“Will is like a brother to me. I met him not long after—” I stop myself from saying more, out of fear Mia will want to rehash my past.
“Not long after you lost your brother,” she finishes for me.
I narrow my eyes at her. “How do you know about Erik?”
She frowns. “I’m a reporter. Did I ever tell you why I wanted to become a journalist?”
I shake my head. “No, you never did.”
“Because of you.” She digs her pointy finger into my bicep. “You left me without saying goodbye. You broke my heart that day. I thought if I could learn how to track down information that I could find you. Then, you showed up, not long after my first semester of college, as if nothing happened. But you were different and much darker than the boy I talked to on the swings in my backyard. The Ethan I knew was long gone.”
“You know about Erik, then.” Bile rises from my stomach, choking me.
She bobs her head. “Yes, but the newspapers didn’t provide a lot of details. I only know that he died in a car accident. You were dreaming about him this morning.”
It took me years to tell Will about my brother. He knows all of my darkest secrets. Sometimes, a reporter has the nerve to ask me about Erik, and every time I shut them down. No one outside of my inner circle can know about my real life. It’s none of their business.
“I have nightmares about my brother. I hate that I lived and he died. I feel guilty. We were twins. A part of me died with Erik. It left me hollow. I still am. Your brother came into my life at the right time. He reminded me so much of Erik. I started to smile again. I felt alive when I was with Will.”
She holds her free hand up to her mouth, and her eyes well up with tears. The pain on her face slices into my chest. I swipe a tear from her cheek and decide to keep going. After telling her this much about my past, she should hear the rest of the story, even though I would rather not share it.
“Erik had a blood clot that traveled to his brain and caused a stroke. It was a ticking time bomb. I was driving the car.” With a heavy sigh and continue, “I tried to help him when he started seizing and ended up hitting the guardrail. It all happened so fast. I woke up in the hospital. The last time I saw my brother alive was right before the car flipped. Almost everything after that is a blur.”
She tightens her grip on my hand. “You were you hurt, too?”
I nod. “I had some short-term memory loss for a few months, a broken leg, a pinched nerve that still hurts sometimes, and a cut above my eyebrow. I hit my head hard on the steering wheel. When the airbag broke, I cracked my thick skull on the window, and well, that’s how I got this souvenir.” I point to the scar above my left eyebrow. “This isn’t from hockey, even though I tell everyone that’s how I got it. At the time, it sounded cooler to say it was a battle scar.”
“I understand you so much more now. Your brother is the reason Will is so important to you and why you need his approval.” Mia swallows hard and wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. “I don’t want to be the one to take him away from you. I can’t… not after you’ve lost so much.”
I silence her concern with my lips. The simple act causes her to still until our lips separate. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
“E, I don’t want your friendship with Will to end over us dating… or whatever it is we’re doing. He’ll be pissed if he finds out we’re having sex behind his back.”
Before I can respond, my cell phone rings, the obnoxious sound interrupting our conversation. I fish it from my pocket and glance at the Caller ID. It’s Will. Of course, it is.
I hold the phone to my ear. “Yeah, I’m here with Mia.”
He asks about our shopping adventure and tells me to put it on his credit card. Alanna has the information on file. I’d prefer to buy Mia the dress for our dinner, but Will insists on doing something nice for her.
“The association called,” he says. “Did you hear from them?”
“Nope, not yet. What did they say?”
“We can move in next Thursday. The repairs are almost done. Only one more week of sleeping on Mia’s sofa. You coming back to her place or what?”
I glance over at Mia and wink. “Yeah, I guess I can rough it with you for a few more days. Unless you want to come stay at the Ritz with me.”
“Nah, Mia can use the company. When are you guys coming back? I want to grab dinner at the Mexican place that opened down the street.”
“Umm… okay. We should be home in the next two hours.”
We say our goodbyes. My heart sinks into my stomach when I see the deflated look on Mia’s face.
“We’re not going to dinner now, are we?”
“No,” I confess. “But I’ll make it up to you this week.”
“When Will isn’t around?”