I shook my head.
“What’s going on? Does it have something to do with my mother? Was it freaking you out that you were going to see her and knew what she had done? I had a feeling it was going to upset you more than you realized.”
I nodded. Suddenly I was a fucking mute even though I had so much that needed to be said.
Her beautiful eyes turned sad. “Go sit. I’ll pour us some wine, and we can talk.”
She extricated herself from my arms and headed toward the kitchen. Just before she was out of reach, I suddenly grabbed for her and caught her hand, pulling her back against me. She smiled, thinking I was being playful, but I was dead serious. If this was going to be our last moment as who we’d become to each other, if everything in our fucked-up lives was about to change, I wanted one last kiss.
Taking her beautiful face in two hands, I kissed her until there was no doubt that she meant everything to me. After, she blinked a few times as if she had to work to get herself back into reality. “You’re scaring me, Dex,” she whispered. “That kiss felt an awfully lot like goodbye.”
If this was the beginning of the end, it was not how I wanted her to remember our last kiss. I caressed her face. “I love you, Bianca. I fucking love you so much.”
She looked surprised at my declaration. Hell, it surprised the crap out of me, too, that the words slipped from my mouth. But even after I’d put it out there, I was glad I told her. She needed to know the truth. The whole truth. Bianca pushed up on her tippy toes and kissed my lips softly, then pulled back to look into my eyes. “I love you, too, Dex.”
I wished I could freeze time and stay in this moment forever. But too soon, Bianca was readying for our talk. “Go. Go sit down, and I’ll pour us that wine so we can talk.”
She smiled at me from the kitchen. Was I a total asshole for dumping on her that I was in love with her a few minutes before I said what I came to say? She was beaming as she poured two glasses of wine. It seemed that my affirmation had quelled the worry she’d had over what I’d come to talk to her about, and here I was about to rip her apart. God, I hoped I didn’t make things harder because I was a selfish bastard and wanted one last kiss if things didn’t turn out for the best.
Bianca set two glasses of red wine on the coffee table and settled onto the couch across from the chair where I sat. I hadn’t noticed what she was wearing until that moment. Rather, what she wasn’t wearing. Namely—very much clothes. She had on skimpy, black boy short underwear and a light pink, spaghetti strap tank top that hugged her beautiful, naturally tanned skin. When she raised her glass to sip her wine, I saw she wasn’t wearing a bra under the tank and her nipples were fully erect and pointing at me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
My mouth watered staring at them. It was agony to force my eyes shut and remind myself: She could be your sister. She could be your fucking sister. When I reopened my eyes, I could have sworn her luscious nipples had doubled in size. I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Do you think you could put a robe on or something?”
Bianca looked down and noticed what I was seeing. “You don’t like my nipples?”
“I like them very much. Too fucking much. I can’t concentrate while they’re taunting me.”
She laughed as though she thought I was amusing but then went to grab her bathrobe. I chugged my full glass of wine in the two minutes that she was gone. When she came back out wearing a sexy, red silk robe that was hanging open, I grabbed her glass and finished it off, too.
Seeing the two empty glasses, Bianca fastened her robe and sat. “Talk to me.”
I didn’t know where to begin. I took a deep breath, followed by a mental snapshot of her as if it was the last time I might ever see her, and then opened my mouth. “Your sister is the spitting image of my father.”
“How is this even possible?”
Dex raked his fingers through his hair. “I called my father after I left. He confirmed that the timeline could work. And that he never used protection.”
“You must be imagining it. Alexandra is so much like my father. They have the same mannerisms, the same sense of humor, they even hold the fork in the same exact odd way!”
“Those things are learned. Not genetic.”
“They both have bushy eyebrows.”
“That’s a fairly common trait. I’d venture to guess that afflicts half the population of Greece.”
“You’re wrong. You have to be wrong.”
Dex took his phone out of his pocket and hit a few buttons, then scrolled until he found whatever he was looking for. Turning it to face me, he extended it palm up. I could see he’d called up Facebook. “It’s my father’s page. Scroll through some of his pictures.”
I hesitated, but eventually curiosity won out. The first picture I landed on, almost stopped my heart. It was as if I was looking at a computer-generated picture of my sister turned into a man. It had to be a coincidence. I swiped again.
My sister’s eyes.
Swiped again.
Alexandra’s chin.
Swiped again.
Her smile. Alexandra’s beautiful smile. Tears welled in my eyes.
Dex reached out his hand and attempted to cover the phone to stop me from looking further. I knocked it away, needing to see more. I swiped and swiped…looking for some semblance of hope that all of the previous pictures were just a bad angle or something. But by the time I frantically reached the end of the pictures, tears were falling.
Dex dropped to his knees and knelt in front of me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He tried to hold me, offer me comfort, but I couldn’t let myself let go yet. I needed to know more. “Did your father know?”
“He claims to have had no idea.”
“Does my mother know the truth?”
“I don’t know.”
“She only started working there a year before Alexandra was born. What the hell did she do? Jump in bed with the boss the first chance she had?” I wasn’t really asking Dex a question, even though I had so many.
“I don’t know what really happened. My father was vague on all the details. Sadly, I got the impression it wasn’t because he was intentionally being ambiguous, but rather it was because having an ongoing affair was a regular occurrence for him during his marriage, and he can’t keep them all straight in his mind anymore.”
“I just don’t understand, Dex. How do you have a child that clearly looks like another man and move on? They just ended the affair after she got pregnant, and neither of them ever bothered to question paternity? Everyone just moved on with their lives?”
Dex squeezed my hands. “The affair didn’t end, Bianca. My father said it went on for close to six years.”
I’m not sure if it was my brain’s protective mechanism, or if I was just really that na?ve. But I still hadn’t had my moment of epiphany. “Six years? Alexandra and I are only four years apart.”
Dex stared at me, looking deep into my eyes waiting for the click.
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