Chapter 23
MASSIMO
The water hits my shoulders hot and brutal. Trying to peel the week off me in one scalding sheet. It doesn’t do a damn thing except remind me how long it’s been since I’ve done something as basic as take a shower.
I lean my forehead against the tile. Let the water and steam smother me, and yet it still isn’t enough to quiet the noise in my head. Everything feels swollen inside my chest. My ribs are too tight around something. I don’t know what to call it. Her name, always her name, shoves into my head.
Sofia.
Every time I blink, I see her closing the door. Hear the clank of her new locks. Every time I try not to think about it, my mind goes right back to the way she looked at me. Like she felt sorry for me. Like I’d taken something from her I didn’t have the right to want. But didn’t I?
Did I want too much? Her bossy voice in my house. Her curls on my pillow. Her hand in my hair. Her curvy body between mine and my brother’s because for the first time in a long time, something felt right, and I let myself believe it.
Stupid.
The water finally goes cold, and that’s what gets me moving. I shut it off. Blow out another frustrated breath and try not to think about all the unanswered calls and text messages. Wondering if she simply blocked me, and they’re not getting through.
I wrap a towel around my waist and step out. The first thing I notice is the quiet. Not the sports highlights. Not him yelling at his video games. Not him hollering for food. No. This is peaceful. The wrong kind of quiet. The kind of quiet that hits the center of my spine like a warning.
The house never sounds like this. Not with Emilio in it.
I rub the towel over my hair and call out, “EM!”
He has no concept of boundaries or silence, so even asking feels ridiculous. Nothing.
I then try again. Louder. “Em?”
Still nothing, my blood runs cold. Because even if he were sleeping.
Even if he were high off whatever bullshit idea he had five minutes ago.
Even if he were pissed at me for telling him to stop talking about Sofia’s donut holes, he would’ve answered by now.
Or yelled. Or even thrown something. Or demanded snacks.
I pull on shorts and a t-shirt. Slip into my slides and throw open my door, stomping down the hallway, about to bitch him out, but he’s not where I left him in the living room.
Not in his messy ass bedroom. I race around the house, throwing open doors and slamming them back. Letting my frustrations out on our home. If he’s playing some fucked up bullshit game of hide-and-seek, I’m going to beat his ass into next week.
A scrape of dread crawls up my throat.
“Em?”
It comes out softer this time. A plea more than a question.
I’m checking everywhere, panic gripping my heart. I even look behind the couch where he once tried to sleep because he was convinced the neighbor’s security camera was watching him jerk off through his window.
Nothing. No sounds. No dumb comments. No twin. The quiet swells until my hands start to shake. When I run back into the living room, where this all started, I catch the bowl by the door where I drop my keys and wallet.
Keys.
Only my Koenigsegg key and the spare house key remain. The motorcycle key. The one I put there because I haven’t had the energy to ride this week, and didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to attempt it, is gone.
My heart stops. Fully stops. Like someone reached inside my chest and yanked the cord to turn it off. I want to vomit and piss myself. My brain is speeding down the track, fucking me a second time with images of him in the hospital.
In the ICU. After surgery. On pain meds. My parents, crying. Me bawling. It’s horrific. I can’t stop seeing what I’ve already lived.
“No,” I whisper, because I can’t lose him.
Not again.
Not like that.
I sprint back to my bedroom, grab my phone, and run to the car. I don’t even bother with closing the door. My neighborhood is safe. No one will steal our shit.
I throw myself into the car. The engine roars to life, then I peel out of the driveway.
Narrowly avoiding a couple walking their dog and shouting out a “sorry” even though they can’t hear me.
I gun it through the streets. Almost take out the guard shack and turn right so fast that the back of my car fishtails.
I floor it to the last location where he was hit. Slamming on my brakes when the light turns red and narrowly avoiding running into the back of someone else.
My pulse hammers into my palms. My fingers wrap so tightly around the steering wheel that they ache. My knee bounces as I wait for the light to change. More images of how the accident scene was laid out.
My phone rings. Blasting loud as fuck through my speakers.
Unknown number.
I smash the button on my dashboard.
“Emilio?”
A fuck ton of noise on the other end. My panic spikes.
“Is this Massimo Dimas?”
“Yeah? Who is this?”
“This is Boston EMS. We have your brother—”
Everything inside me drops so fast my head falls forward, slamming into the steering wheel. I start hyperventilating. My lungs squeeze hard, my throat struggles for air, and straight up fear races past the chills on my spine. It’s happening again. All over again. Fuck!
I hear him talking, but none of the words sound right, not over the roar in my ears. Not over the images now cycling faster before my eyes. Replaying everything we just went through in a split second.
“—motorcycle collision—”
My lungs stop working, locking the air in. My vision tunnels. Black spots dance across the instrument panel. I try to say something, anything, but my throat won’t open for the words to come out.
“—he’s conscious, but disoriented—”
Those words are the only things my brain manages to grasp. Awake means alive. Alive means I haven’t lost him. Yet.
“What hospital?” My voice is shredded, barely a sound.
He says it, but all I can think of is we’re back to the same ICU, the same place.
Everything is falling apart again. I can’t handle it a second time.
I can’t do this again. I hang up mid-sentence because I can’t listen to anything else without completely falling apart right here in my car as the light changes.
Green to go, and I floor it once the cars clean out.
My fingers tremble so badly I can barely hold the wheel. My chest feels too small. My skin is too tight. My heartbeat is too loud. I can’t catch a full breath. Not until I see him. Not until I know he’s whole, or at least whole enough that they can put him back together again.
The same fear seizes me again. Familiar and scary. The kind of fear that I felt weeks ago, I never want to feel again. Now I’m freaking the fuck out, praying I don’t lose my twin. The idiot I love most in the world. How fast one decision, like taking a long fucking shower, can take everything away.
And somewhere inside all that panic is her again.
Sofia.
Fuck space.
I need her.
Em needs her, and fuck if I don’t call her on the way to the hospital. It rings several times, as it always does. She doesn’t pick up. I cuss a line of shit but don’t expect her to answer.
I blurt out the little bit I know. Ask her to come. Ask her to be there for Em and for me. Beg her not to make me give her space. That emergencies are different. I beg and plead with her voicemail the entire drive to the hospital.
Once I see the emergency room lights, I speed into the parking lot.
Throw my car in park and jump out, sprinting past the double doors to complete chaos.
It’s madness. Cops and firefighters standing by, bloodied people moaning on gurneys next to them.
Hospital security is oddly handling patient intake while no nurses are in sight.
I turn in a slow, useless circle, gripping my phone so tight my fingers ache. I don’t know where he is, or who to ask, or what the protocol is when your entire world keeps getting wheeled into hospitals on stretchers. Something about a pileup on the freeway, multiple victims.
None of the EMTs or firefighters look approachable, not with all the blood on their gloves and their radios spitting out codes I don’t fucking understand. The air smells like blood, piss, and fear. My panic rises as someone screams behind a curtain.
My knee buckles, and I catch myself on the wall because this feels too much like déjà vu, except I am more awake this time, more aware of how quickly a life can vanish between one breath and the next.
My mouth is dry. My throat tastes like metal. I swallow hard enough that it hurts.
“Excuse me—”
No one hears me. Or maybe no one cares. I’m not bleeding. I’m not screaming. I’m not dying on the floor, so I’m just another body in the way. I push through two men arguing with a cop to reach a triage nurse, who finally appears.
I lean over the front desk even though I know better than to get aggressive with hospital staff, but I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t stand here doing nothing while my twin is somewhere behind these walls.
“Emilio Dimas,” I manage, voice cracking so hard she has no choice but to look up at me. “Twenty-one. Motorcycle accident. He was brought in. I . . . need . . . please, I just need to know—”
“Sir, you need to step back,” she barks, looking for someone to make me, but the security guy is on front desk duty.
“I’m his brother. Next of kin.” I back up but barely, hands shaking so hard my phone clatters on the countertop. “Please. I just need to know he’s okay.”
“Sir, everyone here is being seen—”
“He has a walking boot and stitches.” I push out, talking over her. “You guys called me or the ambulance. Please he can’t take another hit . . .”
My voice gives out, just drops off a cliff. I don’t care. I’d beg on my knees if it means seeing him alive and talking.
The security guard she was looking for moves closer, like he thinks I’m going to cause trouble. Maybe I am. My hands won’t stop shaking. My pulse is bright white behind my eyes. My breath keeps snagging in my chest like my lungs are folding in on themselves.