Prologue

PROLOGUE

Autumn

Eight Months Ago . . .

"Please, please don't do this," I cry, pleading for my sister's life.

"Shut up," Rick, my sister's stupid ex, shouts.

Tears stream down my face as I do everything I can to get my sister, but I'm unable to do so. Rick ensured it by locking me out of the house. He came in and threw me out, locking the storm door so I couldn't get back in. All I could do was shout and scream for him to open the door.

I knew he wasn't going to do it, though. He's not just stupid. He's a total psycho who should've been locked away years ago.

Avery learned the hard way when it came to him. My sister thought differently of him for a long time. He never showed his true colors. Not until he had her where he wanted her. Secluded away from everyone else.

Everyone but me.

She's my twin sister, and I would never allow her to seclude herself from me. I fought for this and even got in Rick's face about it, which is something I would never do under normal circumstances.

"Rick, you can't do this." I bang on the door once again, flat palm, and jerk at the handle.

"She's fuckin' mine, and you took her from me." Rick whirls around, waving the gun in my direction with one hand, holding my sister to him by her neck in the other. "I'm not going to let you or anyone else take her from me."

Avery's eyes meet mine, and I see the knowing fear in hers. She knows what he's going to do. I know what he's going to do. He's going to kill her like he's threatened to do more times than I can remember.

"Rick, we can talk about this," I try once again to get him to calm down. "Just put the gun down, and we can talk about this. You know you don't want to hurt her. If you love her, you won't kill her."

"The hell I won't." Rick turns the gun back to my sister's head. "She's mine. If I kill her, no one can take her from me again."

In the next second, Rick pulls the trigger. To my horror, I watch him take my sister's life. Her body slumped, half her face blown away.

Rick drops her body, and she falls to the floor with a heavy thump.

With wide eyes, I lift my gaze to stare at Rick, who lifts his gun under his chin, eyes on me. A smile played on his lips. "Now, you can't take her away from me again." Pulling the trigger, he takes his own life.

My breath seizes in my lungs, and I struggle to breathe. To feel anything. My sister meant the world to me. She was the other half of who I was. Who I am.

Several years ago, we'd left home, taking the money our parents gave us, and we decided to pick places off the map to start up a business. She wanted to open a café. So, we did. It was my sister's dream to start up a café, a coffee shop-style place. Together, we worked to make it happen.

Our folks wanted to do what they could and gave us the start-up money, so neither of us had to get a loan from the bank. They weren't rich by any means, but our grandparents, Dad's parents, left an inheritance. Mom and Dad didn't want the money. They told Avery and me we could have it to pay for college, though they'd been saving for that too. But college wasn't for either of us. Sure, we took some accounting courses as part of the deal with our parents.

When we finished, Dad handed us both a check. He told us to follow our dreams, and we did.

We started Falls Café in Stonewall Mills and Avery's Café in Franklin. They're hours apart. I stayed to handle Falls Café for a while until business was good and a manager was in place. Then, I moved to Franklin to be with my sister.

She'd been with Rick for about two months when I moved in with her. He wasn't too happy about that and didn't hide his displeasure. She shrugged it off, but I didn't, I watched him.

A few times, I caught him being a bit rough.

It took a while for Avery to see what I saw. When she did, the break-up was ugly, but he finally stopped. Or we thought he stopped.

I should have known he wasn't done.

I shouldn't have taken the day trip to check in on Falls Café. I suggested to Avery that she come with me, but she didn't want to close her café.

This was fine, or I thought it was.

Business was good. We had customers coming in. The girls from the salon next to us were always coming for coffee. They found out we offered catering, and I swear they nearly lost their minds.

I'd been out of town for one event, and the next one was a wedding. A biker wedding at that. Avery had been busy, so she hadn't been able to come with me.

A few of the women there, I learned, were ol' ladies to the bikers, and they'd mistaken me for Avery. I hadn't corrected them at the time. Mostly because I found myself transfixed by a guy who didn't even know I existed.

Tall, dark-haired, with a maintained beard that wasn't overly long, nor was it trimmed too barely there. He had tattoos on both arms. But it was the eyes that really did it for me. They were this dark blue, the likes I hadn't seen before. So beautiful, enthralling, and mesmerizing. One look at him, and he'd taken my breath away.

The only problem was he didn't know I even existed. I'd seen him, but he hadn't seen me.

A couple months after the wedding, Avery and I were in the café together when several of the women who had been at the wedding, including the women next door, came in. They took one look at us and gave a surprised gasp. Usually, one of us was in the back and the other was in the front. Most of the time, it was her out front while I handled the paperwork.

"How had we never realized you were twins?" Emerson, the owner of the salon next door, asks.

Avery laughed and looked at me. "We're identical twins."

"Our own parents struggle to tell us apart even now."

"You're like a clone of each other," Kenny, the woman we'd catered a wedding for, states.

We all laughed and joked about it.

I suck in a breath and then another. Sirens could be heard coming from the distance. One of the neighbors must have called the police when they heard the gun going off. Or they called when they heard me shouting at the top of my lungs.

Turning away from the sight in the house, I stumbled to the steps and slowly took a seat to wait for the police. There were going to be questions to answer. I was going to need to call our parents and tell them what happened. This was going to break them. I just knew it.

One thing at a time.

One moment forward.

Everything in me hurts right now. Losing Avery and watching Rick take her life, it feels like it killed something inside me.