Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,92

their feet. I didn’t have to protect them anymore. And I didn’t need to protect myself so sternly either.

I cleared my throat and looked at the ceiling. The words came out hoarse at first, like I needed practice speaking them, but they flowed soon enough.

“Matt is also very stubborn. Almost as bad as me. I met him in a group home when we were fourteen. Him and Sean, of course, but I didn’t know that at first.” The wall rose up inside me again, and I pushed my way through it. “I had no idea they were twins, I thought it was just Matt I was seeing everywhere.”

Seb propped himself up on an elbow and widened his eyes. “What? That’s insane.”

I laughed and poked his shoulder. “Hey, I was a kid! And there were so many kids in that home, it was impossible to keep track of anyone anyway. The first few days I was there, Sean was sick and mostly in bed. But I didn’t know that. I’d just see Matt in the living area, and then the next thing I knew, he’d be in the kitchen in his pajamas looking like death.”

Seb snorted and rolled his eyes, but then he nudged closer, wrapped up in the story. I popped my head up on my hand and smiled at him.

“The day after Sean got better and was up and about, I still had no idea. They hardly spoke, so it’s not like I was learning facts about either of them that the other would contradict. I played ball with Matt, I mean, I think it was Matt…then came inside, and he was already showered.” It took effort to get the words out, but he listened, wanted to know. It made the story easier to tell. “I thought he had some secret passageways or shortcuts through the house, but when I asked him about it, he looked at me like I was crazy. I’m pretty sure it was Sean. He still gives me that look.”

“Like the one I’m giving you right now?” His face went completely blank, his lips a straight line, and his eyes piercing but giving nothing away. It was an uncanny likeness, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Very similar.”

Seb’s face lit up again and he ran his hand over my shoulder. I loved his gentle touch. The skin of his hands was so soft. “So how did you find out they were twins?”

I grinned as the memory came to me. One of the better ones from my foster years. “Snuck outside in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep, and they were under the porch, smoking. Jesus, I almost had a heart attack. Thought I was in some spooky horror film.”

Seb smiled up toward the ceiling. “I can see the cheesy ‘80s cover now.”

I nudged him and growled in mock offense. “Nineties, thank you very much.”

He winked and planted a kiss on my cheek before settling back into his position. “What’d they do when you caught them smoking?”

“Of course, they didn’t even blink. They were just like, ‘Hey, you want a smoke?’ And the rest is history—”

“Uh, no, it’s not.” He shifted and stared at me seriously. And I was happy to accept all the help I could get. “How did you go from, ‘Hey, you want a smoke?’” He put on a ridiculous low voice to impersonate the twins—“to ‘Hey let’s build the Vanguard Tower’?”

I smiled at him, amazed at how easily he could leap over my blocks with his sweet humor. He made me feel safe. But my voice still quivered when I recalled how serious things got after I’d first met the twins. “Okay, good question. We made the plan that night. Or started to, at least. The two of them had been through a lot in the system. Ended up in some real shitty homes because at that point they’d refused to be separated. There weren’t that many places that took pairs of siblings. And that limited them to really…dangerous homes.”

He nodded and put a hand on my chest.

I pushed on, determined to open up to him, to let him in. “We made a pact to move in together one day, to create a house where we could live, just the three of us. Then we got moved, separated into different homes. But we found ourselves in the same places again and again. Formed a bond, and decided we’d be real brothers. We wanted to take it deeper. We were the