This one, though . . . He stood there, staring at the list he’d written weeks ago.

Start living again.

Shifting his gaze to the ring he wore, he thought about the whispered conversation—if it could be called that—he’d had with Aliesha in the few minutes before they’d wheeled her off to surgery.

Aliesha had known.

His mom had called Aliesha an old soul. She’d been grounded and solid and so serene. Gentle, even. He’d fallen in love with that gentleness and her kindness and her humor.

And she’d lain on the table, gripping his hand and looked at him with knowledge in her eyes. She’d known. She’d been born with a genetic heart defect and maybe that had given her a somewhat fatalistic outlook on life.

She’d been sick often as a child but she’d gotten stronger, healthier as she grew. Both her cardiologist and her OB/GYN hadn’t seen any reason why she couldn’t have a safe pregnancy, as long as she was careful.

Too bad the fucking drunk driver hadn’t been careful.

As they were wheeling her into surgery, she’d looked at him with pain-bright, but clear eyes, her hand clinging to his.

Don’t stop living.

Hadn’t he, though?

That ring that he wore as a shield—he could psychoanalyze it to pieces. Those psychology courses he’d taken in college came up damn handy at times. If he flipped this all around and looked at it dispassionately, he knew it all made sense.

There were times he couldn’t even stand to have a woman touch him. Not in any way that resembled intimacy. Aliesha’s death, her funeral—the very loss of her, and then those dark, lost hours the night of the funeral, they were tangled up in a miasma of guilt he couldn’t get free of.

He still didn’t have those hours back. Whatever shit had been given him, it had been damn effective at turning his mind into a blank slate. He had the vaguest echoes of memory, but that was it.

The only bits and pieces he could call up from that night were the memory of whiskey—as evidenced by the fact that the smell of it still turned his stomach—and the echo of a woman laughing, and then shouts, followed by fury and pain. The fury and pain made sense, in a way. He’d ended up battered and bruised, so he’d sure as hell ended up in a fight with somebody.

And that was probably the last time he’d really let himself feel anything that didn’t involve his son or his family. He’d shut himself down, locked himself up.

He’d done exactly what Aliesha had asked him not to do.

He’d stopped living.

Slowly, he tugged the ring off. It would come off for good this time, too. Something that might have been panic swam up, trying to grab him and pull him back down. He’d fought it before, fought the edges of panic even as he fought the depression that had eventually driven him into a shrink’s office.

If it hadn’t been for Clayton, he wouldn’t have gone.

If he hadn’t gone, he never would have realized just how utterly fucked up he was.

And because he knew how utterly fucked up he was, he made himself close his fist around that ring, made himself put it down.

The phone’s harsh ringtone shattered the silence.

Trey jerked, sweat beading on the back of his neck, his upper lip, slicking the palms of his hands. His phone sat on the bureau, and the picture of his twin, his nose pressed to Clayton’s, both of them mock snarling, lit up the screen.

He grabbed the phone like a drowning man. “Yeah.”

There was a faint pause.

“You’re a fucking mess, Trey,” Travis said, his voice rough, heavy with sleep.

“Suck my dick,” he said, all but collapsing on the edge of the bed.

Somehow Travis had picked up on the chaos Trey was feeling, and it had been enough to wake his twin up. Trey didn’t bother feeling guilty. They’d been like this all their lives and more than once, he’d been the one to call his brother—or at least try—knowing something was up.

“Shit, man. If you’re this worked up that I can’t sleep, you might as well talk,” Travis said, his voice a little clearer. “’Sup?”

“Nothing. Everything.” He stared at his ring, because this was the one thing he couldn’t, wouldn’t share. “Look, my head, it’s just . . .”

“I already told you that you’re a mess. I got that part. Now tell me what’s going on.”

Abruptly, like everything had morphed into a boulder teetering on the edge of a cliff, Trey could feel himself on the verge of giving in. Letting it all out, like a poison.

“Shit. I am a mess. You remember that . . .” He stopped in mid-sentence, uncertain where to even go from here. I saw her again. Ressa. I want her. Except I can’t. And I mean I really, really can’t—

Travis’s sigh carried across the line and then his twin said, “Are you dreaming about Aliesha again? About the wreck? Trey, you know there was nothing you could have done.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he sat there for a moment. “No,” he said, forcing the word out through gritted teeth. Then he opened his eyes, stood, and started to pace. “It wasn’t the wreck. It wasn’t her. It’s . . .”

“Is it that night? Call the shrink.” Travis paused, the words reluctant. He knew how much Trey hated to talk about this. “I know I’m not the—”

“I still wear my ring,” Trey said, cutting in. He stared down at the bit of gold on his hand. “Not all the time, but when I’m out at a thing like this, or if I go to church with Aliesha’s parents . . . if I head back to San Francisco. I wear it. Last night, I saw . . .”

*   *   *

Recognizing the ache that echoed inside him, Travis closed his eyes. Not all twins had that weird connection. Life might be easier if he and Trey didn’t have it, but he wouldn’t cut this out of him even if he had the choice. But he didn’t want his brother feeling the rush of relief that punched through him.

“A woman.”

Trey’s laugh was dry, strained. “You could say that.”

Something about that pricked at Travis—especially combined with a weird edge of panic. It was familiar, something he’d felt too often.

“It was Ressa. The librarian. Remember her?”

For a minute, Travis’s mind went blank. And then, as a smile came over his face, he had to fight the urge to pump the air, or something else equally goofy.

Still, there was a reluctance, a heavy feeling of guilty.

Softly, Travis said, “Yeah. I remember her. Trey, this isn’t a bad thing, right?”

“Fuck.” A world of frustration came out in that harsh, decisive grunt. “The hell if I know. I just . . . I could . . .”

“You could what?”

A taut silence hung between and Travis held his breath, thinking maybe, maybe, whatever poison Trey was hiding would finally spill out of him.

But then Trey just said, “Nothing, man. I can’t do this now.”

Those words, softly spoken, made him close his eyes.

‘Trey, look—”

“I can’t. Look, I gotta go. There’s a panel, and I . . . I think she thinks I’m still married. The ring.”

“Then take it off, damn it.” Travis paused then, as he felt something twist, almost savagely inside him. And it didn’t come from him. “Trey?”

“It’s not that easy.” Then the phone went dead.

*   *   *

Trey disconnected and put the phone on vibrate before he tucked it into his pocket. He already knew what Travis was going to ask anyway and it wasn’t anything he could answer just then.

Why isn’t it that easy? What’s stopping you?

It should be that easy. Nothing stopped him.

Yet something vital did.

He hadn’t had sex in so long, he might well have forgotten what it was. There had been exactly three chances in the past six years—three dates, each with a different woman and each time had resulted in spectacular failures.

The first one had just been a series of stops and starts and when Cassie had looked at him expectantly at the end, obviously waiting for a kiss, he’d just nodded at her so she had tried to kiss him and he’d backed away so fast, he’d ended up tripping over the planter she had on her porch.