What in the hell?
Did I die last night? Have a mental breakdown?
Another Corbin, a second Corbin, walked in the door and stopped mid-step, his gaze glancing between the first Corbin and me.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, refusing to look anywhere but at the two men in case one of them disappeared.
Did I fall into a Terminator movie? There were two of them. The situation stole my breath until I had to suck in a large gulp of air so I didn’t pass out.
Everything was absolutely wrong with the Corbin to my left, but the one on the right made my knees weak just by looking at him.
How could that be? They were identical.
“You,” I said, blinking twice. They were still both there. “Have a twin?” It was a statement, not a question, but it definitely sounded like I asked.
Corbin, my Corbin, frowned, looking at his identical persona. “Yes, and he’s an asshole. He didn’t touch you. Did he?”
One hand balled into a fist while the other held a light pink paper bag. The other Corbin, not my Corbin, and I both cringed at the idea.
“She is definitely not my type, but noted,” he said, knocking the top of the pizza box and then ramming it back into the empty fridge.
The two brothers exchanged a head nod and a question as if they were speaking in a weird twin language I’d heard about. They definitely came to an unspoken agreement as we stood in the kitchen.
“What’s that mean?” I asked, wanting to know what they’d said to one another.
“What are you, like a preschool teacher?” Second Corbin asked, his leering gaze running over me again.
I stuck out my hip and put a hand on it, ready to tell Corbin’s brother exactly where to go. “No, I’m not a preschool teacher, but what would be wrong with that?”
He laughed. “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
Corbin, the one I liked, dropped the light pink bag on the table and turned me around. His hands on my shoulders, he led me into the living room. “Ignore Cyrus. He’s second born and has never gotten over it.”
“Only by two minutes!” Came from the kitchen, proving Corbin’s words true.
CHAPTER8
CORBIN
Iwaited until the water turned on after ushering Hazel into the bathroom and finding her a towel. We needed to get out of his house, but I had a bone to pick with my brother.
He’d found himself a comfortable spot on the couch when I returned to the living room. “You’re such an asshole. What were you trying to do?” I asked before I fully cleared into the room.
Did he want to scare her away? Steal her for himself?
I’d been pissed at my brother plenty of times in life but never this mad. This rose to seething anger. We hadn’t fought in years. Not since grade school when my mother showed up to parent day, and we both were rolling around on the gymnasium floor arguing over who got to sit beside her. She ended up sitting between us as she’d planned to do all along.
Cyrus was my twin brother, and I loved him, but that didn’t mean we weren’t competitive. I couldn’t even blame my mother for it. She tried to treat us equally. My father did as well. We eventually learned to compromise in high school and each settled into our own areas of life, even forming a good partnership after graduation.
But in that moment, in that very second, I wanted to do nothing more than strangle him.
What had he been thinking?
Cyrus flipped through channels on the TV, which wasn’t hooked up to cable so everything was static. Finally, I positioned myself in front of the screen, forcing him to raise his gaze to meet mine.
“What’s up, Corbin? You look like you want to hit me, bro.”
My fists tightened, and my nails cut into my palms. “I do. Stay away from Hazel,” I said it and then jerked my hand between the two of us, letting him know that was the final say.