“Did you tell them about ours?” I immediately asked.
“Hell, no,” he said. “I don’t want any other man having visions of my beautiful wife.”
For my part, I made it clear that I loved sweet, kind, and even rough sex, as long as it was with him. I told him I would do anything he asked me to do if he wanted to try new things. He wasted no time listing all the things he wanted to do to me, and God, I just want to be done here and get started on all of them.
Last night was the best night’s sleep I have had since he returned home. We made love slowly and it felt just as good as when he took me hard and fast. I should never have mistrusted him in the first place. Turner loves me, and for me to doubt that love is a feeling that I never want to experience again.
Zack and I have talked briefly a few times on the phone since that awful dinner. Even after I told him my insecurities were entirely erased, he still insisted on checking things out just to put his own mind at ease. I’m okay with that if it’s going to make Zack happy and remove all his suspicions as well.
Both Turner and I have been cooped up in our offices all day every day, documenting financial transactions and summarizing several of our clients’ financial statuses. I’m exhausted. Turner being gone last week has put us behind with a few of our accounts. Now that the end of the week is here, I feel like I can breathe again as I e-mail the last of my reports to a client.
I look at the clock and realize I still have an hour left. Turner is on a conference call, therefore I can’t ask him if he wants to skip out a little early and get to the bar for happy hour. Reaching for my phone, I decide to kick back and relax and maybe download some new songs. I plug in my phone to keep it charged and start listening to some music as I browse through the new selections.
“Clove?”
I jump, catching sight of Zack out of my peripheral vision.
“Christ, you scared the shit out of me!”
I sit back in my chair with a smile on my face, placing my hand over my heart as I slump back in my seat. I laugh, finding the situation funny. Pulling my ear buds out, I watch my brother as he strolls in and sits across from me at my desk. But he’s not laughing or smiling.
“There’s something wrong,” I say in a strangled voice.
“Yeah, there is.”
“Is . . .?”
I start crying and can’t seem to get any words to come out. My chest starts heaving and I hold onto the edge of my desk, my knuckles snow white from my tight grip.
“Is he cheating on me?”
“It’s worse, Clove. Much worse.”
The way he looks at me tells me whatever his news is, it’s going to rip me to shreds.
“Wha-what is it?” I can barely choke the words out.
“Remember the bachelor and bachelorette parties we threw for you and Turner when you got married?”
“Yeah.” My eyebrows knit together. Where is he going with this?
“You remember how all of us guys went to a bar and a chick tried hitting on Turner? He got up to go to the bathroom and the chick followed him in, but the chick wasn’t really a chick?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, it seems Turner doesn’t. When I was talking with him and joking with him about it, he said something that didn’t make any sense. He said, ‘that chick was hot. I’d never cheat on your sister, but if I were single I definitely would’ve done her.’ ”
“What?”
“Exactly. How would he forget something like that? It’s not possible.”
Neither of us says anything for a few drawn-out seconds.
“I am confused, Zack. Where are you going with all of this?”
“I ran his prints, Clove.”
“You . . . you ran his finger prints? But why?”
Zack leans in and the look he gives me has me suddenly standing up from out of my chair.
“I suspected something wasn’t right from that moment on, Clove. That’s why I ran his prints. There is no way in hell he wouldn’t have remembered that she wasn’t a chick.”
We stare at each other for an eternity as I grasp the implications all at once. Zack’s face drops and he is up out of his seat in no time at all, catching me as my legs give out beneath me.
“Jesus Christ, no!” I wail, shaking my head back and forth.
“He’s not your husband, Clove. The man you brought home from the airport is Turner’s identical twin brother, Trent Calloway.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Zack? Turner doesn’t have a twin brother. He doesn’t have any siblings at all!”
“I hate to tell you this, Clove, but it’s true. We were able to track down a birth certificate for this fucker with the information we had. He is definitely Turner’s twin.”
“But . . . why didn’t he ever tell me? He’s never mentioned, not once, that he had a brother, much less an identical twin! And his mother! In all this time she has never talked about another son or even said she has had other children. I- I don’t understand this at all. Turner has never lied to me before, ever.”
How many more secrets and lies are waiting to be uncovered in this whole mess? It was bad enough when I thought my husband was cheating on me, but this? Then, like a ton of fucking bricks, it finally hits me that the man I have been sleeping with for the last week is not my husband, but his brother. His identical twin brother. I feel sick as my stomach starts twisting and churning.
“W- Where’s Turner?” I whisper in horror.
“I have no fucking idea at this point, Clove, but I am sure as hell going to find out. Who the fuck is this guy and what does he want?”
His face turns stoic and I can’t breathe with all of this shit running through my head.
“Oh, my God. Zack. Where in the hell is my husband? We have to find him!”
“Clove.” Zack shakes me, gripping my shoulder tightly. “Listen to me, Clove.”
He gently coaxes me back down in my chair.
“Look, I cannot imagine how you’re feeling right now, but you need to pull yourself together and listen to me. Can you do that?”
I can’t even answer him. My body goes into full force shock. I feel myself trembling as the room spins around me.
“What the hell am I going to do, Zack?”
My lips begin to quiver and tears start to slip down my cheeks. The look on my brother’s face is full of pain and anger.
“You’ve got to help me find my husband, Zack.”
“We’re going to find him, sis,” he says, kneeling down next to me. “But I can’t do this without your help.”
“My help? What do you need me to do?”
“Damn it!”
He gets up and starts pacing the floor.
“It’s going to kill you to do this, Clove, but you have to leave him. There is no way in hell I am allowing you to stay with some psychopath. I want you the hell out of there, NOW.” His entire body shakes as he pleads with me. “I don’t have any more answers right now.”
My body has gone into a complete state of denial. How could this be happening to Turner and me? Our lives were perfect.
“I should have gone with him like he wanted me to,” I sob, nearly losing my ability to speak, straining to even get those few words out as a lump too hard to swallow forms in my throat.
“No. Don’t say that. This is not your fault, you hear me? Something tells me this would have happened one way or another, Clove, and until we find some answers, I need to know you’re safe. The safest place for you to be right now is at my house.”
The expression on my brother’s face is killing me. He’s worried and hurting as badly as I am. And now I am about to hurt him even more.
“Do you know exactly what this means, Zack? If I leave him not knowing where Turner is, will he kill him when I’m gone? I can’t do it. I refuse to leave and walk around wondering what might happen,” I say adamantly through the tears streaming down my face . . . tears for Turner, tears for my brother, tears for myself.