The Twin He Never Mistook

Damian Hawthorne, the heir to one of Manhattan's oldest fortunes, had pursued me in public for two years. I still refused him.

My identical twin sister was coming back to New York on Friday. No one in my circle even knew she existed. My friends said I had dragged the playinghardtoget act too far.

I looked down at the hardfaced man in a black suit, smoking beside his car below my building. "Do you know I have an older sister with the exact same face as mine?" My friend froze.

In my first life, Damian's pursuit blinded me. I dated him. Then I married him. On our wedding day, my sister came home from Seattle.

Damian stared at her, and I thought I watched him realize he had married the wrong twin. Snow drifted past my window. Damian still had not moved.

At last, I took out my phone and sent him my sister's flight information. [See you at JFK on Friday.] Friday was the day my sister came home.

This time, I would put the right twin in front of him and erase myself from the story. Chapter 1 The message telling Damian to meet my identical twin went through.

Damian finally moved. From the dark room upstairs, I watched him take the cigarette from his mouth and pull out his phone. A second later, his face tipped toward my window.

The lights were off. The curtains were drawn. There was no way he could see me. I stepped behind the wall anyway. My phone chimed. [Where are you?

When did you leave?] The questions pressed for an answer. I gave him none.

Two years ago, Damian had seen me at a hospital and forced his way into my life with the same relentless focus he brought to everything else. But I had already died once.

I remembered our first life. I knew every warm look and every fevered attempt to win me had begun because he mistook me for the sister who had once helped him.

He had treated me badly after we married. In this life, while my sister's existence still had to remain secret, I treated him with ice.

Damian had been born into the Hawthorne family with every door already open. When he wanted something, he advanced until the rest of the world moved aside. Money. Attention. Time.

He poured all three over me as if none of them could ever run out. Soon, everyone around me knew he wanted me. Even my friends started accusing me of playing games.

Because this was Damian Hawthorne. His face, his family, his ability to turn a room with one glance. People could not find a flaw in him.

My phone chimed again. [Ignoring me again.] Outside, the snow thickened. Damian looked up at my window one last time, then climbed into his car.

He sat there for another ten minutes before driving away from my building. I closed my eyes. When Damian decided to be good to someone, sinking into him was easy.

That was how I had fallen in love with him in my first life. When he decided to be cruel, he could stand beside me and make me feel alone.

That was how our marriage had left me with nothing but despair. While my sister prepared to return to New York, I prepared to leave for Seattle.

We had the same face, but we only traded places in our private lives. Who stayed near Mom. Who used the personal number our friends knew.

Our passports, school records, hospital files, and medical credentials had always remained separate. For strangers, one identical face was enough to create a mistake.

My mother had been forced into becoming a married man's mistress. When she got pregnant with us, she fled to a remote town and hid until we were born.

No one knew she had delivered two babies. When our father finally brought her back to the family estate, she took me with her. My sister was sent to Seattle.

Chapter 2 For twenty years, my sister and I had switched places every five years. One of us stayed with Mom in New York. The other lived on the West Coast.

Our father's family would only allow Mom to be seen with one daughter. Sometimes that daughter was my sister. Sometimes it was me.

We chose similar fields in medicine and shared a small private social circle, but we never mixed our school records, hospital files, or work histories.

That meant my sister knew all about Damian. In our first life, I had fallen in love with him too fast. Love made me selfish. I hid him from her because I wanted him to be mine.

Only on our wedding day did I decide I had been the extra person in a story that belonged to Damian and my sister.

In this life, I told her about him the day he appeared. "Is he some mess you left behind in New York five years ago?" My sister was much livelier than I was.

She laughed on the other end of the call. "How old do you think I was five years ago?" She did not remember Damian at all. Photos and videos changed nothing.

I texted back, [But five years ago, I was in Seattle. Whoever he met in New York couldn't have been me.] Before I left, I never expected to see Damian again.

It was after midnight at the hospital. I had assisted my supervising attending in surgery, then slumped against the stairwell wall, half asleep.

Someone sat beside me and draped a black coat over my shoulders. My eyes opened to the sharp lines of Damian's face.

He had lowered himself onto the concrete step beside me, his head turned in my direction. "If it wears you out this badly, why did you choose medicine?" he asked.

Mom had almost died giving birth to us. Doctors had saved all three of our lives. That was why my sister and I had chosen medicine. I did not tell Damian.

Instead, I turned toward the wall until he had a clear view of the back of my head. "Why are you here again?" My voice came out low. "Didn't I say I'd see you at JFK on Friday?" His voice was soft in the winter dark. "You don't even try when you lie to me." "I checked with your attending.

Your conference trip isn't until Wednesday." His gaze sharpened. "You were upstairs that night." Damian leaned closer.

His chin brushed my shoulder. "Evelyn," he said into the darkness. "Why are you so hard to win?" His clean, cold scent closed around me. Every muscle in my back went still.

I was not hard to win. I had seen what his coldness did to me in our first life. I was afraid of living through it again. This time, I wanted nothing to do with him.

Before we left the stairwell, I told him, "Give me a little more time." Time for my sister to return. Time for them to meet. They had always been the two people inside that story.

My sister could decide what came next. On Friday night, my sister and I wore the same clothes and pulled matching suitcases into a restroom at JFK.

She wrapped her arms around me. "We'll switch back in five years." I did not promise her that. I only held her tighter.

If she fell in love in New York, if she wanted to marry and build her life there, I could stay in Seattle forever. Our meeting lasted only minutes.

Then she used her own ID and walked toward the hospital coworkers waiting for her. I held my own boarding pass and turned toward my gate.

Chapter 3 I boarded the flight to Seattle alone.

While I waited for takeoff, my sister texted me. [Damian Hawthorne came to pick me up after all.] They must have met without a problem.

That was what I told myself before I turned off my phone. My sister took over the personal number I had left in New York, the one only our friends and family used.

My work number and every official document stayed with me.

By the time the long flight ended, my phone held greetings from Mom and my sister, along with messages from my friends and instructors in Seattle.

My sister's thread sat at the top of the screen.

Her newest messages were about Damian. [Now I understand why you said everyone around you knows he exists.] [Damian Hawthorne does nothing quietly.] [My department had dinner after I got back from the conference.

He invited himself.] [He came to JFK himself.

Then he sent Reed to pick up your attending and coworkers.] [He's colder in person than he looks in pictures.] [Just looking at him, I can't imagine that man chasing anyone this hard.] [But he's so polished.

He knows exactly how much space to give me. I can't even find a clean way to turn him down.] Those messages had come hours earlier, right after she met him.

She still remembered nothing. [Even after seeing him in person, I can't remember meeting him before.] I skimmed the thread and ignored every comment about Damian. [I landed, sis.] It was the middle of the night in New York.

She was probably asleep after the trip. I put away my phone and rolled my suitcase out of SeaTac. Life moved at a different pace on opposite coasts.

While I fought to settle back into Seattle, I also had to keep up with my sister in New York. Her days revolved around a busy hospital department.

Her private messages revolved around Damian. His presence had a way of swallowing everything around him.

One night, she asked me a new question. [Does Damian even remember what you like to eat?] [Probably not,] I replied. [We hardly ever ate together.] I had never shown strong likes or dislikes around him.

In our first life, I had learned that I was only a standin until my sister appeared. For those two years with Damian, I had kept every preference folded inside me.

Her answer came at once. [At dinner tonight, I picked the scallions out of my food. Damian watched me do it.] My sister and I wore our hair the same way. We dressed alike.

We could even copy each other's tone and habits. Food was different. We had grown up moving between two homes, and each of us had kept a few preferences that belonged to us alone.

My sister could not stand scallions. One careless motion with her fork had been enough to scare her. [Do you think he noticed something?] [Don't worry.

I never showed him what I liked to eat.] Damian could not know which foods I loved and which ones I avoided.

Even if he discovered there were two of us, it would only help him find his way to my sister faster. That was what I wrote.

My thumb stayed over the dark screen long after the message left. Chapter 4 My sister was the one in New York now.

She was also the one who had shared that brief connection with Damian years ago. Mom had always been beautiful.

Our father had used his power to trap her as the other woman in his marriage. My sister and I had inherited every one of Mom's best features.

No matter which coast we lived on, men noticed us. I looked at the blond classmate in front of me and refused another date. He did not give up.

He dropped into the seat beside me, propped his chin on one hand, and stared as if persistence alone would make him charming. It only made him annoying.

Against my will, I thought of Damian back in New York. He had been raised inside a controlling oldmoney family. Rebellion lived under his skin, but his manners never slipped.

Even his loud, public pursuit had never made me resent being near him. In my first life, I had fallen easily. In this one, I stayed far away.

He had already broken me once, and some weak part of me was still afraid I could fall again. My phone chimed. It was late in New York. My sister was talking about Damian again.

This time, she thought he had found another crack in our act. [I have that extra scar on the inside of my right arm. You don't.] I remembered it.

The injury was old, and the mark had faded until it almost matched her skin.

Even Mom did not know it was there. [Damian brought dinner to the hospital a few days ago.] [The ward was too warm, and my sleeve had ridden up.

When I reached for something, he kept looking at the inside of my arm.] [I didn't realize until after he left that he had been staring at the scar.] Damian could put pressure on a room without saying a word.

One look had made even my sister nervous.

I typed back with more certainty than I had. [I didn't spend enough time with him for him to remember whether I had a scar there.] [Yours is so faint that most people wouldn't see it anyway.] [Don't let him get in your head.] Her next question caught me off guard. [What do you really think of Damian?] He had pursued me for two years, she reminded me.

He had been loyal, patient, and far beyond the reach of most women. She could not understand why I had rejected him so fiercely.

I had only been in Seattle for two weeks, and even my sister had started wondering what made me run from him.

My fingers paused before I answered. [I don't like Damian.] Then I made myself clearer. [Whatever you decide, don't factor me in.] From the beginning, she had been the woman Damian was waiting for.

My sister answered, [No. This isn't about my choice.] [I don't remember Damian at all. I don't believe I ever met him.] [Maybe he knew it was you all along.

Maybe you were the one he had been pursuing from the start.] [I can step into your place anywhere else,] she wrote. [But when Damian is kind to me, I feel like I'm taking something that belongs to you.] Chapter 5