He said, ‘Brandy.’ He poured her a shot and handed her a glass. When her hand shook too much he put his hand around hers and lifted it to her mouth. She drank and winced as the fiery liquid burnt down her throat into her stomach. It worked almost instantly, sending out comforting tendrils. Creating a warmth between her and the numbness that had taken hold.
The shudders started to subside slowly.
Apollo poured himself some brandy and slugged it back. He held up the bottle. ‘More?’
‘A tiny bit.’ She didn’t want to become insensible, not when her mind was actually functioning again. She took another small sip and the warmth extended from her stomach out, creating a calming effect.
Apollo sat on the edge of the bed. After a minute he said, ‘So, do you want to tell me what’s come back exactly? How much of your memory?’
She forced herself to look at him. What they’d just shared... She knew that would be the last time he’d ever allow intimacy between them once she had finished telling him what she had to.
‘All of it. Everything.’
‘Why are you saying you’re not Sasha?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Because I’m not. I’m Sophy. Sophy Jones. Sasha is...was...my twin sister.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOPHY COULD SEE Apollo try to absorb this. Eventually he said, ‘Twins.’
She nodded. She felt sick. Again.
He stood up. ‘What the hell is this...some kind of joke? Now you’re trying to convince me you’re someone else? Did you ever have amnesia?’
Sophy stood up, even though her legs felt like jelly. ‘The accident...happened. It was real. Sasha was driving, she’d picked me up from the airport.’
‘Well, if you’re a twin, and she was driving, where is she now?’
She was driving manically up a winding road, speaking so fast that Sophy couldn’t understand half of what she was saying. And then she turned to Sophy.
‘You have to seduce him, Soph,’ she said. ‘He wants you, not me. Isn’t that ironic? He wouldn’t sleep with me—he knows the baby doesn’t exist now. But if you sleep with him you can get pregnant. Then there will be a baby.’
Sophy looked at her sister, her insides caught in a vice of anxiety and confusion. ‘Sash, what are you on about?’
And that was when Sasha took a bend too fast.
Sophy could see that they were too close to the unprotected edge and she called out. Sasha slammed on the brakes but it was too late.
They stopped right on the edge, the front of the car tipping over. Sophy felt nothing but blood-draining terror as the ravine appeared below them, narrow, deep and dark.
She said, ‘Sasha, don’t move.’
She pushed through the gut-churning terror to open her door carefully and undid her seat belt. If she could inch out of the car then the weight would be redistributed...
Sasha was crying. ‘Soph, I’m so sorry... I should never have done this to you. I’ve ruined everything.’
Sophy looked over and saw blood trickling down Sasha’s forehead. She must have hit her head on the wheel.
She said, in as calm a voice as she could muster, ‘Sash, don’t think about that now. Just look at me, and keep looking at me—not down. I’ll get you out.’
Sophy put her leg out of the car and felt for the ground. Then she eased her body so that she was perching on the seat, her feet on the edge of the cliff.
She looked back at her sister. ‘Keep looking at me, Sash.’
Sophy kept her eyes on Sasha while she reached out to try and get hold of something that might anchor her if she jumped free of the car.
But at that moment a strange expression crossed her sister’s face and Sasha said, ‘I’m sorry, Soph, but I won’t take you down with me.’