Dance for Me

Chapter Twenty-Three

The puzzle pieces finally click into place. The scene they create makes total sense now. Ransom has a brother. An identical brother. As we stand in the kitchen looking at one another, it dawns on me just how embarrassing this situation is.

"God," I say, hiding my face behind my hands. "I totally walked in on you in the bathroom."

Rebel maintains that stern frown, and I think he must be a real ass if he can't forgive an honest mistake. If he didn't want anyone to walk in on him, then he should have closed the damn door.

"Don't worry about it, babe," Ransom said cheerily. "Rebel's not exactly the shy type."

Rebel's hateful stare hasn't left me for a second, and when Ransom leaves my side to tend to the bacon, I scoot a little closer to him and farther away from his brother. Supposedly, everyone has an evil twin out there somewhere. Rebel must be Ransom's, I decide. Even his name seems to suggest it.

"Don't worry," Rebel says, his voice a deep, dark rasp. "It's nothing she hasn't seen before. Right...Joe?"

The way he says my name, like he's testing out the feel of it on his tongue, is disturbing. Oddly, I feel my body responding to the low timber of it as if his voice is calling to me on a deeper, more intimate level. It must be the resemblance. Or, rather, the effect of looking at the exact same image of the man who drives me crazy.

Ransom shoots his brother a condemning look over his shoulder and turns off the stove. "Stop trying to make my girlfriend feel uncomfortable, Rebel. I'm sure it's a pretty big shock to find out I have a doppelganger before she's had her morning cup of coffee."

"Imagine what a shock it must be for me, then, to see the woman I've been screwing these last few weeks dressed in my brother's shirt this morning."

Everything just stops. Time, breath, heartbeats. My head snaps up at the same time as Ransom's. He looks at me and then at his brother as if he's insane. Which he is because there is no way in hell I've slept with this man.

No way.

Is there?

I study both men again. They're exactly the same, every single detail. But, as they begin to argue, I start to realize that there are some differences. For instance, Ransom's voice is smoother, even when he's angry. Whereas Rebel's is a husky growl, no matter his mood.

That's the deciding factor. I'd thought the puzzle had finally clicked together? I was wrong. So very wrong.

What I didn't realize until this very moment was that a piece was missing—the one crucial piece of the puzzle responsible for pulling it all together in a nice, neat package.

Suddenly, the differences I'd recognized in Ransom are making sense. Perfect sense. All those times at the hotel and the club, when he'd been too rough, demanding, and callous compared to when I'd see him at the university, where he was subdued, softer, and more agreeable. When he'd made love to me and actually tended to my needs for once, instead of only worrying about his own.

Ransom wasn't always Ransom.

He was also Rebel.

Twins. Identical twins.

I'd been sleeping with two men.

Brothers.

My blood runs cold. Falling back, my hip bangs against the counter, but the impact is nothing against the heavy cloud of confusion, hurt, and betrayal that's slowly choking the air from my lungs.

Noticing the panic written on my face, the yelling stops and Ransom reaches for me. I move out of the way, refusing contact.

I don't want anyone touching me, least of all him. Them. Fuck! My head is spinning. I feel like I'm on a tilt-o-whirl, everything around me reduced to a blur of indistinct shapes and colors. My emotions are a mess of confusion, humiliation, and abject horror.