Until Sage (Until Him 2)

“Yeah, I went to college and did the whole four-year thing to please my parents, but I was never happy. So when I graduated with a degree in business management, I decided to spend two more years doing something I knew I would be happy with. I’ve always loved makeup and hair, so it seemed like a no-brainer.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“Florida, about two hours outside of Miami.”

“Why Tennessee?” I ask, and something shifts behind her gaze, but she hides it quickly.

“I just wanted a change.” She shrugs then nods to my plate. “You should eat before your food gets too cold.”

Picking up my fork, I dig in then spend another hour with her before I leave her with a kiss and a promise to see her later.

Kim

HEARING KNOCKING ON the sliding glass door, I roll out of bed and glance at the clock. It’s after 1:00 a.m. Sage sent a text while I was at work and told me he would be over late, since what he was doing was going to keep him a while, but one in the morning is not someone who is interested in you. One in the morning is the time a booty call shows up, and I do not want to be a booty call, no matter how amazing the sex was between us.

Feeling something uncomfortable fill the pit of my stomach, I grab my robe and pull it on quickly while the knocking turns to pounding. Hitting the living room, I turn on the light, and that’s when I see Kelly standing outside, looking at me through the glass with her fist up ready to start knocking again.

“Hey,” I greet her as soon as I slide the door open.

“I’m leaving,” she states, tossing her hair that looks exactly like mine over her shoulder.

“You’re leaving,” I repeat, and she nods, shouldering past me into my apartment that she hasn’t been staying at and she’s only used when the guy she’s been messing around with kicks her out of his bed, leaving her no choice but to come here to crash. “Why… I thought—”

“I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I can’t,” she cuts me off, going to the closet, grabbing her black duffle bag from the floor, and opening it up.

“I need you,” I whisper, watching her pull things off hangers and shove them into the open bag on the floor.

“You need me.” She turns around to face me, picking up the bag, and I notice then that her eyes are wild, which means she’s gotten high recently—something she told me she would stop doing. “You don’t fucking need me. You just want to use me like every fucking other person in my life does.”

Rearing back like she slapped me, my body jolts. “That’s not true.”

“It’s not?” She laughs, but her cackle sounds evil and grates across my skin. “You didn’t even fucking try to find me until you were out of options.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I’m sure, bitch!” she shouts, and I take a step back.

I’ve never seen Kelly like this. I’ve never seen her so out of control, and I don’t have any idea how to fix this or how to defuse the situation. “You know my parents never told me about you or about our mom.” And they didn’t. I didn’t even know I was adopted until the day the test came back and I found out my kidneys were in the beginning stages of shutting down. That’s when they told me I had an identical twin. That’s when they told me everything.

“I don’t fucking care!” she screams at the top of her lungs, leaning toward me. “I do not fucking care about you.” She points in my face, and my heart cracks open. “I don’t care about any of this shit. I do not need your kind of fucking drama in my life.”

“What happened?” Something had to have happened. Something had to have set her off to make her act like this.

“Nothing happened. I just finally got a fucking clue.”

“Kelly, please.” I grab onto her arm as she starts to storm past me. “Let’s just calm down. Please don’t go. Let’s just get some sleep and we’ll talk about this tomorrow, when you’re thinking more clearly.”

“Thinking more clearly? Fuck you, Kim. Fuck you and your holier-than-thou attitude. Ask your fucking perfect, rich-ass parents to help you out.” She jerks her arm from my grasp and heads for the door.

Running after her down the steps in the garage, I yell, “Kelly, please don’t do this!” as she hits the remote for the garage, sending the door up. “Kelly,” I beg, but she doesn’t stop or even turn around to look at me. She ducks under the door, runs across the pavement, and gets into the car that is parked and running in front of my garage with the lights on, slamming the door once she’s inside. Standing here, I watch her back out of the driveway then take off.