Page 107 of Merging Wright

50

Playlist: “Good as You” – Kane Brown

[Mach]

The truth about Ainsley and Myles is a pile of puzzle pieces without a guiding image to follow. Everything inside me is a jumble, and I need to talk to someone. The first person I think of is Jane. Her absence is a gaping hole in my dark heart. I’ve sent her text after text and phone call after phone call, needing her to speak with me. Ainsley and Myles are only a sliver of the issue.

I want to know how to fix Jane and me.

When my imagination ran rabid with drastic scenarios, like colliding with a bridge, drowning in a river, or crashing on a plane, Jane finally responded to at least one text.

I made it back to Chicago.

Her silence was destroying me, but her message was clear. Leave me alone.

The night after Jane left, I sit outside Ma’s house near the firepit. A fire doesn’t burn. I haven’t been able to tackle a single issue with Trixie’s fire or the vacant store. I simply sit among the rustle of leaves with the bridge in the distance glaring at me, and I stew.

“Here.” A glass of scotch appears over my shoulder and rests against my upper chest. Myles stands beside me. His eyes don’t meet mine.

“Thanks.” I take the glass canning jar from him and give the liquor a sniff. Ma’s special blend. I could use the bite, and I take a drink as Myles hobbles around me. He limps to a woodpile a short distance away and wobbles back with a few logs under his arm. I stand and remove the stack from him.

“Thanks,” he mutters.

I drop the few pieces on the charred pile within the brick ring. Myles leans forward and strikes a match, laying the flame against some unburned twigs. A thin stream of smoke floats upward, and the crackle of wood catching fire stirs the night.

I sit back in my seat.

Myles remains standing, leaning on his cane and watching the flame build. “Ainsley called me.”

“How did I never know you were fucking her?”

“Hey!” The blaze in his eyes is brighter than the fire in the pit. The defense in his voice suggests she was more than an easy lay to him.

“Sorry,” I mutter, but arch a brow. “Well?”

“You weren’t meant to know. Plus, it was a long time ago, and it doesn’t matter now.” His voice grows distant as he turns back to stare at the slow-growing flame.

“Did you love her?” I watch my twin.

“That doesn’t seem to matter either.” Regret and loss fill his hollow voice.

Damn. “Myles, I thought that you and Tracy—”

“I know what you thought.” His voice turns harder, edgier than I’ve ever heard as he faces me. “You didn’t stick around for the truth. Maybe it was better that way, though.”

“How can you say that?” I shift in my seat, leaning forward to place my elbows on my thighs. My glass dangles from my fingers.

“You wanted to believe what you wanted to believe. Maybe hating me took away the pain of losing Tracy.”

“Nothing could take away that pain,” I defend my heart. My first love. My first wife.

“Not even Jane?” Myles stares at me, notching the string, and flinging an arrow. Bull’s-eye. Because Jane was taking away the pain. She wasn’t erasing memories, but she was building new ones. As Ma said when I first arrived, Jane was my acushla. And my heart’s rhythm has been erratic ever since she left.

“Riddle me this first. Why did Jane come to see you the day she left?”

Myles shakes his head, looking back at the firepit. “She wanted to make sure she wasn’t screwing me out of my inheritance if she left. She didn’t want to disappoint me.” He turns to me again. “I hugged her because she looked like she could use a hug.”

He takes a deep breath. “I had no idea about the rest until, you know, the two of you had it out in my office.”