Chapter 3

Stephanie quickly wiped her eyes when someone knocked on the door of her office. "Come in," she called after a minute, looking down at the papers spreaded across the top of her desk in front of her.

Someone walked in and shut the door softly. The next thing Stephanie knew, someone was sitting on the edge of her desk and she could feel the person staring down at her.

"I'm really sorry about what just happened," the person said.

She looked up and couldn't believe her eyes. "Chris! I thought you didn't want to talk to me," she exclaimed.

"I'm not Chris," Riley said.

She narrowed her eyes. "Then who are you, then? Gosh, Chris, why are you playing games with me?"

"No, I'm really not Chris. I'm his younger brother Riley," he said.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Impossible. Chris never mentioned any younger brothers to me."

"He has four younger brothers. Me, our younger twin brothers, Talan and Tristan, and our youngest brother Taylor," he informed her.

"Yeah, right," she said.

"Look. You just talked to Chris, right?" he asked.

"Yes, I just talked to you," she said pointedly. "You."

"When you talked to Chris just now, was he wearing what I'm wearing?" he asked. He touched his goatee. "And what about this? Did he have this? Or..." He pulled the sleeve of his shirt up and showed her the tattoo on his right arm. "Did he have this?"

"Oh my God, you really aren't Chris!" she exclaimed. She looked at him with wide eyes. "But you look so much like him!"

"I know," he said with a shrug. "I'm cursed."

"You have his eyes, his facial structure, his lips, his body..." Her voice trailed off. "You're a carbon copy of him. You even have his voice!"

"And his love handles. I'm cursed," he replied in a teasing voice.

"You have the sense of humor that he used to have, too," she said wistfully. "Heavy emphasis on used to have."

"Maybe it's because I'm younger. I'm only 29," he admitted. "Just a few years younger than him."

"A few years can make a big difference," she said with a sigh. She was thinking about how the two years she hadn't talked to Chris had completely changed her whole relationship with him.

"Anyway," he said, interrupting her thoughts. "I just came here to apologize for my brother's behavior."

"He's an adult. He should be able to do it himself."

"I'm not trying to make excuses for him, but he's been through so much," he said. "So when you came back tonight, he was shocked and all the pain he had buried inside just came rushing back to the surface."

"So..." She tried to think of a way to word her next question so that she wouldn't sound nosey. "How are things with Chris and his wife?"

"Never been better. After he lost contact with you, he focused really hard on making things right with her," he said.

"Oh."

He looked at her and could see the pain in her eyes. He didn't like it. "You look really sad. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, not right now," she said sadly. "No one could help right now except..."

"Chris," he finished. He stood up and grabbed a pen off her desk. "Here," he said, scribbling his cell phone number on a sheet of paper from a sticky pad that was on her desk. He handed it to her. "Call me if you decide there's anything I can do to help. And don't be shy, ok?" He smiled at her, then left the room.

She watched the door close behind him. Then she looked down at the sticky note in her hand. He had his name on it, and his cell phone number. She cradled it to her chest and closed her eyes, knowing that she would never call him...