The blaring of an alarm woke me up. I opened my eyes, disoriented. Kol was up and out of bed in a flash. What on earth was going on? I rubbed my eyes to rid it of the gunk in them. I stood up as gently as I could and followed after Kol who was running down the stairs. By the time I got to him, I was out of breath and he was perched on his chair behind his array of screens.“Kol, what is going on?” I looked at the time on his screen. It was past 2am.“Someone tried to force their way in.” My face leached its colour.“What?” Kol looked intently at the screen as he tried to figure out who the intruder was. I didn’t think he had security in place for his home. I mean, it made sense but I thought that was left for his other workspace.“After the flower incident, I upped security around the house but to think someone had the guts to actually come into my home…” Kol fingers continued to work at a furious pace until a face popped up. No, not a face. A body, clad from head to toe. They definit
I slammed the door of the car as I settled into the passenger seat. Kol looked at me apprehensively as he waited for me to speak.“I’m a twin.” Kol’s eyes grew wide as saucers.“Charlie is your twin sister?” I nodded at him.It was too much information to process at once. After the shell-shocking news, we couldn’t really get past it and we’d decided it was more than enough information for now. We had hugged and said goodbye.I knew nothing about her and about myself but it felt like I still knew too much. I’d been waiting to find out the gender of my sibling. I did. Then, I wondered if I was younger or older. It turned out we were the same age. Just minutes apart. I’d had the wrong birthday all this while.We were July born and my original name was Charlotte Rivers.“Wow.” I sunk into my seat trying to process a different life as Charlotte Rivers. I couldn’t. It seemed like a world far away. Too far away yet so close.“Let’s just go.”***“Did you say Rivers?” Kol spun around to look
“Yeah, it has worsened lately. I think it’s my fault though. I’ve been avoiding my glasses a lot and it makes me strain my eyes.” I rubbed my itchy eyes once more but I stopped when the doctor sent me a look that would have had a child crying.“Do things get blurry at all?”“Yeah. I can’t see too far of a few feet in front of me.”The doctor gave me a new prescription. At this point, I could be considered blind because the lenses were so thick they could pass for flat mugs.I put on the glasses and I felt a little better. The swelling of my hand had gone down and I was back to work.I’d taken enough sick leaves to last me a year and I was tired of Kol treating me like I was made of glass. Charlie and I had also spoken over the phone in the last couple of days and it turned out, she was a doctor. Could she be any more perfect? She’d finished school early and with awards to her name. It was quite easy to find a placement in one of the top hospitals in the country.To be fair, she didn’t
I now had two men shadowing me everywhere I went. Everyone was a suspect, regardless of who it could possibly be connected to.Kol hadn’t had many partners and one was already dead. I highly doubted that high school crushes could some how spawn delusion psychopaths who thought it was perfectly okay to watch people in their houses and how on earth had they even avoided the cameras? All three of us, Kol, Josh and I had stayed up all night ransacking video footages of the company, the streets near and Kol’s house and found nothing. It was like this person was a ghost. A skilled ghost.I didn’t tell Thea or Charlie. They had too much to deal with. I couldn’t offload all that on them, plus, it was my problem. I’d deal with it.I’d temporarily moved in with Kol and we now went to work and back home together, fueling the rumours at work for anyone who noticed. Kol’s place was safer than mine in terms of security and definitely much cozier. Our fights had increased daily and we were both stre
“Where should we meet up?”“How about you come over and I make dinner? I happen to be an excellent cook.” We hadn’t been to each other’s spaces before and Charlie thought we would feel cozier if we met up at her place, which I realised wasn’t too far from Kol’s. A win-win situation.“Aren’t you very busy though?” Her being a doctor surely messed with her schedule. I’d seen videos of how over worked some of these medical staffers were, especially the nurses. How wrong I was.“Nope. I only work on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since I’m a plastic surgeon, my workdays are quite flexible.”“Oh.. okay.”“Does 6pm sound good to you?”“Sure.” All my exhaustion from the days work suddenly disappeared. I walked up to Kol’s office and knocked. There was no answer. I decided to open the door and wait for him.I walked to his floor-to-ceiling glass window and peered outside. I had never done that and even though I’d been in his office countless times, and there was an actual window, I felt like
"You didn't." My eyes narrowed at her."I'm sorry." She ran to open the door, revealing a slightly older man with a head full of dark hair. He looked way younger in person. "Dad!" She hugged him before letting him in."I smell chicken fried rice. You cooked?" I didn't miss the tone of surprise in his voice. She walked hand-in-hand with him to the kitchen. He hadn't seen me yet. He was more focused on their conversation. When I finally came into view, he stopped in his tracks, as if he couldn't believe his eyes. "How..." My brows drew into confusion.I looked at Charlie with panic in my eyes. He had the same green eyes as us and now they were filled with fear mixed with shock?"My God! Evelyn."My eyes widened in surprise. He'd mistaken me for his dead wife."Charlie? Can you please explain what's going on here?"I looked back at Charlie who had a sheepish expression on her face. I threw the napkin on the kitchen counter and folded my arms across my chest, anger evident on my face
“How about a vacation?” I looked up at Kol who was running his hands through my hair. I lifted my eyebrows quizzically. Kol wanted us to go on a vacation? Workaholic Kol?Things had been quite silent at work, especially with Jason. Too quiet even and though neither of us said it, but we waited for the other shoe to drop. Jason was not the type to sit back silently when he was ‘attacked’. “You have anywhere in mind?” My eyes closed as I breathed in his scent. His fingers moved wisps of hair away from my face and looked at me with love and a hint of mischief in his eyes.“I’m not telling.” I huffed. “So you’re kidnapping me then?” His deep chuckle vibrated through my skin and into my bones.“I wouldn’t call it kidnapping. More like surprising…”I rolled my eyes and lifted his shirt to reveal his well-toned abdominals. I moved my lips to his skin and his body tensed in response. If he thought I was going to do something s*xy, he was in for a big surprise.I brought out my tongue and
“This is insane. How is your place this big?”I looked around Thea’s house. The house she’d gotten in Naples had multiple rooms that she probably wouldn’t need but it was the aesthetics that blew me off. From outside, it looked just like a pristine-white mansion that covered over four thousand square feet but on getting inside, I couldn’t shut my mouth. It was like a splash of flavours. The arch ways had murals painted over them and some rooms had some kind of alt décor in some of them. You could get to a room and feel warm and you could get to another and feel hyped up enough to do some work because of the lively space.“Bro… I can’t even…” We’d just left her workspace from the tour and I could understand why her house was so huge. There was this really big room that could fit 20 of old room in it and there were fabrics upon fabrics strewn about with lots of machines I couldn’t even recognise.“Damn! How did you even manage our space? It seems like an ant compared to this.” I motione