My Husband Slept With My Twin Sister (Crawling Back #11)

1. Elena

Elena

My husband gives me the same necklace he gave me last year.

I know before I finish opening the box.

The Vale family jeweller uses the same dark-green velvet, the same gold lettering inside the lid, the same tiny magnetic clasp that releases with a soft click beneath my thumb. Even before I see the diamond pendant resting against cream silk, I know exactly what I’m going to find.

For one absurd second, I wonder whether Adrian has taken last year’s necklace from my dressing room and wrapped it again as some kind of joke.

Then I see the receipt tucked beneath the box.

He bought another one.

Around us, forty of our closest friends and family wait for my reaction beside the pool of our Hudson Valley estate.

White roses spill from stone urns. Floating candles drift across the water even though the sun has not fully set, and a string quartet plays beneath the pergola while servers circulate with champagne.

Everything is beautiful.

I made certain it would be.

“Oh, Adrian,” his mother says, lifting one manicured hand to her chest. “It’s exquisite.”

My sister’s champagne glass touches her lips, but Seraphina isn’t drinking. She’s watching me.

Adrian stands beside me in a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The open collar reveals a triangle of tanned skin and the faint dark hair I kissed this morning while he answered emails over my shoulder.

He smiles as though he’s waiting for me to become happy.

“Do you like it?”

The diamond catches the evening light.

It is a teardrop-cut stone surrounded by smaller diamonds, suspended from a delicate platinum chain. Last year, I loved it. I wore it to dinner that night and nothing else when we came home.

Adrian should remember that.

I look up at him. “It’s beautiful.”

His smile deepens with relief.

Behind the crowd, Mara closes her eyes.

She knows.

She helped me choose the silver gown I wore to our ninth-anniversary dinner. She fastened the first necklace at the back of my neck because my hands were shaking after Adrian leaned close and whispered what he intended to do to me once dessert arrived.

“Elena, put it on,” Vivienne says. “We need photographs.”

Of course we do.

I turn around and lift my hair.

Adrian removes the new necklace from its box.

His knuckles brush the back of my neck as he fastens it, and my body responds with a helpless shiver despite the ache pressing against my ribs.

Ten years of marriage have trained me to recognize every variation in his touch.

The careful glide of his fingers when he wants me.

The absent sweep of his palm when his mind is still at the office.

The firm pressure at my hip when he needs me to smile through a conversation he despises.

This touch is warm but distracted.

“Perfect,” he murmurs.

I lower my hair and face the cameras.

Applause rises around the pool.

My husband kisses my cheek while I stand beneath a banner that says TEN YEARS OF ELENA & ADRIAN wearing proof that he cannot remember what he gave me twelve months ago.

“Now yours,” Seraphina calls.

Her voice is bright, almost eager.

The watch is waiting on the table beside us. Unlike Adrian’s gift, it did not take an assistant one phone call to purchase.

I spent four months finding it.

It is a restored 1958 Patek Philippe, the same model Adrian’s grandfather wore in the only photograph Adrian keeps from his childhood.

His father sold the original after the old man’s death, along with everything else he considered outdated.

Adrian mentioned it once when we were newly married.

We were lying in bed after midnight, his head on my stomach, his usual armour loosened by darkness.

It was the first beautiful thing I ever understood belonged to someone who loved me.

I remembered.

I always remember.

I lift the polished wooden box and hold it out to him. “Happy anniversary.”

Something changes in his expression when he opens it.

For the first time all evening, his phone, the guests, and the problems waiting beyond our gates disappear.

“Elena.”

He lifts the watch carefully, as though it might dissolve between his fingers.

“Turn it over,” I tell him.

He does.

On the back, beneath the date we met, four words are engraved into the gold.

Still choosing you.

His throat moves.

“This is Grandfather’s watch.”

“Not the original. I tried to track it down, but it was sold privately sixteen years ago. This is the same model, same year, same face. The strap was made from the same kind of leather.”

“How did you even find this?”

“I listened.”

The words leave me before I can soften them.

Adrian looks at me.

The crowd falls strangely quiet. Mara stares into her wine. My sister’s mouth curves at one corner.

“I mean,” I say, “you told me about it years ago.”

He runs his thumb over the engraving. For one dangerous moment, I think he understands what has happened. I think he’ll look at the diamond around my neck and remember fastening another identical chain there last year.

Instead, he kisses me.

His hand curves around the back of my neck, and his mouth finds mine with enough heat to make the guests cheer. My anger slips for one treacherous second. I taste champagne on his tongue and feel the familiar scrape of his wedding ring against my skin.

He still knows how to kiss me.

Or my body still knows how to be kissed by him.

I’m no longer sure those are the same thing.

A server touches my elbow as Adrian is pulled away by his brother.

“Mrs. Vale, there’s a problem with the caterer.”

Of course there is.

I leave my anniversary party to discover that Vivienne changed the dinner menu without telling anyone. She replaced the lobster Adrian requested with a seafood tasting menu that includes oysters, despite Adrian’s father being severely allergic to shellfish.

I handle it.

Then the florist informs me that the heat is wilting the arrangements.

I handle that too.

A neighbour complains that three guests have blocked the private road with their cars. The quartet needs another electrical outlet. Adrian’s cousin has brought an uninvited date who is already drunk. Someone has spilled red wine across the limestone terrace.

Every time I look toward the pool, Adrian is laughing with someone else.

Everyone praises him for the party.

“Classic Adrian,” one of his college friends says, surveying the estate. “He never does anything halfway.”

I stand four feet away holding a revised seating chart.

Adrian does not correct him.

By the time the sun disappears behind the hills, I have eaten half a canapé and taken two sips of champagne. The diamond at my throat feels heavier with every passing hour.

I find Adrian at the outdoor bar, listening while his brother complains about the board. I slide two fingers against the inside of his wrist.

It is our signal.

It means I need you.

It also means I am here.

Adrian glances down at my hand. “Give me a minute, sweetheart.”

He turns back to his brother.

My fingers fall away.

I go inside alone.

The house is cool and dim after the heat of the terrace. Music drifts through the open glass doors while I climb the curved staircase to our bedroom.

Last year’s necklace is in the third drawer of my dressing table.

I place the two boxes side by side.

Same velvet. Same gold lettering. Same pendant.

I photograph them together.

Then I remove the new necklace and put it beside the old one.

My bare throat looks strangely intimate in the mirror.

“There you are.”

Seraphina leans against the open door in a gold dress designed to make husbands reconsider their vows. We have the same green eyes, the same mouth, the same high cheekbones, but she wears our shared face like a dare.

Her gaze drops to the boxes.

“Oh,” she says.

I wait for sympathy.

She laughs instead.

“Adrian bought it twice?”

“Apparently.”

“That’s brutal.”

“He’s busy.”

“So were you.” She wanders into the room and picks up the watch receipt I left beside my jewellery case. “God, Elena. Do you know how much effort you put into making that man feel understood?”

“He’s my husband.”

“Exactly. You already have him.”

I take the receipt from her. “That isn’t how marriage works.”

“No, that isn’t how your marriage works.” Her eyes travel over the room, the terrace beyond it, the life surrounding us. “You exhaust yourself keeping everything perfect, and he rewards you by ordering the same diamond twice.”

I close the jewellery drawer harder than necessary.

“You should go back outside.”

Seraphina walks to the balcony doors instead. From here, we can see Adrian beside the pool. He has put on the watch. His head is tipped back as he laughs at something one of his friends has said.

He is beautiful when he forgets to be guarded.

My sister watches him too closely.

“You’re staring at my husband.”

“I’m admiring your anniversary present.”

“He isn’t one of the gifts.”

Her smile is slow. “Are you sure? Everyone else seems to think you’ve already given him your entire life.”

I step between her and the doors. “Go downstairs, Seraphina.”

For a moment, we face each other with no one around to praise her boldness or excuse her cruelty.

Then she lifts one shoulder.

“You know,” she says, looking past me at Adrian, “sometimes I think I would have been much better at being Mrs. Vale.”

Below us, my husband stands at the centre of the party I created, wearing the proof that I know him better than anyone alive.

I look at my sister.

“That’s because you’ve never understood what it costs.”