wave of press had been insane ever since my return from Australia months before.
The case had stunned the nation.
One twin plotting the other twin’s demise?
It belonged in a bad soap opera. But it went deeper than Cain’s instinctive and soul deep hatred of me.
A part of me wondered if, like Thea had once told me, every gift came with a curse... I wondered if it counterbalanced the so-called Kinkade curse. Because she sure as hell counteracted the connection I should have had with my twin.
She was the only thing that made this bearable.
We were going to be seeing a lot more of courtrooms in the future too. While Thea, Freddie, and I had transferred to California so she could complete her degree in accounting—just the thought of her as an accountant always made me want to laugh because it just wasn’t her—we’d be flying back and forth across the country as soon as the team of defense lawyers we’d hired went to work on liberating Genevieve from her prison sentence.
I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but Thea was willing to blow millions to make it happen. I’d seen her bank statement in the aftermath of all the sponsorship deals she had going on—she could well afford it—and while, in this country, money sometimes spoke louder than justice, I wasn’t sure if it would in this case.
But we were going to try.
Just as we were going to have to avoid Genevieve’s doomsday premonitions when she found out who we were to one another.
She might think we were cursed, but I knew otherwise.
We were blessed.
Thea was my jílo, and I was hers.
The thought dragged me from the miserable moment, and I tugged at the ring I’d placed on Thea’s finger the day after we’d found Freddie in the family’s vacation home in Winthrop, where Cain, ever myopic, had gone to ground. Swiveling the ring around, I rubbed the emerald before I muttered, “I’m ready to go home.”
She nodded tiredly, giving me a wan smile before she tipped her head back and reached up to kiss me. A simple connection, yet somehow so complex. Even as it recharged my batteries, she whispered, “Me too.”
Because she knew what I meant.
She was my home, and I was beyond ready to be alone with her, away from prying eyes, away from cameras and reporters who wanted to know all the sordid details.
So, we’d go home, and we’d be away from those eyes and the flashes and the gossips, sticking together like glue, united against the world.
And that was how it would be, for as long as we both would live, because my curse was in jail, my blessing slept in the same bed as me, and unlike my brother, I was no fool.
I knew what I had, and I’d spend the rest of my life proving to her that, to me, there was no greater gift than having Theodosia Kinkade at my side.
Curses be damned.
THEA
Thirty-Five
“It’s creepy.”
His lips twitched. “It’s brilliant.”
I shivered as I stared up at the hyper real image on the wall that had arrived while I was at school and which he’d put up within hours. “I can’t believe you had it shipped over from the UK.”
“It’s an original Justin Weave painting. Not only that—it’s you. What did you want me to do? Leave it to the tenants to jack off over you?”
His scowl told me he thought that was a very real possibility.
Yeah, right.
I didn’t have self-esteem issues, but I knew what I was—scrawny but strong. Just because Adam looked at me and saw a pin up model didn’t mean the rest of the world did.
Plus this wasn’t even that great a shot. I’d just won a race and… I tilted my head to the side. Okay, so I looked excited. The adrenaline was still flushing my skin, and I looked exactly what I was—triumphant.
My nose crinkled as I carried on staring, seeing little lines either side of my eyes, tiny wrinkles of strain…. Yeah, way too hyperreal for my own good.
Adam slipped behind me, sliding his arms around my waist as he hauled me back into him. His solid strength lent itself to me as it often did, and the truth was, I felt grounded. Everything might be up in the air, I might be training my ass off for another competition, and I might, just might, not have studied for upcoming Finals, but somehow, everything felt fine when he held me.