I take another bite of my cronut. “I wish things were different. I wish you weren’t slipping away from me every day that passes. I wish Mom was still alive. Part of me wishes Trey had moved to Binghamton with me. Sometimes I wish Aaron never broke up with me to begin with. Life would be so different.” I sit back in my chair. “Now I have no idea what to do. I’m so mad, so freaking angry, and entirely way too confused. How does someone choose between two people they love?” I shake my head, my thoughts not having any cohesion. “I worry about him, Dad. I worry about Aaron, even though I’m so angry at him.” Sighing, not sure I can comprehend what I’m about to say. “I was dating Aaron’s brother. Trey is Aaron’s brother. He has a brother,” I say in disbelief. “Two for that matter. Aaron has two brothers. You didn’t know that. I didn’t tell anyone. I should have seen it, Dad. It’s so obvious when you see them together because they look similar. But where Trey is more polished, Aaron has ruggedness about him with his scruff and bronzed skin. They’re alike but so different. They both work very hard, but I can see that Aaron’s work doesn’t define him.”
Taking a deep breath, I exhale slowly. “I know what you would say right now, you would say who cares, but I don’t think this is a who cares moment, not when I feel so . . . broken.” I stare out the window, my appetite fading. “You made it look so easy, Dad. I only wish you could hold me and tell me everything will be okay, because right now, I’m lost. I wish I knew why he kept his brother’s identity from me.”
I lean my head against the back of the chair. A tear slips down my cheek, and I wipe it away just as my dad presses his hand on my knee. He doesn’t look at me and he doesn’t speak, he just holds me, and that’s all I need. His warmth, his touch, letting me know that everything around me might be crumbling to the ground, but he’s still here for me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
AMELIA
I’m about to sit down with a pot—yes, pot—of mac and cheese when there is a loud knocking at my front door. Taking a look at the time on my phone, I realize it’s entirely too late for visitors, so I take my pot of freshly made Kraft Mac and Cheese with me to the door in case I need to use it as a weapon. Cautiously I walk up to the door and look through the peephole, and when I see Amanda waiting impatiently on the other end, I relax.
“Amanda, what are you doing here?” I ask, opening the door.
She plows right by me and starts looking around the room like a crazy person, her jacket flapping with her movements. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?” I ask, closing the door. What the heck is my best friend is doing in my house late on a Friday night when she lives hours away?
“Ah ha!” Amanda holds up my phone as if she’s just won a trophy. “I knew you had a phone, I just knew it. I thought to myself, ‘You know, Amanda. I’m pretty sure Amelia has a phone so you’re not sending her texts into the Interweb. There is an actual landing base for them.’” She holds my phone out to me and continues, “And look, there it is.” Okay, she’s angry. I may not have messaged her back for a few days. “So can you explain to me, Amelia, why the hell you haven’t been answering me? Hmm?”
Unsure what to do, I hold out the pot in my hands and cutely ask, “Mac and cheese?”
Sighing, Amanda reaches for the pot and says, “I’m not a barbarian. Of course I’ll take some mac and cheese. But you better tell me what the hell is going on, and why I had to drive all the way here to get in touch with you.”
Knowing this is going to be a long conversation, I tell her to make herself comfortable and go into my kitchen for an extra bowl, spoon, and drinks. Looks like my plan to stay away from the outside world has come to an end. It’s time to face the music.
Amanda has her shoes and jacket off and her legs propped on my coffee table when I make it back to the living room. She’s eating the mac and cheese like a fiend from the wooden spoon I used to make it, and she follows my every move until I’m sitting right in front of her.
As if I’m begging for food from a snarling wildebeest, I hold out my bowl. She eyes my bowl and puts half a scoop in the middle. She points the spoon at me and says, “That’s all you’re getting until you start speaking.”
Yup, I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. It never is with Amanda.
I eat the little scoop then set the bowl on my lap while I lean back on my couch. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this.”
“Try me. There isn’t much I haven’t heard,” Amanda answers, mouth full.
“Trey, do you remember him?”
Amanda rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t be a dick about this, just tell me for fuck’s sake. I have zero patience right now.”
I smile to myself and continue, “Trey is Aaron’s biological brother.”
Amanda pauses the spoon that’s headed for her mouth midair, her eyes widening and her jaw dropping. “Excuse me?”
“They’re brothers. Trey and Aaron, they are brothers.”
Slowly Amanda puts the spoon in the pot and sets it to the side. “You were dating two brothers, like . . . two brothers.”
I nod, still unable to comprehend the entire thing myself.
Amanda holds up her hands and shuts her eyes for a brief moment. “I’m going to need you to start from the very beginning, because I feel like my mind is about to explode.”
I spend the next few minutes retelling her everything that happened in the last two weeks from my slow restart with Aaron, to our visit with Dad, to the night we had sex—which Amanda made me share in detail—to the morning after when I found out Trey and Aaron are brothers, to Trey’s gut-wrenching pleas to get me back.
“Wow . . . just wow.” Amanda leans back on the sofa, her eyes staring at the ceiling. “I mean, what are the odds of that happening?” She grips the couch. “And Aaron knew all along?”
“Yeah. Well . . . when I think back about it, I caught him looking at a picture of Trey and me that I had on my mantel. He knew for a while.”
“And never said anything to you.” I shake my head. “Well, that’s fun,” Amanda says sarcastically.
“It’s not. It’s not fun at all.”
“What would you have done if you had known?” Yep, she nails it. That’s one of the many questions that have run through my mind since the whole thing happened.
“I’m not sure.”
“Yet, you’ve made it the reason for rejecting Aaron. Interesting.” I have no answer to that one either.
“Okay, so you find out they’re brothers, what happened after that?” I’m thankful she’s trying to get her head around this with me. I don’t feel so alone.
Aaron’s sorrowful face pops up in my head. “Trey lost it when he found out Aaron was the Aaron, so he punched Aaron in the face. Aaron threatened to retaliate but then backed off, muttered an apology to me, and took off.” I swallow hard. “He has yet to return.”
“He hasn’t come back home?” I shake my head.
“He ran?”
“Yup.”
Amanda mulls that over as she takes a sip of her drink, eyes still cast to the ceiling. “Okay, so where do you stand? Is Trey moving here?”
“I have no idea.”
Amanda waves me off. “And what about Aaron? Are you in love with him?”
“It doesn’t matter if I am or not. He ran again, Amanda. How can I trust him anymore?”
“Valid answer. I guess.” Amanda nods. “But that’s not what I asked you. I asked if you’re in love with him.”
Am I in love with Aaron? Two days ago I believed I was. He knows me. He loves my dad. The absent man now is not the confident, caring, invested man I spent the last week with. The man who asked me to take my time, then ravish me throughout the night, is incredible. Where is he?
God . . .
I nod, my lips pressed tightly together.