He sent her a wry glance. "It was one of the few things I was better at."
"So what happened?" she asked, her tone neutral.
"We were visiting the mountains. There was a trail that led away from the house, that ran for, I don't know - three or four miles? Off we went."
"With you in the lead?"
"Oh, yeah. Adrenaline was pumping through my blood and I was running as fast and hot as that damn bike. I felt like a million bucks when I got to the turnaround point without a sign of Gage behind me. But then I went cold, my twin-sense telling me something bad had happened."
Jane felt her mouth go dry. Griffin seemed lost in thought, his gaze trained out the windshield but his focus clearly on the past. "But your brother's all right," she heard herself say. Of course he was all right.
"I turned around, revving the bike even faster. Gage was about a mile back, his own bike on the ground. He was struggling to get it righted. That's when I saw that his chest was bleeding. He'd lost control and run into a tree. The sharp end of a broken limb had stabbed him in the chest."
Oh, God. She could see it. She heard the echo of fear in Griffin's voice.
"I got him on the back of my seat. He didn't seem to notice anything was wrong, but I screamed at him to wrap his arms around my waist. I threw one arm behind me to make sure he didn't fall. It seemed to take hours to get back to the house, and the whole time I felt his blood pumping in spurts against my back. And I kept thinking, I goaded him to do this. I'm going to have to tell our parents it's my fault he's dead. I've killed my twin."
"You didn't goad - "
"But I did. He hadn't wanted to race, but I called him every name one brother will call another until he got mad enough to go along." Griffin ran his hand over his hair again, and his voice was so quiet she thought he was talking to himself and not to her. "I'm the older brother. It's up to me to keep everybody safe."
She didn't like the dark note in his voice. This was supposed to be her happy day! But she appreciated the insight into his personality. He felt so responsible for people. "That must have been scary," she said. "Was the recovery difficult?"
"Sometimes I think it was harder for me than him. He took full advantage of my guilt. The video-game challenges I lost!" And then he grinned.
It was as if that white smile had the power to break up the traffic as well as the tension in the car. They started moving again, and she flipped on the radio and found a station dedicated to surf music from the 1960s. "Little Deuce Coupe" and "Surfer Girl." Nobody could be unhappy hearing those songs. They were the perfect antidote to any lingering down mood.
In a few minutes she caught him tapping out the beat on the steering wheel. He saw her looking at him and smiling about that. "What?" he asked.
As if she'd point out he was humming. "Just thinking about how well we'd share a package of cookies," she said, determined to keep things light. "I'd take all the crispy wafers - "
"Leaving me the sweet creamy centers," he finished, capping it off with a leering wiggle of his eyebrows. "You know how good I am with those."
She whacked him on the shoulder, pretending outrage when she was actually delighted by the teasing turn of the conversation. They were almost back at Beach House No. 9, and they'd managed to sidestep all the potential land mines left by their interlude between the sheets the night before.
The car tires crunched over the shells, and Jane unrolled her window to take in the scent of the cove, all warm summer day spiced with salt and balanced by the tang of the eucalyptus trees. A shaft of sunlight hit her straight in the eyes, and she closed them, breathing deep of the magic. In the distance the waves threw themselves onto the shore, no holding back.
He pulled into the driveway at the rear of the house. As they stepped from the car, Private came racing from Tess's place, where he'd had a sleepover with her kids. He ran to Griffin first, carrying a well-bitten Frisbee.