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“Lucy Tucker is my queen and I can only hope that one day, I’ll be her king in the back row.” He opens his eyes, a melancholy smile touching his cheeks.
The narration of his journal entry has me weeping, choking on my strangled sobs. Itwashim. This entire time, it was Saxon. I stroke over his queen chess piece tattoo on his forearm. Did he get this for me? Am I still his queen?
“Why didn’t you tell me? You let me believe you were Sam. Why didn’t you correct me, Saxon, why?”
“Because I saw the way you looked at Samuel. You liked him. When we first spoke in the library, I knew you felt the same spark that I felt for you, but I didn’t know if it was genuine or not—if you felt that for me, or for Sam. I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you’d stop looking at me the way that you did. I wanted so desperately for you to want me; that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to believe that when you looked at me you saw Sam, so I made you seeme—and you did. But I was too late.
The person you returned the book to and had coffee with wasSam, not me, Lucy. He knew about you because like I said, I had confided in him about how much I liked you. I even asked for his advice on how to talk to you. That’s why he fell into the role of being me, well, him, so easily. He knew everything.”
“What?” I gasp.
“When I saw you a week later holding hands, I felt betrayed, hurt beyond belief. I thought that regardless of our connection, you still wanted Sam. I never knew you had coffee until Sam told me when we turned eighteen. He apologized and told me that you had approached him, thinking it was me, well, him. He didn’t mean for things to happen. He said he was just intrigued by the girl who had captured my heart. But in turn, he fell in love with you. He’s always been in love with you. Sam may have been an asshole to me, Lucy, but his feelings for you have always been real. You changed him.”
We’re both silent, deep in thought.
“By trying to act like Sam,” he scoffs. “I inadvertently made you think Iwashim. I wanted to believe you thought it was me, but everyone wanted Sam. It made sense you wanted him too.”
“I wantedyou, Saxon. I fell for the boy who gave me this.” I sadly look down at the necklace which now represents all I’ve lost. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugs, helpless. “It didn’t matter. I could see that you loved him, and you were happy. I was so hurt that you couldn’t tell us apart. Stupid, isn’t it? We’re identical, for fuck’s sake. But regardless, I couldn’t be around you and be reminded of what I lost. And I couldn’t be reminded of what Sam did. He betrayed me, even if he said he didn’t mean to, causing an even bigger rift between us.”
This explains everything. His hatred for me was caused by the fact I hurt him. I unintentionally hurt him, but tell that to a seventeen-year-old kid. But as we got older, he surely understood that I was just a child. I deserved to know the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me when we got older? Or why didn’t you tell me the day that we kissed?”
I’m beseeching him to tell me the truth because I need to understand.
With shaky fingers, he reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. His touch still sends shivers down my spine. “Because I wanted you to wantme. Not the seventeen-year-old me you met in the library. Yes, it was me you first met, but it washimyou fell in love with. I wanted a chance to prove myself. To show you that the spark between us has always been there.”
A thought hits me, leaving me winded. “You stayed away because of me. I ruined your life.” He sacrificed his happiness for me.
Shaking his head vehemently, he cries, “Lucy, no. This isn’t your fault.” He wipes away my torrent of tears with his thumbs. “This is why I never wanted to tell you. It resolves nothing. It only brings up bad memories, ones I wish I could forget.”
I thought I had all pieces to the puzzle, but I don’t. There is still one remaining. “Is that why you hate Sam? Because he stole me away from you?”
Saxon sighs, his face forlorn. “It’s part of the reason why.”
“But there’s something else?”
He nods.
I dig through every word he’s spoken, looking for a clue, a minor sign which will piece this all together. It’s there; it’s on the tip of my tongue.
It comes to me so quickly, I nearly double over in disbelief. “Oh, god, Saxon, no—what did you do?”
He runs a hand through his hand, closing his eyes ashamed. “Being someone’s twin allows you to be a doppelganger. And Sam asked me to be his. Numerous times. When he got into trouble with Kellie, I always took the blame. Perfect Sam could do no wrong. She could never tell us apart, so in the end, even when she caught Sam red handed, it was always my fault. Sometimes, I think she knew it was Sam, but it was always easier to believe one child was a failure, and not both her boys.
I hated Sam, but he was my brother and I naïvely hoped that maybe one day he’d need me as much as I needed him. But then I grew up. I realized there are bad people in this world, and my brother was one of them.”
I gulp.
“We were always competing for Kellie’s affection. She shouldn’t have had one child, let alone two. But she loved Sam. He excelled at sports, something my parents could understand. But me, they thought I was weird, different. I was set outside the Stone mold.
“So the answer to your question is if Kellie, our own mother couldn’t tell us apart, what hope did our teachers have? Sam was a great basketballer, but he was a lousy, lazy student. Dad was on his back to get good grades, set on him graduating and helping him on the farm. But Sam didn’t want that. He wanted that scholarship to Montana State. But for that to happen, he not only had to excel at basketball, but in all his other subjects, too.
“He begged me to help him, saying I was the smart one, while he was the one who was supposed to turn pro. That was his dream, Lucy. And as his older brother, even after all the shit he pulled, even after Kellie favoring him throughout our entire childhood, I wanted that for him. And a selfish part of me wanted him gone, hopeful he’d leave you behind.”
I don’t make a sound, lost in a past I always knew was there.
“I sat his SATs for him, and I aced it. He was getting that scholarship, no questions asked. The makeup test was the following week, which I was going to sit. I made up some lame excuse that I had the flu and couldn’t get out of bed to sit the original test. The excuse stuck, as no one upset the Stones. But that never happened because Sam told me the wrong date. I trusted him, but he lied. I was a day too late. The story of my life.”
