“She’s not a prize to be won, Cole. Why don’t we both ask her out and let her choose.”
“How can she choose? She cares about us both, and we’re identical twins for Christ’s sake. Let’s make it easy for her.”
I stared at him, noting the pleased look in his eye, the happy-go-lucky expression on his face, the easy way he carried himself. We were identical twins, but we were about as different as two people could be. And that might be the problem. If Lia had to choose between us, wouldn’t she choose Cole? I paused, a sick feeling of certainty squeezing my guts. Of course she would. Oh fuck, of course she would. They had so much in common. Cole was funny and outgoing and made everyone laugh. People just naturally flocked to Cole. They always had. God, I should be happy he’d left it to a foot race. I could win in a foot race. If Cole had his sights on Lia, this might be my only chance.
“Okay.”
He nodded. “Same track as usual?”
I nodded back. When we’d been younger, our dad had taken us out in his pickup truck and measured the distance on two different back roads with a thick growth of forest in the middle, that met in the same spot, each ending at the mailbox at the end of our road. They were the same distance. Cole and I would each take one, not knowing the other’s pace until we came around the bend and spotted the mailbox. It had taught us not to use the other runners’ paces to determine our own, to simply picture the finish line and get there as quickly as we possibly could. We’d been really good and had beaten all kinds of records in middle school. But we’d moved on to other sports when we started high school and hadn’t run this route or any other for a couple of years.
“Brother oath,” Cole said, spitting in his palm and holding it out to me. I looked down at his outstretched hand. We hadn’t done this for years either. I supposed it spoke to the importance of the match we were about to enter into. Could I do this, though? Bet on the only chance I might have to make Lia mine? I hesitated, but when Cole thrust his hand closer, I spat in mine and gripped his, the wetness of our mixed saliva creating what we’d deemed an unbreakable bond.
When we were seven, Cole and I had gotten into an argument about something and when our dad broke it up, we’d both turned away, each of us holding onto our personal grudge. Our dad had made us turn back to each other and that’s when he’d told us about the brother oath. We’d shook, promising to drop the grievance. “All right then,” our dad had said, “you’ve promised to let it go, and so you will. A man is only as good as his word.” He’d repeated it often over the years.
A man is only as good as his word.
“Brother oath,” I repeated.
He nodded once. “If I win, you step away from her. If you win, I’ll step back. Honor between brothers.”
I pressed my lips together but nodded. Brother oath. Honor between brothers. And we’d never broken either.
A man is only as good as his word.
We dropped our towels and took a minute to stretch, eyeing each other like two gladiators about to go into the ring. We were each wearing water shoes, which weren’t ideal for running, but at least we were on even footing, literally.
We lined up, facing opposite directions, the dirt road I was going to run stretched out in front of me. This was stupid. This wasn’t right. I turned to my brother to call it—
“On your mark, get set, go!”
Despite my last-minute reservations, the words jolted me into action, and we both took off, shooting apart, running toward our goal. My legs pumped and my lungs ached, but I ran my heart out.
Lia.
Lia.
Lia.
I pushed myself as far as I could possibly go without breaking, not caring that I was shaking with effort as I rounded the bend. I ran for Lia. I ran as if I were running straight into battle for her. I’d never run so hard in all my life. And yet as I came around the corner, I let out a sharp cry of pain and defeat, the bitter blow of disappointment knocking what little wind I had left completely out of me.
Cole was just arriving at the mailboxes. He’d beaten me by twenty-five yards. How the hell had he done it? I was obviously far more out of shape than I’d thought. Fuck!
I came to a walk, breathing harshly, my lungs still aching from my effort, a sharp pang in my side where a nasty stitch had started. Cole was breathing just as hard, but he leaned back against the post, shooting me a smug smile.
“Don’t gloat, asshole,” I said, bending forward and resting my hands on my knees in an attempt to slow my breathing. I’d lost her before I’d even had her, and he had the gall to rub it in.
He laughed, slapping me on my bare back. “I guess she was just meant to be mine,” Cole said. I wanted to own those words. I guess she was just meant to be mine.
I tried to pretend it didn’t hurt as badly as it did that I’d just lost Lia. In a fucking foot race.
CHAPTER THREE
Lia – Fifteen Years Old
My mama stepped into our house, the door slamming behind her. I glanced up, and then paused, frowning at the look on her face. She always looked tired, always looked slightly angry, but tonight she looked as if she was in pain. “Hi, Mama. You okay?”
She dropped her purse on the table, sitting down in one of the chairs and swearing softly in Spanish.
“Is it your back?”
“Sí.” There was resentment in her tone as if I should know very well it was her back.
I sighed, standing from where I’d been sitting on my air mattress doing my homework. I went to the cabinet in the kitchen where we kept medications and grabbed the bottle of pain reliever and a glass of water. I brought them to the table and set them in front of her, moving around behind her wordlessly so I could massage her shoulders.
She poured four tablets into her palm and threw them back with a long drink of water and then let her head fall forward so I could work out some of the kinks.
I kneaded her muscles in silence, staring at the shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe that she often kneeled in front of in prayer. I knew that one of my mama’s prayers was that I’d never been born, so I’d come to look at that shrine with anger and pain. “The devil held me down and raped me all through the night,” she’d once told me. “In the morning he went away, but he left me with his eyes. Devil eyes to watch and curse me all the rest of my days.”
When I was just a little girl, I’d thought it was a terrible story, a scary story, and I’d felt deep sympathy and fear for my mama. It had been years before I’d understood that by “he left me with his eyes,” she meant he’d left her with me and that the strange green eyes I’d inherited had belonged to him, a monster and a rapist.