All Chapters of THE TWIN IN HIS BED: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The house was dark and still when we crossed the threshold. Apparently, the house staff had retired for the day. Carlton didn't bother with the lights. He kept his hand at my back as we climbed the stairs, and I was grateful for the darkness. It made the climb feel less like returning to someone else's life and more like slipping into a dream I wasn't quite ready to wake from.The bedroom door closed behind us with a soft click, and the lights came on immediately. "Come here," he said, and it wasn't a request. I turned to face him. His eyes were a dark shade, purposeful, the look of a man who'd spent two days in silence and decided he was done with it.I went into his arms immediately.His fingers combed through my curls, as his eyes ran over my face. I didn't bother pretending I was someone else tonight. “The past two days have been hell without you,” he said. Hell without me. I filed that away to gloat about later."Tell me," I said, tipping my chin up. "What

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Grey light again, soft and quiet, like a light that hadn't decided whether the day would be raging hot or cold. It peeked through the curtains, then spilled across the sheets in long stripes. For a moment I let myself believe nothing outside this room existed — no today, no tomorrow, no version of the day that didn't end with both of us exactly here.Together. I thought of now. Carlton slept beside me, one arm flung above his head, jaw loose, all that careful architecture stripped away. Asleep, Carlton Holland looked vulnerable— nothing guarded in it, nothing performed. I studied him the way you study something you already suspect you're about to lose — memorizing angles, cataloguing the small imperfections nobody else got close enough to see. The faint scar above his eyebrow. The way his mouth softened at the corners in sleep, nothing left of the man who ran boardrooms like weather systems.“You're staring,” he muttered groggily, his eyes still shut. My bre

 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX  I sat down slowly, because there wasn't a version of this morning that didn't involve me sitting down at some point. The spread in front of me looked like something styled for a magazine shoot — soft scrambled eggs, fruit cut into shapes fruit had no business being cut into, a basket of pastries my stomach wanted no part of.  Arla poured her own coffee. She didn't offer to pour mine. "Eat," she said, settling into the chair across from me, sunglasses finally coming off. "You look like you haven't had breakfast.” “You gave me one hour,” I muttered, when my head said to simply shut up.  I regretted my words immediately, because Arla's lips curved.  “I called you by ten o'clock, Ellesmere,” she said, relaxing back into her seat. “

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The house had been bought! And it belonged to me.I didn't know which part of that revelation shocked me the most. Everything had been paid in full, by a buyer whose name had been left blank on every copy — every field where it should have appeared instead read ‘Trust’, followed by a string of numbers that meant nothing to me and, I was fairly sure, meant a great deal to whoever had set it up.My hands shook as I read the document again, and again, trying to make the math work. I hadn't cashed the check. It was still in my bag, creased from Arla's folio, the number on it still too large to feel real. “Cash it Monday. Take Mama for the surgery, get a new apartment, do whatever.”Her words rang through my mind on an endless loopWhy would she give me that much money and ask me to get a new apartment, if the house I already lived in, with a leaking roof and water stain she had no business noticing, was already paid for, in my name, and fixed?That dreadful, hove

CHAPTER THIRTY I don't know how long I sat there, but, it was long enough for the vending machine, two rows over, cycled through its hourly hum twice before I actually registered the sound.An older man in the chair across from mine, someone else's crisis unfolding at his own pace, offered me half a granola bar without a word, like it was the only currency either of us had left to spend on kindness that night. I didn't eat it. I could barely put anything in my mouth. But I held onto it, and it kept me from noticing that my hands were still trembling.The doors opened after an unbearably long wait. One of the doctors I knew stepped out, her expression was wary, with a rehearsed calm doctors learned for situations like this. The moment her gaze landed on mine, my heart skipped. "Ms. Morrison?"I stood so fast the room tilted. The granola bar hit the floor. "How is—""She's stable." She led with the thing a person needed to hear before their legs give out. "But there's significant bl