“That’s not him, Dom. It’s not the same guy.” I was opening my mouth to snap that I had two functioning eyes in my face when he shook his head. “Twins. They were twins.”
Were? I relaxed my stance a little and crossed my arms over my chest. We just stared at each other for a long moment until Lando sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Remy and Rule Archer. Rule, the guy inside, is the only surviving twin, Dom. Remy got in a car accident several years ago and was killed instantly. For a long time I thought it was all my fault.”
I was trying to follow, but I still felt like I was missing big chunks of the picture. “Why didn’t you just tell me that when I asked you about the picture? You deliberately let me believe it was a relationship that just ran its course and ended badly.”
He let go of my shoulders and took a few steps away so that he could pace back and forth in front of me. “Because I never really dealt with Remy dying, Dom. I loved him … hard. He was my first everything and I was head over heels. I wanted forever and I only got a couple of years. When he died it broke something inside of me and I was never really interested in fixing it. I was going through the motions, thought I was doing things right, and then you show up and show me I’m doing everything wrong.” He cracked out a bitter laugh and turned to look at me with his hands on his hips. “I told you when we first met that the body has its limits and you need to listen to them. Well, so does the heart and I thought mine had reached it and then there you are and all of sudden everything seems limitless. It was scary, Dom. It is scary. I lost someone I loved and in that I lost myself, too. I didn’t even realize it until I started falling in love with you.”
They were pretty words and I wanted to believe them, and the man giving them to me, but I was still unsure and confused. “Why did you think his accident was your fault?” I understood how powerful a motivator guilt could be and was looking for a way inside his reasoning. I had watched it get really close to taking Royal down in its clutches but luckily she was a fighter and had fought back until Asa showed up to pull her all the way free. Guilt would go a long way in explaining why he was still so hung up on the man who had been his first love.
“Because we fought the night he died. We had been fighting a lot after we moved in together. It was supposed to be a huge step forward but ended up being a hundred steps back.”
He scraped a hand over his face and I could see sadness and memories that went along with a light in his eyes. They were so pale they almost looked silver as he continued to look at me.
“Remy didn’t tell anyone he was gay, not his brothers, not his parents, no one knew. He moved in with me and used his best friend, a gorgeous girl with a wonderful soul, as a smoke screen. He let everyone he loved think she was his girlfriend and that we were just roommates. We were together for years, Dom. I never met his family, he never met mine and didn’t want to. At first I dealt with it because I loved him and I thought things would change. I convinced myself that love, like we had, was obvious and impossible to hide and keep in the shadows. I was wrong.”