“And your heart?” I asked. “What about that?”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I’ll answer that if you answer this. Was any of it real?”
“Every moment, every single one was real. Why do you think I tried to keep myself from kissing you? Because every kiss took more of me and I knew it would kill you when you found out.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m not him. I won’t ever be him,” I admitted sadly. “I’m not your real fiancé, or the man you fell in love with in college.”
“The man I fell in love with in college took my heart, and he never gave it back, Bridge. He kept it close even when he hurt it, even when he knew it was breaking. Julian may own this apartment, he may own my car, but he doesn’t own me, not anymore, and the day of the accident, when I was giving him back his ring, when he was trying to put me off again, I made a choice, to walk away from this, from him, with what was left of my heart intact.”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked up at me with bright eyes. “Don’t be, you’re the one who nursed it back to health.”
And then she kissed me.
I didn’t wrap my arms around her.
I was afraid to move.
Afraid to shatter the moment.
Still feeling guilty but wanting her more than anything in this world. Her tongue touched my lower lip and then slid inside.
I opened my mouth to her.
I wanted to give everything to her.
Our hands found each other then, entangling, holding on for dear life as we sat in the middle of the couch, both broken, just something else my father had tried to destroy.
Izzy pulled back and then moved to straddle me.
I had my hands on her back just below her waist. I was petrified to go any lower. We were both too vulnerable. I didn’t want her caught up in the moment.
I wanted her caught up in me.
“For the record . . .” She licked her lips like she could taste me there. “Every night, when I went to sleep, I’d pray for more time with this version of Julian. What I didn’t realize was that I was praying for more time with you, Bridge Anderson Tennyson.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying . . .” Our foreheads touched.
I held on to the moment, her in my arms, knowing it was me, not him.
“I’m saying we should probably watch a movie and order takeout because I’m exhausted and I know you are too.”
“Yeah.” I was disappointed, and I had no reason to be. She was being rational, and I was acting like a fool in love.
Chapter Thirty-Five
ISOBEL
Emotionally I felt like I’d been run over by a train. Physically I didn’t know how to react. We were familiar and yet we weren’t.
He was a stranger.
One I’d kissed.
One who’d held me.
Showered with me.
Slept in my bed.
It was bizarre to try to process and yet I still yearned to see Julian to make sure he was okay, to sit at his bedside and confess all the ways I had failed him, even though he failed me first.
I wanted to recite my sins one by one.
Worst of all, I wanted to confess that I fell in love with his brother, while he was healing.
Now that I knew Bridge wasn’t Julian, I felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner, then again it’s not normal for people to walk around with unknown identical twins taking over their lives, but there it is.
Bridge was sitting on the couch, his arm draped over the back, and his hoodie clinging to his muscular body like a second skin.
He was the rugged version of a very polished Julian.
Where Julian was smart suits and flirty smiles, Bridge was loud and argumentative, sarcastic and at the same time sad, more sad than Julian, like he’d purposely taken the weight of the sadness for both of them and volunteered to carry it so Julian wouldn’t have to.
Julian had never been weak. His biggest fault was trying to earn the approval of a man who would never give it.
And Bridge? His biggest fault was resentment over his father separating them while his brother continued to live and die by Edward’s approval.
“You’re thinking awfully hard over there,” Bridge called out. “Don’t you just press a button for popcorn? Or did you need a manual?”
I rolled my eyes and grinned. “You know you could get off your ass.”
“I could.” He turned to look at me with that same smolder Julian had, damn it. “But then I wouldn’t get to stare at you while you walk all the way back over here with the bowl, and when I dropped a piece I wouldn’t get to watch you bend over to pick it up.”