Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 225(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Will nodded, then motioned with his head to the plastic bag. “Only one way to find out.”
The arrival of our food marked a welcome break. We all needed to catch our breath after that story. Will wanted to know everything about Ryker: how he grew up, his likes, his dislikes. And Ryker was happy to oblige. And I was happy to listen.
I got a detail-packed crash course on this new man in my life. After one dinner, I probably knew more about Ryker than I did any other man I’d ever dated before.
I was pleasantly surprised at the common threads between his upbringing and mine. Though he grew up on the East Coast, and I on the West, our experiences weren’t so dissimilar. We’d both gone through a goth phase at more or less the same time. And we both went into medicine for the same reason: the TV show Scrubs.
Ryker told his life story all the way up to the hike, meeting me and to us now seated at the table in Franklin Country Kitchen. Then he asked Will a string of questions, interrupting his answers with more strings of questions. Owen and I were relegated to bystanders.
While Will and Ryker were engaged, Owen asked me what I did in San Diego.
“I’m a dentist.”
He tilted his head to the side and furrowed his brow. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a dentist.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m scared of dentists. Terrified, actually.”
“You’re not the only one,” I said.
“Somehow, I doubt your patients are scared of you.”
I cocked my head to the side and twisted my lips into a pensive frown. “What do you mean by that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. You have a calming presence. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s your smile.”
“Thank you, I guess.”
“I’m sorry. Would you rather hear that you’re intimidating, that you make me nervous?”
I shrugged. “I suppose I would take that as a compliment, too.”
He chuckled. “That’s a healthy attitude.”
After a beat, I asked, “Do I?”
“Do you what?”
“Do I make you nervous?”
He laughed. “Somehow, I think, even if you had a drill aimed at my mouth, I would feel just fine.”
Is he coming on to me? Or just trying to be nice?
Owen had a very confident and commanding way about him. He spoke slowly and articulated each word as if what he was saying were extremely important and that I’d better listen. He also had an imposing physical presence: stockier, more robust, thicker arms than his twin or even Ryker, who had quite the athletic build.
As for his facial features, they were identical to those of his twin, save a scar that cut through his left eyebrow.
I motioned to it with my fork. “How’d you get the scar?”
He touched it and said, “An axe.”
“An axe!”
He chuckled and brought his thumb and index finger together. “A small axe.”
“What were you doing to get a small axe to the face?”
“We were kids, playing in the woods. I had a dog back then named Ruffy.”
I smiled. “Ruffy, that’s a good name.”
“He was a good dog. Some of the kids—not my brothers—but some of the kids were playing, and they weren’t playing nice with Ruffy. I didn’t much care for that. So, I stepped up to one of the kids—older kid, mean kid—and I told him to stop. So”—he pointed to his scar— “I have a little souvenir of the encounter.”
“You’re a hero,” I said.
He smiled and shook his head. “No, Ruffy was the hero. The number of times he saved us from danger, I can’t even begin to count them.”
The way Owen spoke, the rhythm and the melody of his speech, was hypnotizing. I could listen to him narrate the tax code.
I looked at Owen, then Ryker, then back at Owen. If they’re not related, I will be dumbfounded.
Owen caught me staring. He smiled and said, “There’s quite a similarity, isn’t there?”
“Quite,” I said emphatically.
The closeness in their physical appearances had a strange effect on me. I found myself sitting across from a man I didn’t know, though I felt like I knew him intimately. He looked like Ryker might look in five or six years. And the more I looked at Owen, the more I felt like I was with Ryker but six years in the future. We had traveled the world together; we had celebrated successes, argued over trivial things, and had had sincere and passionate make-up sessions. And we were now back at the quaint country diner where we’d had our first proper meal together, six years ago.
“Looks like you’ve got something on your mind,” he said.
I exhaled a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. It’s been an eventful day.”
After dinner, Will called his friend on the force and told him he’d be by to give him a DNA sample to run. The four of us stood outside the diner, none of us knowing how to say goodbye.