I Confessed to the Wrong Twin

The Rescue

SENA

The Delta house is loud before I even reach the front steps, bass thumping through the walls hard enough to feel in my sternum, string lights strung haphazardly along the porch railing throwing everything in a warm, unreliable glow. Priya's already texted three times demanding to know my ETA, and I've changed my outfit twice in the last hour before settling on dark jeans and a fitted black top I haven't worn since before everything happened back home, something that used to make me feel good in my own skin, before I learned to dress for invisibility instead.

I find her the moment I walk through the door, drink in hand, hair down in loose waves instead of her usual braid, grinning the second she spots me. "You came. I'm shocked. Genuinely shocked."

"Don't make it weird."

"I would never." She loops an arm through mine and pulls me deeper into the house, past a kitchen crowded with people I don't recognise, into a living room where half the furniture's been pushed against the walls to make room for bodies swaying loosely to whatever's playing. The air is warm and thick with the smell of alcohol and someone's too-strong cologne, and for a moment I let myself just stand in it, unremarkable, unbothered, one girl among many.

Priya introduces me to a cluster of her chem lab friends, and for the first time in weeks I let myself exist without an agenda. No notebook, no careful calculations about what to say and what to keep buried, just easy, forgettable small talk about professors and dining hall food that asks nothing real of me. Someone hands me a second drink I don't remember agreeing to. I laugh, actually laugh, at a story one of Priya's friends tells about a disastrous lab explosion, and it startles me, how normal it feels, how close to okay.

Kai finds me near the stairs an hour in, hair slightly damp like he came straight from somewhere, an easy grin already in place, a dark green shirt that fits a bit too nicely around his muscular frame. Once again, I find myself struggling to pull my eyes away from his biceps. Was I always this muscle obsessed?

"You made it."

"Priya's orders. I didn't have much say in it." I lie.

"Smart woman." He nods toward the kitchen. "You want a real drink, or are you committed to whatever that is?"

"This is a real drink."

"That's a crime against alcohol, actually, but I respect the confidence." He steals it out of my hand before I can protest, disappearing toward the kitchen with an easy, "Give me two minutes," that leaves me standing there fighting a smile I don't fully manage to suppress.

He comes back with something better, and for a while we fall into easy orbit around each other, drifting between conversations, trading commentary on the party under our breath the way we used to trade commentary on classmates back home, that old rhythm settling into place like it never left. He does an unflattering impression of his coach that has me laughing hard enough to draw looks from strangers, and I catch myself, mid-laugh, thinking that this, just this, ordinary and unguarded and easy, is the first time since I got here that I've felt like a whole person instead of a carefully managed project.

"You know," he says at one point, leaning against the stair railing beside me, close enough that I'm all too aware of the warmth coming off him, "I forgot how much I missed this. You, being annoying at me on purpose."

"I was never annoying. You were annoying."

"Objectively untrue, but I'll let you have it." His smile softens into something quieter, more sincere, and for a second the party noise around us seems to dim, narrowing down to just the two of us.

Whatever he's about to say next gets swallowed by a loud chorus of his name from across the room. Three of his teammates, red-faced and grinning, waving him over with the kind of urgency that only ever means something stupid and time-sensitive. "Whitmore! We need you, man, Deacon's about to lose a bet that requires your specific skill set."

Kai groans, dragging a hand down his face. "I have to go stop whatever that is before someone ends up in the ER."

"Go be a hero."

"Don't move," he says, pointing at me with mock seriousness, already being pulled backwards by an insistent hand on his shoulder. "I mean it. Two minutes."

I watch him get swallowed into the crowd, laughing at something one of his teammates says, and I let myself lean against the stair railing for a moment, still warm from the last hour, still smiling despite myself, in absolutely no hurry to go anywhere.

It's a text from Priya, blurry through several drinks; kitchen, need backup, this guy won't leave me alone, that pulls me off the railing sometime later, and I go without thinking twice, weaving back through the crowded living room toward the kitchen, the warmth of the evening still sitting pleasantly in my chest.

Priya's fine by the time I get there, already laughing off whatever it was with a group of girls, waving me off with a false alarm, I got it that leaves me standing alone at the kitchen counter for a moment, deciding whether to head back to find Kai or refill my cup first.

"You're new." The voice that calls out to me is unfamiliar and for some reason, it feels unpleasant.

I turn to find a guy leaning against the counter beside me, tall, broad through the shoulders, a lazy, appraising kind of smile that I don't love the shape of. He's got a red cup in one hand and an expression that suggests he's already decided how this conversation is going to go before I've said a word.

"Sort of," I say, keeping my tone light, already angling my body slightly away from his, the easy warmth of the last hour draining out of me fast.

"I'm Marcus." He doesn't take the hint. "You here with anyone?"

"Yeah, actually." I glance toward the living room, hoping to spot Kai, find nothing but a wall of unfamiliar faces.

"Cool, cool." He steps closer, close enough that I have to consciously not step back, close enough that the easy party noise around us suddenly feels very far away. "You've got a great smile, you know that?"

"Thanks." I answer blandly while wondering when during this conversation I smiled at him. I try to move past him, toward the doorway, toward literally anywhere else, and his hand closes around my wrist before I fully register he's moved at all.

"Where are you rushing off to?" His voice is still light, still performing casual, but his grip isn't, and something in my chest lurches hard and fast. Old and familiar and terrible, a door I've spent a year keeping shut wrenched open all at once.

"Let go," I say, and my voice comes out thinner than I mean it to.

"Come on, don't be like that." He leans in, and I catch the sour edge of alcohol on his breath, close enough now that his other hand finds my waist, and something in me goes electric and wrong, my whole body flooding with a panic that has nothing to do with this kitchen and everything to do with a classroom a year and a lifetime away. My head swims with memories I've fought so hard to keep buried, and I feel my breathing going more laboured with each second that passes.

"I said let go." My voice cracks entirely this time, and I wrench my arm hard enough that his grip slips, and I'm moving before I've fully decided to, shoving past him, past bodies, out through a side door into the cool dark of the backyard. My lungs suddenly refuse to take in air properly, my vision narrowing at the edges into something small and tunnelled and terrifying.

I don't make it far. My knees buckle somewhere near the porch steps, and I go down hard onto the grass, gasping, my chest locked tight around a breath that won't come, the party noise behind me warping into something distant and underwater, my hands pressed flat against the cold ground like it might anchor me to something.

"Hey. Hey, look at me."

A voice, close, low, steady.