Suit (The Twin Duo #1)(46)

I sighed while I watched my family walk away without me. “Bastard. Dick. Fuckface. Jerk-off,” I said aloud to no one but me.

After securing the boot back to my foot, I went to the kitchen in search of something to cook. There was plenty of food. That wasn’t the problem. I just didn’t know how or what to cook. I found one cookbook, but it wasn’t really food. It was mixed drinks. Hmmm, that sounds more like it. I could make some sort of exotic drink for the adults and something else for the kids. But what?

“Oh, the tablet,” I said when I remembered Paxton’s comment. Now if I could just find it. I didn’t remember seeing it anywhere. After searching the front rooms, high and low, I moved to my room. Where the hell would I keep a tablet? I scratched my head while I stood in place and looked around.

The nightstand on the right held a kids’ book, a bottle of nasal spray, a notebook, and a pen. I picked up the yellow notebook and looked around the room with an eerie feeling. I always felt like I was snooping in someone else things when I opened drawers. Like it wasn’t really my stuff to be meddling through, or like I was being watched. Nonetheless, I opened it.

“Wow,” I said through a sigh. This was my life. Expectations. That’s it. I had half a notebook full of to do’s. Extracurricular activities for both girls, what day I went to the grocery store, things to do for Paxton. Like new shirts. I was supposed to go shopping for him two days after my accident. I did everything by time and schedules. Somehow that didn’t feel right. I felt more like the type to move forward without clocks or calendars. Not this. Wow. I closed it and searched the other nightstand for the tablet. I’d come back to that mess another time.

The drawer to my left housed the white tablet. The one I presumed I’d used to make loving meals for my family with. Blah!

I spent at least twenty minutes learning about me from my tablet. I liked to read. I had countless books on there, most of them already read. Hmmm. Who would have thought? I didn’t feel like a reader. Evidently, I was a writer, too. Poetry. I liked poetry? Really? File after file of poetry filled the different folders. All marked by subject. I opened the first three, skimming through them until I stopped.

Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee at other lakes and the night overtake thee everywhere at home.

That wasn’t my poem. I didn’t right that, but I had heard it from somewhere. I just couldn’t place where. My eyes darted around the room with the feeling of being watched again. I shook my head with a heavy sigh at my silliness and turned back to the tablet. I didn’t have much time. I would have to find out who really wrote it later. When I had more time to snoop.

“Grrr, it’s not snooping,” I said out loud in an agitated voice. The tenth file was the one that caught my eye. Half way down the page.

My Clyde.

My finger hovered above the file while my mind debated on going there. I quickly tapped it with my finger, afraid of chickening out, but I did it.

My heart moved a million beats a minute when I read the first line.

I can see it in her eyes,

A love like no other.

I can feel it in her presence,

A graceful bond forever.

She’s my twin,

My Clyde,

My other half.

My eyes skimmed the pages of poems. One after another. Poems about Clydes, twins, sisters, and severed parts. Some of them were soft and gentle, some not. Like the one about a detached heart. Gruesome details about the blood oozing out, slowly over sharp obstacles.

I closed it before I read another word, knowing how much time I had. I needed a minute to decipher that, anyway. I didn’t even know where to begin to look for something to make for a barbeque. Everything I looked at either called for meat, or looked disgusting. Lucky for me, I knew my way around Pinterest. I didn’t ask myself how because I had no idea. I just knew. I guess the same way I knew that pepper trees would end in a mess on a car. Bird shit.

I knew I had everything to make the cool dessert, and the kids would love it. Paxton, probably not, but he didn’t really like anything. Jesus. I’m provoking him. Why would I want to provoke him? With that, I stood and carried my tablet to the kitchen. I knew the answer before I ever asked the question. The faint throb I felt between my legs knew it, too.

I was a slut, suited for Paxton’s needs.

But...

Were they my needs, too?

By the time Paxton had returned, I’d made a dessert, some sort of pasta with fettuccini sauce, and peas. Also found on Pinterest. The mixed drink was chilling in the refrigerator and I was in the shower.

“Aahhh! Oh, my God. Don’t fucking do that!” I screamed to the top of my lungs. Jesus. Was he trying to give me a heart attack?

“Oh, my God, Gabriella. This isn’t working. You don’t talk to me like that. You don’t say the F word. Ever. Not at me, not to me, not around me.”

“What the hell do you expect? You just waltz right in here and shut the water off when I’m in the shower? Who does that?”

Paxton ran his hand through his hair and breathed a sigh of irritation. For a second, I thought he was done. He turned toward the door and closed it. This was crazy. I wasn’t even allowed to get mad for him scaring the hell out of me.

“Where’s the girls?” I asked while taking a step back.

Paxton ignored the question and walked right in the shower. I came with him by my hair. He pulled me, soaking wet, out of the shower and to the sink.