Chapter Twenty Seven

"Morning," Lucy said sleepily, shuffling out of the bedroom and then stopping in her tracks as her eyes opened more fully.

Her cabin mate was already up and at 'em, fully dressed, fire stoked, and sipping a cup of coffee, looking like he'd been up for hours.

“Um, what time did you get up? Oh Dark Thirty?” she asked, running a hand through her bedhead with embarrassment. “Was I supposed to be up, like six hours ago or something?”

Sullivan laughed. “I’m an early riser. I’ve been up for a while, but I thought I’d let you sleep in. No worries.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d wake me if the Hike from Hell was due to start at sunup or something,” Lucy said with a small smile. “There’s coffee?” she asked hopefully, looking towards the kitchen.

Sullivan nodded, taking another sip from his own mug. “Mm hm. And then breakfast, and then we’ll hit the trail. Sound like a plan?”

“You bet,” she said, reversing trajectory and going back into the bedroom to dress – and to do something about her hair.

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting at the kitchen table as she devoured egg whites and wheat toast, orange juice and yogurt. “Yum,” she said with a grin. “You need to come over every morning and whip this up for me. I’m either too tired in the mornings, or nothing sounds good until halfway to lunch, and by then, I’m starving.”

He sat down across from her. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Didn’t you know that?” he asked in a mocking tone.

“Yeah, I seem to recall hearing something about that,” she said, sipping the juice. “But theory and practice are two different things.”

They finished their breakfast, dancing around each other in the small space to finish the dishes and put away the breakfast supplies, both careful not to touch each other, both unsure of the dance going on between them since the kiss of the night before.

Lucy so badly wanted to brush up against him, run a hand down his back, something, but she didn’t, instead going overboard on cheerfulness as they topped off their coffee mugs and retreated to the porch outside.

She settled down on a broken down sofa on the front porch, drinking in the caffeine and the scenery while her companion rested against the doorjamb comfortably. “This is nice,” she said, repeating her sentiment from the night before. “God, it’s so quiet. I mean, Monterey isn’t all horns honking or people screaming or anything, but this is… this is quiet.”

“But in a good way?” Sullivan asked, looking out into the trees, for some reason desperately wanting her approval of the place and the environs around it.

“Yes, in a good way. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually excited to get out and go walking, just so I can see more around here,” Lucy said, wiggling her toes in her running shoes.

“Me too,” Sullivan said softly, watching her out of the corner of her eye. She met his gaze and smiled back before dipping her head shyly. “Did you, um, did you sleep well?” he asked after a moment.

Lucy nodded eagerly. “Really well! That bed was really comfortable. How about you? Were you okay out in the family room? I feel bad about that.”

Sullivan nodded. “Sure, no big deal. I dropped right off.”

After tossing and turning and thinking about Lucy for the better part of an hour after lights out, he thought sardonically.

“So, what’s the plan?” Lucy asked, finishing her coffee and putting the mug on a nearby table with a clatter. “Do we have an established trail to follow or are we doing the Lewis and Clark thing through the wilderness? Should I bring my compass and some flares, or what?”

“A little of both,” Sullivan said with a grin. “Flares, huh? I like a girl who’s prepared.”

“But more importantly, should I bring gorp?” Lucy asked with mock seriousness.

“Gorp?” Sullivan laughed. “What the hell is gorp?”

“You know, trail mix. Nature food, but with chocolate,” she said with a laugh. “Even more important that flares.”

“No, no gorp. There’s the beginning of a trail behind the cabin, but it peters out after a while. From there, we’ll just see what way works and go that way – I think I can still remember the way to this amazing beach, if you are up for some elevation changes. Hopefully we won’t need to take a machete or anything to the surroundings just to get down there.”

“Yeah, machete wielding is definitely not a physical skill I picked up at the Sparkly Unicorn,” Lucy said with a teasing grin.

Sullivan cocked his head to the side in confusion at her odd sentence. “Huh?”

Lucy took a step back. “Huh what? We never covered machetes. Or did I miss a day?”

“Where?” Sullivan asked seriously, searching her face.

“The… the sparkly unicorn. The gym. You know,” Lucy said cajolingly, her eyes searching his.

Sullivan watched her a beat too long and then, she could tell, faked a response. “Sure, yeah. Of course!” he said, his voice a little too convivial.

She took another step back, until her back was pressed against the rough hewn logs of the cabin wall, assuming an almost defensive position. “What’s going on?”

Sullivan bit his lip, realizing that he had obviously made a mistake – he had missed something that Spencer obviously knew, or that was a joke between them.

Dammit.

He had been planning to tell Lucy the truth when they reached the beach – a few miles away by their proposed hiking time. It was calm and peaceful, and hopefully would diffuse any ager or confusion she might feel.

He could tell now, though, that he was going to have to move up the truth timetable considerably.

Sullivan put up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “Listen, Lucy, there’s something I need to tell you. I was going to tell you later, but…”

“What?” she asked, her voice laced with suspicion.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked, gesturing half heartedly at the furniture they had just vacated.

“No,” she said tersely. “I don’t. What’s going on? Are you… are you feeling okay? You don’t remember our joke? What’s wrong?”

“Lucy,” said gently, sitting down and looking up at her anxious face, not sure how to put it delicately. “I’m not who you think I am.”

Lucy crossed her arms defensively. “What?” she asked, her voice tiny.

“I mean, I’m me, I’m not an axe murderer or anything,” he said, with what he hoped was a convincing smile.

“Not helping,” Lucy said, her voice still small, but steely.

“Okay,” Sullivan said, taking a deep breath, then running the next words together in a rush in an effort to get it all out. “So, you’ve been working out with Spencer Jackson, who is a fantastic trainer, and you’ve been hanging out with me away from the gym – uh, not such a fantastic trainer.”

“Huh?”

Sullivan gave himself a mental head slap for that half assed explanation. “I’m a computer programmer and web designer. Spencer… Spence is my brother.”

Lucy squinted at him, noting dimly that they looked an awful lot alike.

“Spencer is my twin brother,” Sullivan amended. “He’s the trainer, I’m the programmer. He’s the outgoing one, and I’m the… well, not as outgoing one. I’m the one you’ve been to the market with, and the beach, and well, here. Spencer is…”

“Who are you?” Lucy breathed, her mind spinning with the news.

Sullivan stood, suddenly feeling a bit more formal, as though they were meeting for the first time. “I’m Sullivan. Sullivan Jackson. I’m Spencer’s twin brother.  Hi,” he said unnecessarily.

“You’re Sullivan. Spencer’s twin brother.”

“Yes.”

“And you and I have been hanging out, like at the market and stuff? That was you?”

“Yes.”

Lucy stared at him dumbly. “You and I hung out, even though we were total strangers. You went to these places, and we’d never met before.”

“Well, we hadn’t met that first time, but then after that, I knew you. And you knew me.”

“You. Spencer’s twin brother.”

“Right.”

“And at no point before this exactly minute did it occur to either of you to, I don’t know, TELL ME this information?” Lucy asked, feeling her anger begin to boil over.

And a fair bit of hurt.

And humiliation.

“We wanted to, but… well, it’s complicated. Anyway, I’m… I don’t know. I’m me, I guess. And I’m the one you’ve been hanging out with. I wanted you to know.”

“Ya think?”

Sullivan sighed. “Listen, we really didn’t want to hurt your feelings. We wanted to…”

“Are you kidding me?!”

“Lucy…”

“Are you kidding me?!”

“I want to explain…”

“No,” she said, stumbling backwards, nearly tripping over the small throw rug by the front door. “No, you don’t get to talk. You don’t get to try and explain. You don’t…”

Her eyes welled with tears as she wrenched open the front door and ran – actually ran – down the steps and into the woods, shoving limbs and leaves aside in her haste to be alone.

Away from the man calling her name in the distance, away from the man she thought she knew.

Because that wasn’t him.

At all.

Choking back a sob, Lucy accelerated, her footfalls absorbed by the dense forest surrounding her.

Run, she thought angrily, the tears forgotten and replaced with fury.

Just run.

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