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I focus on her rather than the fury raging inside me. She knows I’m not letting this go. Target practice is happening, and I always shoot dead center. I blow out a heavy breath, clearing my mind because I owe her this much. The truth.
I hesitate to answer because this will rock her world. It shook mine at the core. “Did you know you were adopted?”
She angles her head. “Yes,” she says, dragging the word out. “Before I turned eighteen, I asked Dalton if he would adopt me so I could start over with a new last name. That’s when I found out. I also found out that my birth mom named me Ellie so I wanted to keep that part. How did you know?”
I take a swig of my beer, set it on the glass table, and rub my hands down my pants. I can’t tell if it's condensation from the beer or sweat. “The reason I thought you were Everly was because your DNA matched hers.” She tilts her head, pinching her lips together.
“How… could that be?”
“You were born a twin. Everly is your twin sister.”
She gasps under her fingers covering her mouth, blinks a couple of times before releasing a breath. “How?” she squeaks out in a disbelieving tone.
“You were adopted to different parents.”
“Who would split up twins?”
I shrug. I hate I don’t have all the answers. “We found the documents, but I didn’t read them thoroughly. I only know you are part of a twin.”
“Twins have the same DNA?” So it seems. She sits forward and covers her face with her hands. I reach for her, but stop halfway, pulling back. I want to comfort her, but I don’t know how she’ll feel about me touching her. “Oh my god,” she snaps, lifting her head. “You love both of us.”
“Loved,” I blurt out. Her brows knit together. “I loved her. I love you, Ellie.” She belts out a bitter laugh. “Everly and Ellie. I can’t believe this is happening. I thought worrying about being number two was bad. Knowing you loved my twin sister and thought I was her is so much worse.”
She shoves off the couch, grabbing her beer and drains the rest while she paces. She replaces her empty beer bottle with a full one, downing half of that one in one gulp. “It still doesn’t make a difference to me,” I plead.
“It does to me.”
This could be the end of us and there isn’t anything I can do because it doesn’t change the fact I love two people with the same face. Same DNA. I told her I loved Everly, but that isn’t true. I’ll always love Everly, she was a big part of my life. It’s different with Ellie though. The love I have for her completes me. She gets me and never makes me feel like I have to justify anything I’ve done.
“Why did you ask what the date was?” She stops walking and stares at me.
“It’s the day Everly was in a car accident. They thought she might have passed out because she plowed into another car without even braking.”
“Oh my god, oh my god.” Her voice escalates. She fans her face as her eyes well up with tears. “He almost killed both of us.”
She collapses onto one of the dining room chairs, head down on the table. Her back shakes from her silent cries.
After that, she was done talking, except to tell me I should go. I told her I would leave, but I’d be back to check on her tonight after she had time to think about everything. The salty air hits my face as I walk out of her apartment building. I’m on auto pilot walking through the streets, not caring where I’m headed.
When my feet hit the soft sand, I stare out to the vast ocean. I haven’t been out in the deep waters in a few months. Each step closer, I strip off a piece of clothing, only my boxers left by the time I touch the water. This is what I know. I take a few deep breaths before running and diving in. The cool water engulfs me as I slice through it at a high speed. In the shallow waters, my body glides above the sandy bottom, my mind focusing only on my environment, temporarily erasing the last two hours.
A sting-ray glides underneath me in the opposite direction. Those I don’t mind, it’s the sharks I don’t like to play with so I keep a watchful eye. I rise to the top, barely breaking the barrier to the open air and take a quick breath and lower again. The ocean floor drops and the darkness takes me back to many mission dives. Life felt easy then compared to now.
Something falling into the water grabs my attention. I stop swimming and focus on the object covered in bubbles. Craning my neck forward, I see it’s a person, swimming toward me so I kick my feet to move me to the surface. The person follows, but the red and white helicopter above our head, tells me who it is. Shit. Hello coast guard.
“Sir, you’re going to be okay,” he yells. I smirk at the ridiculousness of this. “Put this over your head.”
I shake my head and yell, “I’m fine. I’ll swim back.” Pointing back to the shore, I notice how far I swam. The beach is barely visible, so I think back to how many breaths I took.
“I need you to put this on.” The blades of the helicopter swoosh loudly making it hard to hear anything. He’s not letting me go, so I grab the harness and put it on quicker than he can do it himself. He stares at me for a moment and mumbles a few things to himself before lifting a thumb to pull me up. The cocky side of me wants to wave at him as we're being hoisted up, but I put it away. They’re doing their job and they do a damn good job too. I worked with a team out in California when I was training during BUD/S. I have the highest respect for them for putting their lives on the line to save people.
When we’re both pulled into the helicopter, I strip off the harness and all eyes are on me. Pulling my wet boxers away from my junk, I sit and strap in the seat. The crew looks at me confused. I flip my wrist around, showing my bone frog tattoo on my forearm since talking right now without a headset is useless.
“Son of a bitch,” I think one says.
They call it in as a false alarm and we breeze through the sky. One guy hands me a helmet. “Where are we dropping you off?” he asks over the headset.
“Just take me back to Base, I’ll catch a ride back from there.” They've wasted enough resources on me. The New Haven Station is located a few miles away. He smiles and shakes his head. I hold up my hands. “I was just taking a swim.”
