earth to find me because it’s a gravitational force between us. But I’ve learned that revolving around someone doesn’t make it a good thing.

It’s just another way to say you have no control.

Chapter ten

~KIERAN~

I pull on my running shoes, tightening the laces. They were created by a NASA engineer to be water-resistant, but water has a way of dripping in, then flooding into the places it's wanted least.

Women can be that way as well. At least one of them can.

The shoes are necessary. Many of the streets I run on aren’t maintained, and it snowed about ten inches last night. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d watched it come down and rationalized wanting to keep Farah safe. She is carrying my children; she’s the only thing keeping them alive. But it was much more difficult torationalize the way my brain burns like a harsh chemical is corroding it—except when I’m near her.

The run, combined with the cold temperatures, will flush out whatever toxin infiltrated my body. I’ll expel it—and her—and return to a version of myself that can breathe just fine alone.

As I pass by the library, I catch a glimpse out the bay window. The snow is still piling up, making my backyard look like untouched land in Antarctica.

Farah doesn’t know that I’ve seen her huddle near the cherry blossom, waiting for the deer to make its trek to the creek that runs through the yard. Even if she manages to find a coat instead of the blankets she drags out, walking through it will be a test of endurance, and she won’t be able to hide as easily when the snow will make her several inches taller.

Oh well. She can stay inside. It’s better for the twins.

I pull on my coat and leather gloves, grabbing my phone and wallet before heading out. I lock the door and step into the deep snow on the stairs.

The snowflakes on the surface of the snow glisten. It makes me think of the car crash—seeing Farah for the first time, the shattered glass covering her like a shimmering dress.

The mix of beauty and threat. Maybe it’s what is still drawing me in.

I keep reaching my hand into a car wreckage to grasp onto a venomous flower, just because the flower has amazing tits and an ass that defies gravity.

A snow shovel is set out against the porch. I’d left it there for Nate, the eighteen-year-old son of my housekeeper, who’d needed work, so I hired him for yard work. He’ll be here in a couple of hours. He won’t do the backyard since it isn’t part of his contract.

I recall Farah walking through the heavy snow. I imagine it rising higher, almost to her knees, and turning cold. I imagine it melting, the cold sinking into her socks.

Her stubbornness would make her wait too long until she’d return to the house. Frostbite, hypothermia, andtrench foot. It could lead to worse diseases from a weakened immune system.

But it’s the thought of her struggling to walk through the snow to get a glimpse of the deer that makes me grab the shovel and turn around. Not illness or pain, but the persistent discomfort at the thought of her discomfort.

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