Jennie

"Feelin' better?" Kyungsoo asked as he relaxed into the chair across from my desk.

"I, uh . . . wasn't sick. Sorry."

He raised an eyebrow as he took a sip of his coffee. "You okay?"

"I have something to tell you. Two things, actually."

Kyungsoo sat up straight. "Are you in trouble? Is this about the Warriors? You haven't seen Taehyung around, have you?"

"No, it's nothing like that. I haven't heard from Taehyung in months."

"Thank fuck," he breathed.

Nothing had ever come of Chanyeol's fight with Taehyung. And I hadn't bothered mentioning to anyone at the garage that Taehyung had come to visit. If the Warriors cared Chanyeol had beaten him up, they'd let it go, but Kyungsoo was never not guarded. He had too much to lose. With Drake gone, he'd stepped in to make sure his family, me included, was safe.

"So what's going on?"

"I called in sick because I knew if I told you the truth, I'd have people on my doorstep. I needed a couple days away because my sister is in town."

"Your twin?"

My eyes narrowed. "How'd you know I had a twin?"

I'd never told Kyungsoo about Irene. Drake had known about my sister, so maybe he'd passed it along, but my hunch was that Kai had snooped. I didn't mind, but I wasn't going to miss this chance to razz Kyungsoo.

"We, uh . . . damn," he grumbled. "Kai kind of—"

"Kai kind of likes to hack into people's lives, and you kind of like to know about everything he finds." I giggled. "It's fine. Next time, just ask me."

"In our defense, it was a long time ago, back when you started working at the garage. And there wasn't much to find. Just your high school transcripts and next of kin. You were boring."

If he only knew how wrong that statement was. "Anyway, my sister is here. I haven't seen Irene in a long time, so it was a surprise when she showed up at my house on Sunday."

"You two been catching up?"

I shook my head. "Not really. She's pretty much been sleeping since she got here."

"Since Sunday? It's Wednesday, Jen."

"There's something wrong." I cupped my coffee mug, letting its warmth seep into my palms. "She's really skinny. There's the sleeping. I have my theories about what's going on, but until she tells me, I won't know for sure."

I suspected that my father had been abusing her for years and she'd finally found the strength to run away. Or maybe my parents were dead, and she'd been free to leave. But the way Irene looked reminded me of my mother on the days when she hadn't tried to hide her pain.

"Want to talk through your theories?" Kyungsoo asked.

"That's okay. But thank you. It's complicated and messy."

"I'm always here to listen."

"I know." I smiled. "And I appreciate it."

One day, I'd tell Kyungsoo about my childhood. When he undoubtedly got angry, I'd calm him down and convince him to leave my father alone, much like I'd done with Drake. For now, my focus was on Irene. And when I needed someone to lean on, I had Lisa.

"What's the second thing?" Kyungsoo asked, picking up his mug again.

"I'm seeing someone."

"Ten Lee." He nodded. "Good guy."

"Yes, he is. But no, I'm not seeing Ten anymore."

"Okay," he drawled. "Then who?"

A vehicle door slammed outside, boots pounded on the sidewalk, and as if on cue, Lisa strode into the office.

I gave her a flat look. We'd agreed this morning when I'd left her house that we'd meet for lunch. It wasn't even ten o'clock yet.

"Morning." Lisa extended a hand to Kyungsoo, who shook it from the chair.

"Don't tell me you're making a sequel already."

Lisa chuckled. "No, this time I'm in Montana for personal reasons."

"The one you're seeing?" Kyungsoo asked.

I nodded as Lisa rounded my desk. "You just couldn't stay away."

"From you?" she bent low, chuckling in my ear as she brushed a kiss to my cheek. "Never."

I met Kyungsoo's gaze and gave him an apologetic shrug. "She's not nearly as horrible as I thought."

"Baby, you say the sweetest things to me." Lisa grinned and sat on the edge of my desk, staking her claim by my side.

Kyungsoo's gaze bounced between the two of us for a moment, then leveled on me. "She's good to you?"

"Yes." I looked up at Lisa, her golden gaze waiting. "She is."

A wave of relief flashed across Lisa's face, like maybe she'd expected me to still be angry about how we'd ended things the first time. But I'd accepted her apology.

She'd been forgiven.

Kyungsoo rose from his chair, standing to his full height, and shot Lisa a warning look. "Don't fucking hurt her."

"You have my word," Lisa promised.

"Does this mean you're going to move to California?" Kyungsoo asked me. "Because I'm not okay with that."

"No," I said at the same time Lisa said, "Maybe one day."

"Uh . . . we haven't gotten that far yet." Before we talked about long-term plans, we needed to survive a dinner date.

Kyungsoo turned and headed for the shop, but before he left, he jerked his chin at Lisa. "Welcome back."

"Thanks."

I pulled in my lips to hide a smile as Kyungsoo disappeared.

"Why do I feel like that was important?" Lisa asked as the door closed.

"Because it was."

Kyungsoo had never liked Taehyung. From the moment they'd met, Kyungsoo'd had a bad taste in his mouth. He hadn't shaken Taehyung's hand or addressed him the few times he'd come to the office. Instead, Kyungsoo had pestered me for years to call off the engagement.

That simple statement, welcoming Lisa to Montana, spoke volumes.

Maybe Lisa's reason for coming here in the first place had been to do a project they despised, but the filming was done and the movie buzz wouldn't last forever.

Once the movie was released, we'd forget about it. In a way, we already had. We lived in our corner of the world, far away from the glamour of Hollywood, and no matter what happened with the film, the memory of Avery Wales had already faded.

"That went better than expected," Lisa said. "I didn't want you to have to tell them on your own."

This woman. "You came for backup?"

"Yep." She leaned down and brushed a kiss across my lips. "And because I missed you."

"It's been three hours."

"Exactly. That's a long time."

We'd spent the night reacquainting our bodies. I'd slept in Lisa's arms and woken in sated bliss before going home to get ready for work.

Lisa stood and took off her coat. "Was Irene awake when you left?"

"No. I peeked in on her, but she was still asleep. It's weird, right? It's like she hasn't slept in weeks."

"There's definitely something going on."

"I think it's about my parents. Do you think, maybe . . ."

"Maybe what?" she sat on the desk again, this time facing me after tossing her coat aside.

"That maybe they're . . . dead?" It was hard to say aloud. I had no love for my parents, but there was something, deep inside, that would mourn my mother.

Never my father.

"Want me to find out?" Lisa asked.

"Find out how? Google?"

She lifted a shoulder. "That or we can hire a private investigator to dig deeper."

"Nah. If we want to do that, I can just ask Kai."

"Kai?" Her eyebrows came together. "I thought he was a mechanic."

I giggled. "Kai's handy with more than just a wrench. I'm sure he's got a background check on you on his laptop along with anything else he could scour from the interwebs."

"Oh, Jesus," she muttered.

"But no, to answer your question. I don't want to know about my parents. Not before I talk to Irene."

"Would you like me to be there?"

I put my hand on her thigh. "Thanks, but I think we need to talk alone."

"I'm right next door if you change your mind."

"This is so . . . this sucks." I dropped my gaze, voicing one of my fears. "We used to know everything about one another, but Irene seems like a different person now. I feel like I don't know my sister anymore. What if we don't like each other?"

"It happens. Families are complicated. My father used to be my hero, and I called him nearly every day. Now, I haven't talked to him in years."

"You will one day."

"What makes you think so?"

"You love your family, Lisa."

Whenever she talked about her mom or sisters, she'd smile and her eyes would light up. And the day she'd told me about her father, there'd been such painful longing in her voice. She wasn't bitter or mad; she was deeply disappointed. Someday, it would fade and she'd be ready to talk to her father again.

"You're not ready yet, but you will be one day. I've never met your father, but I don't think he's an evil man. He's not like Avery Wales. Avery didn't think she did anything wrong. She felt righteous and justified in her actions. Your father confessed."

Lisa stared at the wall behind me, her gaze focused on nothing.

"I know what it is to have an evil father." I squeezed her leg. "My father doesn't think he's done anything wrong either. He thinks it's his right to rape his wife and beat his children. Would your father ever have treated you or your sisters that way?"

"Never," she said quietly.

"He's not your hero anymore, and that's okay. But he's still your father, and I can tell you still love him."

Lisa gave me a sad smile. "I'm not ready to call him."

"Then wait. There's no rush." I patted her leg once more, then reached for my coffee, sipping it before it went cold.

"Is Montana a deal breaker for you?" she asked.

"This is my home."

A home I'd made for myself with a family who loved me unconditionally. A family who'd shown up on my wedding day when they'd hated the groom, but they'd shown up anyway because I'd asked.

I wanted to live alongside them. I wanted to share our lives, blend them together. I wanted to go to Jisoo's house when she and Sehun had another baby and watch their kids while they took a nap. I wanted to have Christmas dinner with Kyungsoo and Nayeon. I wanted to meet Kai and Chanyeol for a beer at The Betsy on a random Friday night to talk about nothing and tease them relentlessly for being eternal bachelors.

"I want it all," I admitted. "I want you, and I want Montana."

"Okay." Lisa nodded.

"Okay? That's it?"

"Okay," she repeated. "Then we live in Montana."

"What about Los Angeles? What about your career?"

"LA isn't going anywhere, and I don't have to live there to do my job. I'll need to travel at times and to see my family, but as long as I can convince you to come with me, this can be home base."

Wow. My head was spinning, trying to absorb her words. We were talking about our future. A long-term future. Lisa had spelled it out so simply, and now that she'd planted the idea in my brain, I wouldn't be able to imagine—I didn't want to imagine—anything else.

We'd build our life here with my family. Our home base. And we'd fly around the world when necessary.

"I've never been on an airplane," I blurted. Why that was the most important fact to announce was a mystery.

Lisa chuckled. "Then you're in luck, because I happen to own an airplane."

"This was not the conversation I'd planned to have today."

Lisa took the coffee mug from my hands and pulled me from my seat, wrapping me in her arms. "Whether you said Montana or California or Japan or Antarctica, it wouldn't have mattered."

I pressed my ear to her heart, soaking in the steady drum. "And if you had said it had to be California, I would have gone."

"Better stop talking, otherwise I'm going to lock us in the waiting room and make use of one of those couches."

I smiled. "I'm pretty sure Kyungsoo and Nayeon have claimed the waiting room as theirs."

"Annnnd I'm never sitting in there again." I giggled as she kissed my hair and let me go. "I'll get out of here and let you get to work."

"What are you doing today?"

"I've got some calls to make."

"For?"

She winked. "You'll see."

I escorted her to the door, standing on my toes as she gave me an indecent kiss. "I'm going to try and get out of here early so I can talk to Irene. Then I'll come over."

"Okay. Call me if you need anything."

"I will." I kissed her again, squashing my habitual goodbye.

Lisa didn't say goodbye. I doubt I would have noticed with anyone else, but Lisa's had always been significant. Refusing to say that word seemed important to her, so I'd stop saying it too.

She waved as she stepped outside and I shut the door behind her, shuttering at the momentary shot of cold. I cranked the heating fan beneath my desk to high when I returned to my chair, and the day went by in a blur as I made up for missing the beginning of the week. My plan to get off early was thwarted, and it was close to five by the time I had deposits ready to swing by the bank and the mail to drop at the post office.

I hurried through my errands, and when I got home, Lisa's truck was in her driveway. I waved, in case she was near a window to see, then went inside to see Irene.

She was in the living room, watching a movie. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun. She wore the sweats I'd brought her last night, her feet bare and curled up under her seat.

Lisa's face flashed across the screen.

A swell of pride puffed up my chest as I sat beside her on the couch. Lisa's voice filled the room as she spoke to her commanding officer on the screen. "This is my favorite movie of her."

Irene hit pause. "I've never seen it, but she's not hard on the eyes."

She had no clue. Lisa on the screen was sexy. Lisa in her bedroom, holding me, laughing, was ethereal.

"Where did you disappear to last night?" she asked.

"Oh, uh"—I pointed toward my bedroom's side of the house—"I'm dating the one next door."

Though dating felt like too casual a word. I mean, she'd told me today she'd relocate her life to Montana.

"The one who was here last night?" Irene asked.

"No. Someone else."

She hummed. "You always did get around."

"Excuse me?" I blinked, certain I'd misunderstood her mutter. "What did you just say?"

Irene popped a shoulder. "You always had a couple of guys on the hook."

"In high school, when I was a confused teenager who was scared and desperate for some attention. Yeah, I flirted with any boy who looked my way twice. But I've never slept around. Don't you dare insinuate I'm some sort of whore. I've been with two person in my life." I held up two fingers. "Two."

"This one next door and my boyfriend? I guess that means we lost our virginity to the same guy."

I flinched. When had Irene developed such a sharp tongue? When had she learned to hate me?

"Why are you being cruel?" I whispered. "Because of Taehyung? He came here. He found me. I didn't search him out to steal him from you. It was years after I left. Years after you broke up. If you're here to punish me for Taehyung, I hate to break it to you, but he humiliated me more than you could ever imagine."

And that embarrassment was the best thing to ever happen to me.

"Whatever," she muttered.

"Why are you here, Irene?"

She popped that shoulder again. "I got your texts."

"All of them?"

"Yeah." She met my gaze. "Every single one."

"But you never replied. Why?"

"I didn't have anything to say, after you left." The last three words were so quiet I barely heard them.

"I tried to take you with me."

Her gaze drifted to the floor. "I was too scared to leave."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Irene."

She stayed silent.

"I wish I had shoved you in the car and made you leave. I've thought about that day a lot. About what I should have done. And I'm sorry that I left you behind."

Irene pulled her arms around herself, hugging them close. "He went into a rage. He was so angry that you'd left, that I wouldn't tell him where you'd gone, that he nearly beat Mom to death."

I gasped, my hand coming to my mouth. "What did he do to you?"

"He made me watch." She lifted her gaze and met mine. "He tied me to a chair in the living room, and other than that, he didn't lay a hand on me. Not once. Instead, he made me watch as he hit her over and over and over again. Until there was so much blood that even she couldn't clean it out of the carpet the next day."

Tears flooded my eyes and I squeezed them shut, trying to block out the mental image, but I saw it with vivid clarity. I saw exactly what she'd been forced to endure. Except unlike the times I'd been tied to a chair to watch the same horror unfold, Irene and I hadn't been side by side. I hadn't been there to hold her hand or help get Mom to her bedroom when it was over.

"I'm sorry."

"I should have left," she murmured. "I should have gone to California with Taehyung."

I wiped my eyes dry, summoning strength to survive this conversation. To set the ghosts free. "When Taehyung came out here, he said that you were still at home. You stayed?"

She nodded. "I stayed. I went to Dad's community college. I took the job he got for me as a receptionist at his company. I did exactly what he asked me to do, like always. Taehyung kept trying to get me to leave, he wouldn't stop pressuring me, until finally he said he couldn't stand by and watch me become Mom."

According to Taehyung, they'd broken up over a year before he'd come to Montana. Even after that year, he'd been so angry that she hadn't wanted to save herself.

He'd had a front-row seat to the disaster that was our home, but she'd never understood.

Taehyung had watched me run and never look back. He'd found me years later, after I'd discovered confidence and self-worth. After fear no longer ruled my decisions.

But he'd missed the years when I'd been confused. He'd missed the moments of doubt.

The pain of our youth was intermixed with love. The cruelty was tied to affection.

Mom was Dad's toy, but she'd doted on her daughters. She'd hug us fiercely each morning, telling us how proud she was and how special we were. She'd kiss our cheeks and braid our hair. She hadn't protected us, but she'd loved us as best she could.

Dad's love came in the form of attention, and not all bad. If he'd slap me for a mistake, the next day he'd take me out for ice cream. He used to play board games with Irene and me. If Hasbro made it, we'd owned it. My favorite had been Clue, Irene's Scrabble. Dad had preferred Monopoly.

Dad hadn't been angry every day. Most, but not every. And on those days, the simple joy of playing games had filled our house. We'd laughed. We'd teased. We'd loved.

I loved my parents.

And I hated my parents.

Those two things were hard, even now, to reconcile.

Irene had been afraid to leave because of Dad's rage. But I suspected she'd also been afraid to leave her home and say farewell to Mom.

She'd always been the daughter closest to Mom. Irene had been the nurse, the first to run for an ice pack or a washcloth to sop up a bloody nose. Irene had attended to Mom while I'd cleaned up the physical mess.

That carpet stain Mom hadn't been able to remove? I would have scrubbed and scrubbed until the spot was clean, my resentment burning with each stroke. Meanwhile Irene would have brushed Mom's hair and stroked her cheek.

"Why did you leave?" I asked.

"Because Mom told me to go." Irene's fingers fiddled on her lap. "I told her you were getting married and she cried because she knew you wouldn't invite her. She told me to come and find you. To smile for her at your wedding. I didn't tell her you were marrying my ex-boyfriend."

"Did she know about Taehyung?"

"No." Irene had hid Taehyung from our parents when we'd been kids and apparently done the same as an adult.

"How'd you leave?"

"Mom gave me a roll of money that she'd kept hidden away from Dad, and one Sunday morning, I snuck out of our pew at church, saying I had to go to the bathroom. And I never went back."

My heart squeezed. Mom must have known what Irene's fate would be if she'd stayed. Either Dad would have forbidden her ever to leave, or he would have found her a man like himself to marry.

"Have you heard from her?"

She shook her head. "No. She doesn't have my number. I offered to give it to her, but she said it would be best if I didn't. Besides, Dad won't care that I left any more than he cared that you did. He's got his favorite punching bag. She might have pushed me out the door, but she won't leave him."

Mom's love for Dad would be her death sentence.

"Wait, you left to come to the wedding." That was months and months ago. "Where have you been since?"

"Here and there," Irene muttered.

Here and there? That wasn't an answer. "How did you get to Montana?"

"A bus."

"Have you been in Black Point this whole time?"

Irene didn't answer.

Was that why Chanyeol had claimed to see my doppelganger at The Betsy? It had to have been her. I'd brushed it off as him being drunk, but maybe he really had seen my twin. If she'd been in town, why hadn't she found me? Where had she been living? How was it possible that no one, other than Chanyeol, had recognized her?

"What's going on? What aren't you telling me?"

She shifted uncomfortably, refusing to meet my eyes.

"Ire—"

The doorbell rang.

Irene jumped, shaking the whole couch. "Is someone coming over?"

"It's fine," I assured her. Who or what was she so afraid of? Was she worried Dad would track her down? "Don't worry. It's probably Lisa."

"Lisa?" Her eyes darted between me and the screen, where her face was still frozen. "Lisa who?"

"Lisa Manoban." I pointed to the TV. "The one who lives next door."

She blinked and her jaw dropped.

I left her there, gaping, as I hurried to the door and swung it open, not bothering to check the peephole. Lisa was probably here for more backup.

"Hey—Taehyung? What are you doing here?"

I asked the question, but as his gaze tracked past me into the house, searching, I knew the answer.

He was here for Irene.

"You need to leave." Until I had answers, he was not coming in this house. I pushed the door closed, but he shoved a foot inside.

Then he lifted the gun I hadn't noticed.

And pressed the barrel to my forehead.