Page 26 of Finding Their Place

I let out another curse.

It was highly possible my real name was Rowan.

Talk about toeing the line of a fucking identity crisis.

If River was right, I had no goddamn clue who I was, who my real parents had been—neither did River, but at least her adoptive parents kept her birth name and knew her mother’s surname.

River hadn’t ever gone looking for the woman who’d given her up, but her adoptive parents had told her at an early age that she had a twin brother who had already been adopted. They were honest with her, had her trust, and she’d never felt the need to find the woman who’d abandoned her.

She’d spent years searching for her brother, but there was no Rowan Angel to be found.

Because he didn’t exist.

Or did he?

Numbness had settled over my mind, and I struggled to wrap my head around the fact I might be her missing twin even though she stared back at me through my cell in vibrant colors.

River and I were on the phone for hours, and I couldn’t believe how our thoughts aligned, how we finished each other’s sentences…talk about a mind fuck. As the minutes slipped past, I found myself believing I’d been adopted, that she was a piece of my soul I’d been missing and didn’t even realize until fate slammed us together.

And until we exchanged numbers and agreed to meet in person in the near future, I was convinced River was my sister.

Emotions slammed into me like a goddamn sledgehammer in the sudden silence after hanging up. Elation. Hurt…a sense of betrayal for having been lied to—and being abandoned by the woman who’d given birth to us.

I couldn’t decide if I was happy River and I had found one another, angry that my entire life was a lie, or just plain disappointed in the two people I had trusted without question.

Well, I had a shit ton of wonderings going on in my head.

Who had given birth to me and River?

Why hadn’t my adoptive parents told me?

What was their purpose in keeping my real identity from me?

Did they have my birth certificate?

Had they known about my twin sister?

Was it their decision to separate us, to take away the one blood relative I had?

Suspicion wrapped around my stomach and squeezed like a vise, keeping me on the verge of nausea while I hopped in my truck and drove the twenty minutes to my parents’.

Mom and Dad.

Tina and Lionel.

I never had to knock, so I let myself into my childhood home without thought. While glancing around, I realized everything about the front door, the entryway, the family photos hanging on the wall along the stairs to my right were no longer my life’s foundation or my truth.

A gaping hole widened inside me, slowing eating away at what I thought I’d known, all I had based my entire fucking life on.

Dad—Lionel—sat in his recliner to my left watching baseball. Pots clanging in the kitchen toward the small house’s back told me Mom—Tina—cleaned up the lunch dishes.

My home—my cornerstone.

All crumbled to dust—

“Hey, son,” Lionel greeted me, a big grin on his face.

I stood and stared, studying the only face of a father I could remember. River had convinced me, but I found myself hoping…

---