Dark Lonely Lies (The Denton Family Legacy 6)

“You’re not her.”

“So what? You get a second chance, is that it?” she asked.

She was really starting to give him a headache with her constant questions he didn’t know the answers to.

“I know how I feel. That’s all I can tell you.”

“But it’s impossible. You don’t know me and I certainly don’t want to know you. I was happy in my little insignificant life and now you’re saying that because of some divine meaning or coincidence, you and I are destined to be together?”

“I know how it sounds.”

“Yeah, it sounds like a bunch of horseshit.”

“Horseshit or not, it is what it is.”

****

Never in all of her life had she been loved. No one had ever cared about her, loved her. She’d been nothing but a passing glance when some parents came to care or watched them. The foster parents, they weren’t always loving, and those that tried too much, well, they were the scary ones. Some kids were lucky. They got out of the system, into loving homes with people who cared.

She’d been cursed to a lifetime of regret, so having this guy look at her and say things like they were destined to be together or that he loved her was impossible to believe.

It just didn’t happen that way. She wasn’t a fucking idiot. She knew the way the world worked.

He fed her some food. It was really bad but after starving for some part of her life, she knew how to eat food in desperation. She needed her strength more than anything else.

Gripping the edge of the chair, she watched him.

He was easy on the eyes, that was for sure. Cute, sexy, and he was more muscular than he was in the picture she’s seen him in. He looked like a hero on a book cover, or at least the rebel.

What she didn’t know for sure was if this Sarah was really her sister.

Biting her lip, she glanced around the room. “Is it true?” she asked.

“Is what true?”

“If you have feelings for me, which I really don’t believe, then does it mean that Sarah, was she … really my twin?” She didn’t want to feel anything when it came to learning about Sarah. She had no understanding of a twin or a concept of what it meant to have a family member.

Landon put down the empty bowl. “Yes.”

Tulip nodded. It shouldn’t hurt.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

She laughed. “You think you’ve got problems. You think knowing love and experiencing it is bad. How about not knowing what it’s like at all? In fact, you, your fucked-up uncle and brothers, none of them know what it’s like to have the mother lode dumped on you. Let me tell you, I don’t like it. Up until last week, as far as I was aware, I was just another unwanted baby. A nobody. I could live with it. No one wanted me, not even my parents. But now I learn I had a sister. A twin. Not only was I not wanted, my other half was. She got the parents, and the boyfriend, and I bet she had a good life, didn’t she? I bet she never knew what it was like to go hungry, or to be afraid because your foster dad’s steps stopped outside of your room and you know he’s been staring at you no matter how hard you try to hide your tits.”

She hadn’t cried in a very, very long time. Only, she couldn’t seem to stop these tears.

They fell thick, fast, and she gritted her teeth, angry at herself for even caring that no one had given a single fuck about her in all of her life.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not sorry. If you were sorry, you’d release me. Let me go. Instead, I’m still chained to a fucking chair.” She started to wriggle with more force. “Let me go. Let me out.”

She screamed until her voice was hoarse.