Page 10 of Entwined With You

“And yes,” he said, leaving the kitchen with his drink as he headed for the sofa, nodding for her to follow him. “I truly loved her.” He’d loved her so much he still wasn’t over her. How many friends had tried to set him up over the years? Enough that he’d tired of the constant pressure. He didn’t want anyone else. How could he? Brina had been his soulmate. She’d known all his secrets. Had shared the darkest part of his life. A part he still had to keep buried.

He’d had a few one-night stands. Even a short-term friends-with-benefits arrangement with Cami, who along with Ollie had been his closest friend at the Academy. That arrangement, thankfully, had ended well before they’d both been recruited by Stark Security. They were still friends—hell, she was his best friend—and she knew more than anyone about his past.

But even Cami didn’t know everything. Neither did Ollie, who’d confided so much to Brax. Neither did Ryan or Damien, even though both men seemed to have unlimited resources to dig out the truth about anyone.

The secret was his alone. The secret of a life he’d buried. A dark life he’d shared only with Brina.

He could never truly be with someone else because he could never truly be.

“Did I lose you?” She’d taken a seat at the other end of the sofa, and was sitting with her back against the armrest, one leg tucked beneath her and her drink balanced on her knee.

He shook himself back to reality. “Sorry. I’m in a little bit of shock here.” He swept out his arm, indicating her. “Why didn’t she tell me? About you, I mean. We shared everything. Or at least, I thought we had.” Could he have misjudged their relationship so completely? She’d been his life. She was home and hearth and laughter and—

He closed his eyes as if that would shut off the pain in his heart. When he opened them again, he looked straight at that achingly familiar face. “Why?” he repeated. “I thought…”

“You thought she loved you,” Samantha said, her voice almost a whisper.

The knife in his heart twisted a little. “Are you saying she didn’t?”

For a moment, she was perfectly still, perfectly silent. Then she shook her head. “No, I’m not saying that at all. Are you saying that you had no secrets either? Nothing you kept completely to yourself?”

He thought about it, then shook his head. “I—no. No, I didn’t. She was everything to me.”

“Really?” Sam leaned back, her expression suggesting that he must be either a liar of a fool. “No secrets at all?”

“None.” The word came quick, but after he said it, he leaned back and truly turned the question over in his mind. “No,” he repeated. “No secrets. Maybe there were things about me she didn’t know, but that was oversight, not something I kept hidden. And we talked about our families a lot. I mean, at first, that was what the core of what we had in common, you know? The families—the situations—that we’d escaped.”

He bent over, his elbows on his knees as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “I told her the truth. I always told her the truth.” He lifted his head to once again meet Samantha’s eyes. “I thought she always told me the truth, too.”

“She did,” Samantha said gently as tears pooled in her eyes. “I’m sure she did. About everything but me.” She swept her index fingers under her eyes, catching the tears before they fell. “Don’t hate her, Brax. She was only trying to protect me.”

“Protect you? From me?” He shook his head, trying to make sense of the words. “You’re saying she didn’t trust me?”

“No. She did. She trusted you more than anyone.”

It took a moment for her words to register, but when they did, he shifted on the sofa, his body stiffening as he went on full alert. “How do you know that?”

“She—we talked. We stayed in touch. Not every day. Not even every week. But we had a system for contacting each other. And she told me how much she loved you. How much she trusted you. The last time we talked, she said you were the best thing that had ever happened to her, and that soon you’d be living straight. Off the grift, and all that.”

“She said that? What else did she say?”

“Nothing specific. Just that you had something big going, and afterward, you’d have enough to settle somewhere and start a real life. Get real jobs. She even talked about kids, and how you had to get clean if you were going to have the kind of family you both wanted. A family that wasn’t run on lies and anger and pain.”

He blinked, ignoring his own tears that snaked down his cheeks. “She told you that?”

Samantha nodded. “Yeah. She did. And she said she loved you over and over. Not that she needed to say it. I could hear it in every word she said about you. Honestly, she was gooey with it. It was a little sickening,” she added, but the goofy smile told him that it wasn’t sickening at all. That she’d been happy for her twin.

“Then why—”

She held up a hand, cutting him off. “I believe she trusted you. I really do. But here’s the thing, Braxton. Brent. Benjamin,” she added, leaning forward as she spoke the birth name he hated. “And I want you to understand that I need to be honest with you.”

“Well, yeah. Of course.”

“She may have trusted you, but I don’t. Not yet.”

“What are you talking—”

“You’re alive, Brax. You’re alive because you weren’t in the van when it blew up. So you tell me, Brax. Why the fuck would I ever trust you?”