Page 4 of The Twins

We’re all alone here. It’s my private time with Remo. Charles and Vegas are home in LA.

Tara’s gone. She’s on vacation with one of her new mysterious boos. She’s on an endless spiral of rebounding from her failed marriage with Seth, but she loves the experience of fooling around. Therefore, we don’t intervene. We, as in Charles, Vegas, Remo, and I.

Finally, Remo reappears. I can breathe again.

“Are you sure you never want to see them again? Your parents?” Remo asks, sucking in a deep breath. I place my hands on his shoulders, supporting myself. They’ve taught me how to swim properly, but I’m too scared sometimes. I also enjoy physical contact now, so I can’t let go of Remo. Not even when he innocently has a fun swim in a lake.

I give him a firm nod. “Never.”

“You don’t believe in forgiveness?” Remo tilts his head to the side, his heavy head touching my hand.

“Actions I can forgive. People that don’t change, however? I don’t think so,” I say, waiting for his reaction. He doesn’t give me much. He rarely does. He’s like me, a book that doesn’t want to be read. We’re fine being in the back of the bookstore, unattended and unloved. Dusty. Forgotten.

Because we feel comfortable that way.

We never knew any better.

I know why I feel that way.

When I was eighteen, my businessman father sold me off to a mafioso to pay off his debts. Said mafioso took me in, pretending to be my husband while he was secretly married to his much older aunt. Said mafioso started raping me on our wedding night, and he never stopped. Eventually, he graduated to sharing me with his friends and employees, allowing them to rape me as well.

I was a body, used for their sick fantasies.

Six long years passed until Máximo Márti fell to his enemies, and I managed to escape. How? I don’t remember the details. I apologize. I spent six years in a painful haze. My memories are a bit fuzzy.

It began as an exploration of lust, this thing between Remo, Vegas, Charles, and I. But it grew into so much more as time passed, and I realized that I’d never felt as safe as I did in their presence.

My parents never cared for me.

My fake husband abused me.

I’ve spent most of my life unloved.

Remo, on the other hand? He’s got Vegas, his other half. They’re two very separate men but God. They’re twins. They’re my twins. Their love for each other, the one I experienced first-hand in San Ricardo, is to die for.

“Did your parents know about this place?” I tentatively ask Remo. He doesn’t answer a lot of my questions when we’re here. It’s just a tiny house with a couple of bedrooms to me. At night, I feel intimidated by the silence. In the morning, the sunlight annoys me.

This piece of land in the middle of nowhere means something to Remo.

Something I can’t quite wrap my head around.

Every time we come here, things look neat. The road that leads to the tiny house is clean. The inside of the house is shiny, and dust is nowhere to be found. The fridge is always stacked. It’s like somebody lives here, taking care of everything for Remo until he decides to visit.

“No, they didn’t know about this place,” Remo replies. That’s his simple response, and it makes me want to dig.

“But you like it here, don’t you? You said you’ve been coming here for years? Even before they died?” I insist, poking a bear that’s been in hibernation.

Remo grabs my wrist gently, rubbing the bracelet I wear for him with his thumb.

My twins tell me about their loving mom and dad. I don’t understand that love because I never experienced it, but my men had a close connection to their parents.

They insist that I wear the bracelet again, and I’ve agreed to it. Remo removed the sneaky tracker upon handing the bracelet to me. He’d taken it from the hospital while I was unconscious after being shot five years ago.

Remo held unto it with the hopes that I’d come back one day to wear it. He says it makes him feel like his mom’s happy when it’s wrapped around my wrist. It doesn’t go to waste in a box somewhere. His mom may be dead, but these tiny reminders, albeit material, mean everything to him and his connection to his parents.

Why does Remo feel like me when he had the love of his parents?

What can I do to help?

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