“Ethan…” But he bypassed the rejection before it came, sitting upright when his sister cleared her throat.
“Aly, we’ll have to coordinate our schedules.” Steph was demanding, a perfect counterpart to her twin brother. Where Ethan exuded subtlety, a coolness when he was after something, Steph went all determined, mildly insistent. Even their looks were a disparity. Steph reminded me of a winter nymph, pale skin, bright blue eyes and dark blonde hair. There was a fairy quality to her features—the bones beneath her fair skin elegant, fragile, a subtlety that made her look ethereal, a wholly feminine quality that drew attention; one that I envied.
Ethan looked more exotic, with his dark, wavy hair, piercing gray eyes and olive skin that seemed to always catch a tan within a half hour of being under the sun. His features were more angular than his twin’s, with a rugged quality hidden beneath the polished, well-groomed surface; like a woodsman pulsing beneath the educated lawyer, threatening to break free given half the chance. I had noticed those differences and similarities the moment I saw them in the same room together.
“Once you’ve set a date, we’ll need to find a venue. Hmm, let me see…”
Ethan shook his head, his smile easy when his twin pulled out her phone, and the calendar app lighted against her face. Before I could stop her, Ethan waved me off. “Steph, pump the brakes. I’ve only just asked her tonight.”
“Yes, but I know how you are.” She glanced at me as though she expected me to have her back before her gaze returned to her brother’s face. “You don’t like waiting…”
“Steph,” Micah started, but was rebuffed when his wife scowled at him.
“This isn’t a secret, is it?” Again the blonde looked at me, ignoring how tense her brother had suddenly become. “You’ve told her why…why we’re so…spontaneous?”
“Wi, cheri. But even without an explanation I would have known,” I offered, hoping my smile would ease the tension around the table or at least get Ethan’s shoulders to relax and his finger clenching the napkin to untighten. “I’ve seen you both skydive over the Mississippi to see who could withhold their chute the longest and let’s not forget the ridiculous Ferrari drag racing along the dirt roads in Manchac. I think I’ve sorted out that you two don’t live by normal rules.”
Trying to make an awkward situation less so was nearly impossible. Then that sibling difference kicked in. Steph’s flustered, impatient face contrasted Ethan’s easy expression.
“But it’ll be within months, right? I can’t imagine…” Steph started.
“Months?” The question slipped from my mouth without any thought at all and then the tension crystalized around us.
Ethan purposefully broke the moment by pulling my hand onto his thigh all while smiling knowingly. “That’s not something we need to get into yet. There’s time.”
The eagerness in his eyes made them seem lighter. He was placating me, I knew that. But it wasn’t some passive aggressive move meant to make me feel bad for my worry. Ethan lived with urgency, with fervor, with a keenness that would have cut others to shreds. He’d explained it to me the first time he kissed me—all passion and eagerness, verging on desperation. When I pushed back that night, confused and afraid because he had never shown that side of himself before, he opened up and told me about his past, and why he felt so compelled to live life full throttle.
“I wasn’t always like this,” he’d said, leaning against his door. “But Aly, I don’t waste a single second.”
It had been the wreck that took their parents when he and Steph were twenty, the devastation it left behind, how Ethan had spent a year in a rehab facility learning to walk again—it made him spontaneous, wild, frantic for what he wanted instantaneously.
“One minute we’re driving up the mountains in Gatlinburg laughing with our folks, talking about dinner and the white water rafting tour we’d take the next day. It was all so…normal. There was absolutely no difference in the moments before Dad took that curve too fast and the ones we had our entire lives. Just like that,” he’d snapped his fingers, making me jump in the dead silence of his car, “they were gone. Just. Gone.”
Time was too precious and neither Ethan or Steph were willing to waste any of it.
That meant a proposal that came quickly. Too quickly. It meant I’d have to face the warring doubts in my mind—the ones that told me how foolish I’d been to say yes and how desperate I was to put my life with Ransom behind me—long before I was ready to even think of how drastically my life was going to change.