Fool for Love (Believe #2) (32 page)

I breathe a heavy sigh of relief when the incessant bass stops, and I cloak myself in the welcoming silence. My reprieve doesn’t last for long, though, and I shut my eyes when Suzy’s question from across the room reaches my ears.

“What did you mean this morning, Garrett? How can you be responsible for the deaths of two people so close to your heart?”

I raise my head slowly and turn to face her. She’s standing with her back to the floor-length windows, soft light from the ceiling illuminating her figure. She’s fiddling with her fingers in front of her, giving away that she’s more nervous than she wants to let on, but her head is held high, and when my eyes find hers, all I see there is determination.

She’s so much stronger than I first thought she was.

Maybe she’s even stronger than me.

“I
’M NOT SURE WHERE
to start this story.” I put my hands in my pockets and take a couple of steps further into the room, but I keep my distance.

Suzy places a hand on her hip and frowns at me.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning? You had a twin brother, Vincent, and you were engaged to be married, about to become a father…What was your fiancée’s name?”

I swallow the lump in my throat.

“Her name was Cecilia, and we’d known each other since kindergarten.”

Her eyes widen in surprise, and I nod once.

“Yes. A long time. We were each other’s first kiss, first lovers, first…everything, I guess. The perfect pair, it would seem. If Vincent hadn’t ruined it. No, wait – that’s a lie.”

She moves towards me and stops next to the couch.

“What happened?” she asks me softly.

I sigh and take off my blazer, the old hurts tearing through me like a nightmare.

Stalling for time, I toss the jacket on an armchair and roll up the sleeves of my button-down shirt.

“Well, I don’t know,” I admit.

“What do you mean?” She sits down on the armrest and bends down to take off her black pumps.

“Do we really have to talk about this now?”

Her long legs cross at her ankles, holding my gaze captive.

What I wouldn’t give to make her forget my story…

“Yes, Garrett, we do.”

I sigh and rub my eyes, blinking a couple of times to clear my head.

“You have to understand that while Vincent and I were twins and shared many similarities, our personalities were very different. Whereas I was very focused, driven, and compelled to take over Nonna’s restaurant, he was the funny, outgoing, and laid-back type. He didn’t take things very seriously, he hadn’t mapped out his future at all, taking each day as it came. For the most part, I was fine with it.”

I pause, the memories assaulting my senses. I begin to feel lightheaded and sick to my stomach.

“Please, go on.”

I grimace and start to pace in front of her. My steps make a loud noise, and there is an ominous sound to it – but it keeps me centred at the same time.

“I don’t have all the details, but like I told you before, Cecilia and I might have been young, but given our long history together, we were ready to get married. I was 23 years old, but mature, and I had a steady job at the restaurant. A couple of weeks before, she’d told me that she was pregnant, and…” I pause, remembering that day as clear as if it was yesterday.

“She was crying when she said those words,” I mumble, lost in the memory. “Trembling as she showed me the pregnancy test; at the time, I thought that she was afraid of my reaction, because the baby wasn’t planned. I came to learn that it was only masking another kind of fear.”

I force myself to unclench my teeth, to breathe deeply, and to get the rest of the story out in the open.

“After the initial shock wore off, I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to become a father – to be a dad.” My voice breaks on the last word, and the nausea intensifies in my gut. I take a couple of breaths, forcing the bile down.

“I felt as if my whole life was on the right track. So I proposed to her that same night. I thought, why not marry if you’re sure you’d found your soul mate, right?”

“Right,” Suzy whispers. I glance at her. The sound of her despondency puzzles me. She’s looking down at her feet, twiddling her fingers again, and I frown at her.

“I know, it’s the stuff fairy-tales are made of. It’s probably not something that happens a lot.” I chuckle sadly, but she shakes her head.

“No, but I’ve heard of it and seen it happen before, so I think I understand how you felt about her.”

I nod and continue to pace, loosening my tie in the process.

“I thought that everything was going well, that we were happy.” The old hatred to my brother has dulled over the years, but the consequences of his actions, the ones that led to mine, are still hurting my soul.

“But…” I take a fortifying breath and stop in front of Suzy, my side to her. “Cecilia thought differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“That night, we were having dinner at the restaurant, the whole family together. Cecilia had been a bit withdrawn – not her usual, bubbly self. I thought it could be the pregnancy that was causing her some discomfort, but I couldn’t help but notice that Vincent was acting strange as well. He wasn’t bragging about his latest piece of ass, or being his funny, flamboyant self.”

“I’m not going to like what happened next, am I?” Suzy whispers, and I close my eyes.

“No.” I shake my head slowly and close my eyes. “You’re not.”

“Finish it, please.”

I sigh and turn to face her. “Fine, I will. Most of us had had a bit more than usual to drink and what I remember is that one minute, we were laughing, celebrating our engagement, and the next, Cecilia got up and ran from the table, crying. Obviously, I went after her, worried – but so did my brother. And when I found Cecilia at the bathroom and went to hold her, she pushed me away.”

Running a hand through my beard, I fall silent and try to gather my thoughts once more.

“She turned to Vincent instead. Sobbing, she told me that she couldn’t marry me; that our…
her
child wasn’t mine.”

Suzy’s gasp causes me to grimace.

“Yeah. I’ll spare you the details of what she said next, but bottom line: she said that due to my always working, she felt she didn’t know me anymore, that I wasn’t the boy she fell in love with. One night, her and Vincent had met at a club in town, and they’d
clicked
.”

I sneer. The anger erupts to the surface, and my body is vibrating with the old hurt.

“Well – it’s the same old sob story, I guess. They’d ended up fucking each other’s brains out in some filthy toilet stall, but that wasn’t the end for them. Against their better judgments, they continued to see each other on the side and suddenly found themselves
in love
with each other.”

“Oh, my god, Garrett – I’m so sorry.”

I take a deep breath. “Apparently, they’d been seeing each other for a couple of months when Cecilia found out that she was pregnant.”

“How could she know the baby wasn’t yours?” Suzy asks me. “I mean, if you were identical twins, then surely she couldn’t know for sure, not even if you’d ended up doing a paternity test.”

I shrug. “She said she was pretty sure that the baby had been conceived when I had been in Italy on business for a whole month. Technically, I guess she couldn’t be 100% sure.”

Suzy stands up and comes to me, but I take a step back. Her mouth parts but before she can say anything, I raise my palm, silently asking her to stop.

“I need to tell you the rest, but I’m…I’m scared,” I whisper. “I’m scared your big, expressive eyes will fill with contempt for me – that you’ll think I’m a monster.”

The admission is hard for me to say, but I have give it to her.

I have to be honest with her for once.

“Garrett…”

“As you can probably imagine,” I interrupt her, “I was livid, hurt beyond measure. I can’t remember what I said to her, but my words were probably harsh, mean words. And Vincent? Well, let’s just say that when he went to stand by her side, I was repulsed. Seeing his face –
my
face mirrored back at me, filled with remorse, but smirking with some weird, misplaced
pride
at the same time?”

She nods and wraps her arms around her waist.

“I lost it, Suzy. I roared at him, and we began to fight. Cecilia was screaming at us to stop, but I didn’t listen. All I thought about was hurting him as much as – no – even
more
than he had hurt me. I can’t deny it. At that exact moment, I wanted to kill him, to see his life force bleed away from him, dimming his light.”

Suzy begins to cry silently, but her gaze doesn’t waver from mine. For probably the millionth time since I met her, I’m surprised by her reactions.

“What happened next?” she asks softly.

Sweat gathers on my brow, and I remove my tie and unbutton a couple of buttons on my shirt, trying to find some relief. I toss the tie away, my breaths coming out in swift bursts, as my heart hammers away against my ribcage.

“Someone was pulling me off Vincent soon after, and I remember my dad was yelling at me to stop. I was in a crazed haze, and I wrenched free of my captors and ran from the place. I couldn’t stand the sight of either one of them, and all I could think about was getting away. Both of them ran after me, though, all the way to the car, parked behind the building.”

I begin to pace again, unable to tell the rest straight to her face.

“I wasn’t in a right frame of mind at that point. I got in my car, Vincent jumped in beside me, and Cecilia tore into the backseat before I took off. I don’t think…” I close my eyes briefly. “I don’t think I knew they were
with me
in the car. All I thought about was getting the fuck out of there, away from their betrayal.”

My hands shake, and I ball them into fists as my body hums with adrenaline from reliving the memory.

“But you couldn’t,” Suzy whispers.

Her voice sounds as if it’s from far away as the rest of the story unfolds like a movie in my mind.

“It had started to snow earlier that night,” I whisper hoarsely. “The wind was howling like a beast, matching my cries…” I run a hand over my cheeks, momentarily taken by surprise when I feel the tears there. “I was driving too fast. I never saw the truck in front of me…”