He threw his hands up in defense. “Whoa. Okay, miss kindergarten teacher is all yours.”
As soon as he raised the stupid left eyebrow of his, I knew I’d played my cards too early. I let my feelings for Hazel show too much.
“She’s not a kindergarten teacher, and it’s not like that.” I frowned. Is it?
I loved Cyrus like any brother loved a sibling. More possibly because we shared the twin bond. But when I walked into the kitchen and saw him and Hazel talking, I wanted nothing more than to throw him against the wall and kick him out.
Of all the things we argued about in life, it had never been about a woman. There was nothing to argue about because Cyrus always got the girls. I may have looked just like him, but I didn’t have anywhere near his charisma.
From our first year as freshmen in a new boarding school, women practically hung off of him. Once a rumor circulated that he had a fling with the math teacher, but I cornered him late one night, and he promised it wasn’t true. He was meeting with her after hours for tutoring. And one thing my brother and I didn’t do between each other was lie.
Not only would I have been able to tell the second my brother tried to lie to me, but we considered it a cardinal sin. We had no lies between the two of us.
Never.
That didn’t mean we babbled to each other right aways. Sometimes it took a little bit.
Everyone knew—including us—that I was the smart one and Cyrus was the fun, sociable one. Even during our first few months at the boarding school, a few people didn’t realize we were two different people. We were months into the semester when people saw us standing side by side and put together there were two.
I preferred to hang back and read a crowd before jumping in, but Cyrus wanted to be the life of the party. In fact, he used to own a shirt that said something stupid like I’ve arrived so now the party can begin. That’s how much he thought of himself. That party literally didn’t start until he arrived.
It was stupid, but so Cyrus.
It never bothered me in the past. Not until now. I’d always laughed off Cyrus’s antics and never cared when he received more attention. But now I wanted to scream. Would Hazel end up like the other women who became enamored with his good looks and personality?
For the first time in my life, I wished to be the fun-loving Kensington. The guy full of smiles and witty comebacks not the genius asshole who people found hard to get to know and unapproachable.
“If it’s not what I think, what is it?” Cyrus asked, turning off the television.
I needed an answer and fast. Something that wasn’t a lie. “I want to keep her safe. She’s in trouble.”
Cyrus nodded, accepting that answer. He knew I had a soft spot for vulnerable women because he had it too.
“I get it. You want to be the knight in shining armor. Plus, it doesn’t help that she’s hot, but it’s probably adrenaline fueling your feelings. It gets your blood pumping to all areas,” he said and glanced poignantly to a certain section of my anatomy.
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. Of course, for him it came to sex. “I’m not thinking with my dick.”
Unlike him, I used my brain to make important decisions.
Hazel was more than her looks. I’d never met someone as strong, and I’d helped strong women in difficult positions for years.
“Does she remind you of Lisa?” he asked, his tone softening.
I nodded, but it wasn’t the complete truth. She was more than Lisa.
Senior year in college, one waitress at our favorite restaurant found herself in a dangerous situation with an abusive boyfriend and three months pregnant. Lisa was the first time I used my computer skills to make an ID for someone to skip the state and start fresh rather than spend her life watching her back from an abusive ex.
We’d gone to the restaurant for a quick lunch on a Sunday afternoon and saw Lisa waiting her tables sporting a black eye and a limp. It took three days to get the story out of her. Three days waiting by her car in the parking lot at the end of each of her shifts. When she finally revealed what happened, Cyrus and I had to take action.
Lisa had no local family to take her in and barely made enough waitressing. We considered hiding her in our dorm room because at the time we didn’t have the funds to set her up in her own place.
We did, however, have a laminator, a high-quality printer, and one twin with exceedingly well-developed forgery skills. I easily could have gone to the other side. If you asked a few people, they might argue that by working for the government the way I did, I was just as evil, but they didn’t know the entire story.
We set Lisa up with a new ID, a job in California, and enough money from our trust funds to get her a tiny apartment of her own. We hadn’t talked to her since, but every once in a while, when the nights grew long, I’d run a quick internet search and check in on her.
She’d gotten married and had a second child with her husband. She’d gone back to school, finished her degree in psychology, and managed a shelter for battered women.
That original act of kindness started our underground operation—one where we helped women in need by providing them with new identities, start-up cash, and the chance to begin a new life. We did our work for free with only a promise they’d never share our identities.