3. Everly
Everly
It took me all of two seconds to realize they weren’t the same shade of blue as Reid’s, but they were pretty damn close. My gaze skimmed over the stranger’s handsome face, noting the piercings on either side of his nose, the rough stubble on his jaw, and the confusion pulling his brows together.
Not a person on the planet would say that the man standing in front of me wasn’t hot. He looked similar enough to Reid that I knew they were related. His brother had needed help with the clogged pipe the day before. Maybe this was Elias.
“You being a good girl, peaches?” he asked, dipping his head and…
“Did you just sniff me?” I demanded, taking a step back. People in our immediate vicinity abruptly stopped talking and looked at us at my raised voice.
Okay, maybe it was a deep inhale that would have been super hot if I weren’t already interested in someone else.
But I wasn’t interested. I didn’t even know this guy, so I was going with sniffing because, to me, that word wasn’t even remotely sexy.
Like moist was cringy to the majority of the world’s population, sniffing was one of my ick words.
Blue eyes narrowed on me. Leaning down, he sniffed again. “You aren’t peaches,” he growled accusingly.
“Stop sniffing me, you creepy bloodhound,” I snapped, already knowing exactly who he thought I was.
Evie and I twinned harder than any twins when it came to our appearance, but my sister was in love with her peaches-and-honey-scented hygiene care, heavy on the peaches. She’d even found laundry detergent that smelled like peaches. I preferred rose and vanilla, heavy on the vanilla.
Dressing alike, doing our hair and makeup so we looked exactly the same, were our coping mechanisms. Evie needed it because for the entirety of the time she’d lived with William, seeing her reflection and pretending it was me was how she’d survived. I was there with her in that mirror.
She could put her fingers to the glass and touch me. If it hadn’t been for that, I knew Evie would have been lost to me forever. Now that we were finally together, seeing me match her calmed her anxiety. Just like keeping the door open and unlocked.
But I couldn’t lie and say it was only for Evie’s sake that I wanted to look exactly like my twin. I needed it too. I was desperate for that connection to the only person who had ever loved me with their full heart.
Getting laughed at or having people ask stupid questions about something that was not their business was part of the package. We’d had so little time together so far, though, that we hadn’t talked about one important aspect of our lives together.
Meeting guys, liking them, and then having them mistake us for each other.
That could be a recipe for drama city, but no guy was worth risking my relationship with my sister.
Obviously, whoever this sniffing dog was— he sniffed me again!
—he had met Evie. When and where, I didn’t know, because she hadn’t mentioned him to me.
At least he could smell the difference between us, which was kind of creepy since he wouldn’t stop sniffing at me. But what if scent wasn’t an option?
Evie and I were two separate people with our own personalities.
Our outer shells should not be the only thing a person used to determine whether they wanted us or not.
Of course it was, though. Appearances were what drew one person to another.
It was what was beneath that determined whether attraction turned to love.
Heart contracting painfully, I remembered Reid.
How his eyes had swept over me like a physical caress the first time he saw me.
How he’d gone from looking tired and grumpy to alert and smiling, as if the sight of me had flipped a switch on for him.
Or recharged his batteries after a long, exhausting day at work.
His attraction to me had been just as instantaneous as mine was to him.
For me, however, it went beyond instant attraction. He’d stolen a part of me when he’d left my apartment. A piece of my heart, maybe even a tiny piece of my soul.
But what if he would have reacted the same way to Evie?
What if it didn’t matter which twin he wanted?
I hardened my heart to that possibility. No one was worth coming between Evie and me. Not a single person.
Not even Reid.
“Why do you look like my peaches, but you don’t smell like her?” He sniffed me for the fourth time—or was it the fifth?
“She didn’t tell you she had a sister?” I gritted out.
He grimaced, taking a step back. “She did, but…”
“But she didn’t mention she had a twin?” I finished for him when he trailed off, his blue eyes still drifting over me from head to toe as if to find what he was looking for.
A difference. Any difference. He wouldn’t find one.
We matched from the roots of our hair to the tips of our hot-pink toenails.
“No,” he muttered, giving me a grumpy glower.
“Did you give her the chance to tell you, or were you too busy sniffing her?” Around us, it seemed like more and more people were pausing their conversations to watch and listen.
My fingers tightened around the handle of the margaritas.
I wished the cranberry and soda had a huge splash of vodka in it.
I needed a stiff drink, dealing with this asshole…
and the possibility that Reid might want Evie more than me if he met her.
Nope. Not thinking about that. Or him.
“I…” Muttering a curse, he rubbed the back of his neck. “All I remember is the desperate need to taste her.”
Without thinking about what I was doing, I threw my drink in his face. “Stay the fuck away from my sister.”
Behind me, those two deep laughs that had caused me to smile while I was waiting at the bar boomed through the entire building. “Tell me someone took pictures. Please, tell me you fuckers got that on camera. I gotta send it to Rory or she won’t believe me.”
“I got it, Matt,” someone called back. “Almost start to finish. His momma is gonna whoop his ass.”
Whoop his ass? His momma? I flicked my eyes up and down the bloodhound biker.
He was a big motherfucker. Taller than average, well over six feet.
Lean in the hips, wide in the shoulders, not so much muscle that I would wonder how he wiped his ass, but enough that told me he could bench-press Evie and me together without breaking much of a sweat.
Could his mother actually whoop his ass?
The crowd, and whoever Matt was, thought so because they were all laughing like it was going to be an epic showdown.
Good for her. I hoped she whooped him good.
“She’d probably whoop that girl before she did Chance. His momma is a curler,” someone muttered.
I barely had time to wonder what a curler was before someone else was shouting, “I have pictures. Who wants copies?”
More than a dozen people called out, “Me!”
Bloodhound growled something vicious at the guy who had offered pictures.
Whatever he said caused the man to fumble and nearly drop his phone.
He still hit send, though. Rolling my eyes at him and the rest of the crowd, I walked around the dog in front of me.
My only thought was to drop off the margaritas and get my sister the hell out of there.
Then we would have a long chat about stranger danger and not letting creepers sniff her.
But I barely got two steps before I realized there were newcomers at our table. Two of them were my new bosses, Mila and River. Seeing Mila sitting beside Monroe caused recognition to click in my brain.
Of course Monroe looked familiar, because she was Mila’s twin.
And though they were technically identical, they didn’t have a bizarre need to look exactly alike.
Mila kept her hair dyed black, while Monroe’s was a more natural brown.
They had completely unique styles in clothes and makeup.
There was also a weight difference between the two, with Monroe being at least twenty pounds lighter than her sister.
They were both freaking beautiful in their own, individual ways.
Mila and River had brought a pretty blonde with them.
I immediately recognized the woman as the waitress from Aggie’s who had given me the free Diet Coke earlier in the day.
I’d needed a shot of my drug of choice before my interview, and her wishing me luck had felt like it had fed positive energy into the universe to help me get the job.
And, of course, they had all witnessed what had just transpired with the bloodhound.
Sammy, Delaney, and Monroe were holding their sides from how hard they were laughing, while Lexa squeezed the bridge of her nose, shaking her head and fighting her own laughter.
Even the men in the booth nearby were all howling with their own amusement, a few of them slapping the table hard enough to make their beer bottles rattle.
But it was Evie my gaze was drawn to. Her confused but wounded eyes shifted from me to the man behind me and lingered there.
Abi touched her arm comfortingly, whispering something to my sister that she either didn’t hear or was too distraught to respond to.
Seeing the distress on her face, I was tempted to turn back and douse the dog with the pitcher of margaritas.
This was not how I’d hoped the night would go.
We were there to celebrate her first day of college.
Evie had taken online classes and was a senior, but today had been her first-ever in-person class.
She hadn’t even gotten to attend kindergarten because William had homeschooled her, the control freak.
Hate him. Hate him. Fucking hate him.
Reaching her, I placed the plastic container and my now-empty glass on one of the tables. “Evie?—”
“Peaches, it was an honest mistake.”
His deep voice held an edge to it. Frustration mixed with a little panic.
I turned slowly to look at the bloodhound, my fingers twitching to grab the nearest glass and drench him again.
I had a brief moment of considering the ramifications if the contents happened to be alcohol-based and I accidentally set him on fire.
It was only an impulsive thought. Not one I would ever act on.
At least not when there were so many witnesses or the risk that my twin could be injured in the process.
He was focused solely on Evie, his eyes wild. Desperate.
That gave me a moment of pause. Taking a breath, I considered what had just happened. It was an honest mistake. He didn’t know we were twins, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood our dynamic until he saw us together. No one ever did unless they witnessed it for themselves.
Plus, other than sniffing me, he hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t even touched me.
Whereas I’d thrown my drink in his face.
Wait, wasn’t that considered assault?
Ah, fuck. I’d just assaulted someone in front of an entire bar full of people. And not just any someone, an Angel’s Halo member. While my bosses watched.
Shit.
That was a stupid move, and I couldn’t even blame it on being intoxicated since I hadn’t had a single drop to drink.
“I swear, I thought she was you. But then I couldn’t smell you, and I instantly realized something was off. Tell me you believe me. Please, peaches.”
Suddenly, no one was laughing. It was so quiet, all I could hear was music and the labored breathing coming from the bloodhound beside me.
The entire bar seemed to be holding its breath, fascination and suspense building around us.
Watching, waiting for the drama to unfold like this was the best reality TV show they had ever seen in their lives.
“Did you know he could say the word please?” Sammy asked quietly to the table at large, breaking a little of the growing tension around us.
“I didn’t think it was in his vocabulary,” Lexa muttered back. “This is weird. Someone touch him to see if he’s real.”
River picked up a straw from someone’s drink and poked him with it. He batted it away without taking his eyes off Evie. “Quit your shit, Riv,” he growled, knowing who it was without so much as a flick of his lashes because he was one hundred percent focused on my twin.
Evie flinched at the sharpness of his tone, and he groaned like he was in physical pain. Knocking a chair out of his way, he crouched down in front of her. “Don’t do that. Don’t be scared. I’m sorry, peaches.”
“Holy shit. Did he just say sorry?” someone grumbled from behind us. It sounded like that Matt guy. “Rory is never going to believe any of this. She’s gonna think I made it all up.”
“Who is Rory?” Evie asked, her nose wrinkling up.
Bloodhound shrugged. “My mom.”
“Oh,” she whispered, biting her bottom lip. I fought a sigh, knowing she was trying her best not to smile.
Apparently, my twin had a crush.
On a fucking bloodhound who liked to sniff people.