Page 105 of Love Me Tomorrow

Dufrene looks at her like she’s suddenly lost her mind. “Since when—”

“Since today,” she interjects, subtly stabbing him in the side with her finger. “Right, Jean?”

“Right, boss. Only a few people.”

I watch them head off, leaving Gage and me alone. Not a big deal on a regular day, but today when I’m doingthis, I don’t even know how the hell to get the ball rolling. I sip my wine, aware that Gage is staring at me like he knows something is up but doesn’t know where to start.Same here, brother.

Finally, he breaks the awkward silence. “You really like her, don’t you?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah, I do.”

“You love her?”

There’s that word again. I want to say yes. It should be a yes, but if it’s gonna be one, then Savannah needs to hear it first. I won’t have it any other way. “Heading that way, I think.”

Gage grunts under his breath, then swirls the wine in his glass. “Remember back in high school?” he says evenly, not a hint of inflection in his voice. “When you tried acting like those three whole minutes you have on me, age-wise, were three years instead?”

I watch him carefully, my eyes roving over his face. “Three minutes feels like a lifetime when you’re sixteen and figuring shit out.”

“I had sex first.”

I huff under my breath. “You were a man-whore, bro. Trust me when I say that I never felt an ounce of jealousy for you sleeping with Bethany Hinx. Didn’t she bite your dick when she was sucking you off?”

Brows lowering, Gage surreptitiously flashes me the middle finger. “Asshole,” he mutters with a half-grin that he can’t quite hide. “First, she didnotbite my dick.”

“I must be remembering the story wrong, then.”

“And, second,” Gage plows on, storming right over me, “my point is that for you being a whopping three minutes and thirty-three seconds older than me, I did a lot of things first. I know your tells, man—when you’re nervous, when you’re pissed, when you’re dyin’ for someone to look your way.”

I shift in my seat, feeling rattled to my core. “And?”

My brother leans forward, elbows planted squarely on the table because atourcore, we are not a fancy, old Creole family who have been trained to know better. Our dad was a cop and our mom never graduated high school, and we grew up eating at hole-in-the-wall diners with wobbly tables and servers that called us “baby” and used cutlery made of plastic, not fine silver.

Gage’s mouth flattens as he stares at me. “A year and a half ago, you sat me down and told me to get my head out of my ass. No secrets, you said. And yet, you’ve sat there all night, an arm’s length away, and have made eye contact with me all of two times. So, I’m going to say this once, and I hope you’ll give me the same respect that I did when you served me with this same damn pep talk: no secrets, Owen. Not between us.”

Christ.

It’s just like Gage to call a spade a spade.

Between my hands, I clutch the linen like it’s a lifeline. Draw in a sharp breath that seems to stick in my throat, threatening to choke me.Rip the bandage off. It should be easy enough to come out with the words: I. Am. Colorblind. Specifically, I’ve got a rather severe case of Deuteranopia. It fucks with my sight. Makes me see things differently.

That’s what Ishouldsay.

But it isn’t what exits my mouth: “When we were kids, we used to play with toy fire trucks. Remember them?”

Gage locks one forearm down on the table, the other planted on his knee. “Dad hated that we didn’t want to use the police car ones he bought us, which made Mom laugh so hard that I used to think she might pee herself.”

“Yeah.” My smile is small, unsure. “Whenever you’d take them to a friend’s house, I used to tell Mom that I wanted the brown truck.” I was six, then, and my art teacher had already figured it all out. My head knew they were red—weremeantto be red—but my eyes . . . well, they told a different story. They still do. “I asked for it every time, and every time I knew that meant Mom would be having a sit down with me.”

I see confusion in the twist of my twin’s mouth, but to his credit, he lets me navigate the story without interruption. I run my damp hands over my slacks. Swallow past the growing lump in my throat. “You know fire trucks are red, she’d tell me. Then she’d grab one of the toy cop cruisers and point at the lights, saying,Red, white, blue. Over and over again, she’d repeat it to me.Red. White. Blue.But I didn’t see it—not that I didn’t try.”

I steel my shoulders. “She told me to follow your lead. Hang back and watch what you did. That was her way of helping me, I guess, accept the fact that I would never see color the way you do, the way most people do.”

My twin’s Adam’s apple dodges down the length of his neck. “Owen . . .”

“Mom and Dad wanted me to keep it a secret, so I did. They wanted me to learn from you, to take mental notes on how you handled certain situations, so I did that too. And all the while, I did my best to never let it slip that I learned to read traffic lights based on what Iknewwas the correct order, even though I sure as hell couldn’t tell the difference between red and green, and, sometimes even the yellow. When we went to prom, and Maryanne told me to buy some red flower for the boutonnière, I stood at the florist’s for nearly an hour before I worked up the courage to admit that I was a fraud who needed help because I was so fucking lost.”

Gage scrubs a hand over his mouth, then threads his fingers through his hair. “You’re an artist. Deep down at your core, that’s who you are. How the hell—”

---