“Both of you only found out after he died,” Viv corrects. “And you can say you had only just met Reeve and you hadn’t had a chance to form a relationship with your twin. No one needs to know that was intentional. You can garner the sympathy vote by lying, and it’s not like that will be a stretch for you.”
Fuck. She really despises me.
“I’m going to land the blame squarely at that fucker sperm donor’s door,” I say through gritted teeth. “It will help to deflect the attention. Let them make it about the revered Studio 27 boss who loved his wife so much he banished the child he believed caused her death during childbirth and lied to his other son about being a twin. The world’s media will lap that shit up.”
Audrey looks at me with a glimmer of sympathy I fucking hate. I know in doing this I will be opening myself up to more of it, but I’ll cope if it means they will focus on me and not Vivien and Easton.
“Are you comfortable with that?” Ash asks Viv. “We might attract some heat from Studio 27 if we paint Simon as the villain.”
“Simonisthe villain,” Viv replies as Nancy appears carrying a tray with drinks. “I have no issue in tarnishing his reputation.”
Nancy sets the tray down, and I distribute drinks, handing Viv a pink gin cocktail. “We don’t have 7UP, but Sprite tastes almost the same.” Her chin tilts up as she stares at me, and I wish I could see her beautiful hazel eyes. She audibly gulps, and I wonder if her mind has thrown her back to nostalgia lane like mine has. After a few beats of awkward silence, I set the drink down in front of her. “I can get iced tea or lemonade or a coffee if you prefer?” I offer as Nancy appears in my peripheral vision.
“This is fine,” she croaks, wrapping her fingers around the stem of the glass. “I haven’t drank one of these since Ireland.”
I walk to meet Nancy, taking the second tray from her. “Thanks a mil.”
“Will your guests be staying for lunch?” she inquires, tipping her head in Audrey’s and Vivien’s direction.
“Probably not, but make extra just in case.”
“No problem, Dillon.” When Nancy first came to work for me, she tried to call me Mr. O’Donoghue, which made me sound like an old fart. I told her Mr. O’Donoghue was my father and if she wanted to keep her job to call me Dillon. She hasn’t messed up once since that day.
I carry the tray with crisps, biscuits, and fruit over to the table, depositing it in the middle before reclaiming my seat.
“What about your hair and your eyes,” Viv says. “She is going to ask about that. How will you explain it?”
Kicking my sneakers off, I stretch my legs out under the table. “I’ll tell her I experimented with my looks a lot when I was a teen. That I went through a rebellious phase and wanted to alter my appearance as a fuck you to the parents I never knew who had abandoned me. I’ll say when I found out the truth and reconnected with my twin, I chose to change my look. I wanted to see how close the resemblance was and what our individual differences were.” I’m sure the reporter will think it was a sweet gesture. A way of feeling closer to my long-lost twin, the brother she believes I hadn’t known about my entire life.
There is no way she will know it was a premeditated attempt to mess with my twin’s wife. Another way of driving the knife home to the love of my life, reminding Viv she picked the wrong brother.
No one needs to be privy to those disgusting truths.
Truths that make me want to lobotomize myself so I can never think of them again.
Awkward silence descends as the reality of my unspoken words resides in the space between us. We all know why I changed my look and why I changed it back. I’m only fooling myself if I think otherwise. There is no getting away from the full horror of my sins, and that is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.