Soulmates

By Jess C Scott

Follow THE WILDE TWINS in a twisted tale of love and loyalty. . .

SOULMATES (Wilde Twins, Book #3)

As young adults, Tania and Trevor attempt a fresh start in terms of paying their debts to society. When the siblings both find themselves in unfulfilling marriages, they become increasingly drawn to each other for comfort and solace. The profound evil from their past is back to haunt them with a chilling reminder: You can get away with this, again...

Can Tania and Trevor trust each other with fighting their inner demons, or will they embrace their dark side to the bittersweet end?

Soulmates is the third and final installment in the Wilde Twins series.

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WILDE TWINS Books:

Book 1 - Playmates
Book 2 - Bedmates
Book 3 - Soulmates

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Praise for Jess C Scott and her award-winning fiction:

-Reviewer Top Pick at Night Owl Reviews (2011)
-Readers' Favorite Five Star Award (2014)

"Simultaneously truthful and eerie."
-- Matt Posner, author of School of the Ages

"Through the voices of these damaged twins, Jess C Scott takes readers to a ride that is at once poignant and chilling. With this thriller trilogy you may find yourself on a roller-coaster you will not want to leave."
-- Marie-Jo Fortis, author of Chainsaw Jane

"Intense and magnetic. . .there is a symbiotic relationship between Trevor and Tania that is almost hypnotic, as each tells his or her side of the story. Warning: This work is not for the faint of heart."
-- Joe Perrone Jr., author of the Matt Davis Mystery Series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jess C Scott
• Release date: Apr 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310161452

Jess C Scott

Jess is a writer who's moved on to better things.She thanks her (loyal!) readers for appreciating her writing over the years.She continues to write lots of non-fiction these days. And yes, she still blogs in a range of different specialties.Jess was a participating author in the 2012 Singapore Writers Festival, and has been called “bold, daring, and always original” by The Arts House.

Book preview

PRAISE for SOULMATES

Simultaneously truthful and eerie.

— Matt Posner, author of School of the Ages

Through the voices of these damaged twins, Jess C Scott takes readers to a ride that is at once poignant and chilling. With this trilogy you may find yourself on a roller-coaster you will not want to leave.

— Marie-Jo Fortis, author of Chainsaw Jane

Intense and magnetic. . .there is a symbiotic relationship between Trevor and Tania that is almost hypnotic, as each tells his or her side of the story. Warning: This work is not for the faint of heart.

— Joe Perrone Jr., author of the Matt Davis Mystery Series

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SOULMATES (Wilde Twins, Book 3)

By Jess C Scott

Published by jessINK | Smashwords Edition

Text Copyright © 2014 by Jess C Scott

Cover Design by jessINK

Cover Image by Mike McDonald/Bigstock

Website: www.jessINK.com/wilde.htm

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

1. Fiction—Psychological

2. Fiction—Thrillers

3. Fiction—Crime

Summary: Can the Wilde twins trust each other with fighting their inner demons, or will they embrace their dark side to the bittersweet end? Book #3 in The Wilde Twins.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: 18-20 Years Old

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

PART 2: 21 Years Old

Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

PART 3: 21-22 Years Old

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27

PART 4: 23-24 Years Old

Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34

PART 5: 25 Years Old

Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42

SNEAK PEEK: SURVIVAL TRILOGY

JESS C SCOTT’S OTHER WORKS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Dedication:

To Billy and The Kids.

Because early childhood sets the stage for healthy adult relationships.

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The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.

~ Ethan Hawke

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PART 1: 18-20 Years Old

Chapter 1: Trevor

Happy 18th birthday, brother dear.

Tania’s happy face, warm with affection, gave me all the strength and confidence I needed as we took our first step towards adulthood.

We didn’t really have a spectacular plan to move forward after high school. We just wanted to be somewhere else where we could still be together.

I’m only taking essentials with us on the road, I said to Tania.

Yeah, me too.

Aunt Hilda was probably singing praises to God that we had moved out of her home. If she could remember any hymns, that is.

"Good luck, was all she said when she saw us packing our things into a few boxes and big plastic containers, into the Oldsmobile sitting in her driveway. Her tone was all venom and spite—nothing else—when she added, I’m writing both of you out of my will."

Something snapped in her after Uncle Bruno passed away.

It must be from all the years of repression, Tania explained her theory to me.

What repression?

That she couldn’t be as nasty as she really wanted to be with us. So now she has something to pin all the blame on us.

Maybe there was a grain of truth in that. Aunt Hilda vehemently clung on to her biased belief that we had brought about her husband’s untimely demise.

Do you think I really killed Bruno? Tania asked me a couple of weeks after the incident. I don’t know if I really did. Was it the shouting that stressed him out, or was it the mention about...

Well, I said. If you want another credit to your name...

I nearly suffered my own heart attack when I was outdoors the evening after Tim’s murder. Tania had crushed some sleeping pills into Hilda’s nighttime tea so we could bleach my bloodied clothes and let them soak in a bucket for a while.

We were standing in the garden beside the pail when there was a police siren—I thought they were coming for me.

They’re here. I turned towards Tania, clinging on to her like a pathetic, blubbering mess of hopeless desperation. They’ve come to get me!

Oh yes, I had seen the online news reports of Tim’s murder that morning. His body was found by a jogger at 7:00 AM. Actually it was the jogger’s pet dog who had found the body—the mottled greyhound tagged along with him for his daily morning exercise.

The thirty-five year old jogger’s comments were published in the papers. He sounded like a stuffy intellectual.

I think this is a desperately abysmal reflection on society, he was quoted as saying, that such serious violence like this happens. And for what reason? Maybe even just for the pure sake of it.

*You* don’t understand, I would have said to the intellectual if I had met him. This person defiled my twin sister!!

The article didn’t mention the postmortem.

There was another article printed that day about a gang fight murder in Miami. The victim had suffered a fractured eye socket, collapsed lung and a broken ribcage which detached from his chest.

I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to do Tim in that way. I was just one person.

But if the attack made me aware of one thing, it was this: that I was young, strong and agile. I could take on the world with that knowledge in action.

I loved being eighteen. To not feel like a helpless child but not really be an adult saddled with responsibilities in life yet was pure magic.

Stop worrying, Tania assured me in that gentle, soothing angel’s voice of hers. The police aren’t coming for you. They turned the corner.

It was only then that I realized she was still holding me, one hand lightly on my shoulder.

We stole a couple of grand from Aunt Hilda to get started on our journey. She was a bit of a hoarder and always had bunches of fifty and hundred dollar note bundles in one of her cupboard drawers.

I didn’t know she kept this much, Tania whispered as we ransacked the drawer.

We should’ve done this earlier.

Word, Tania quipped. Think of what we could have done with it...

That money was used to purchase a used Oldsmobile sedan. Tania and I didn’t need to travel in style (yet) since we couldn’t exactly afford it. But we did like having our privacy.

Hey, I whispered to Tania, when the car salesman walked off for a moment to try to milk someone else for their cash. Thinking what I’m thinking?

More murder and mayhem?

Sweet. I leaned in a little closer. Not just homeless guys—I’d just go for whoever’s available.

We’re not going to get very far if we’re reckless, Trev, Tania said immediately, temporarily disrupting my fantasy of killing more people. We’ve got to plan it out a little bit—space it out a little bit...

What else? I was happy leaving her to be the mastermind of our way ahead. Penny for your practical thoughts?

Maybe both of us should live normal lives. Tania was pensive and there was a jaded, grown-up weariness in her voice.

"Not too normal," I reassured her, holding her hand, but releasing it when the car salesman started making his way back to us.

People should be able to look at us on the street and not suspect us of anything.

That was always on our minds during the planning throughout the end of our final term at high school—quiet planning in the dead of night in my room, away from everyone else’s prying eyes.

College doesn’t sound like a bad idea, Tania said one night. Do you think you could go along with that for the next few years?

Sure.

We both didn’t struggle too much with academics, and if it worked as a great cover for the near future, why not?

Is there any place you’d like to go? Tania asked. I don’t really have a preference.

Anywhere where the weather’s good.

I guess we implicitly divided the workload between us—Tania would take care of the college applications and FAFSA financial aid blah-blah (I loathed the annoying paperwork), while I would be the one to drive us over there and look for accommodation.

The sky was perfect on the day we drove off from Punta Gorda—a brilliant shade of blue without a cloud in sight. We were driving off in a simple car but I was driving it like it was an Aston Martin fit for royalty.

Let’s make love, I said to my sister the first night. We had parked the car in one of the vacant lots at the end of a motel carpark. I was planning on just sleeping in the car for a few hours before continuing on the road—we’d save both time and money that way.

I could often give fake smiles to ordinary people out of social courtesy. But the smile I had when Tania leaned over to give me a kiss was the real thing—I think I only smiled that way with a girl or woman I really liked.

Tania and I were on the way to a whole new place and a whole new life. We were heading for the west coast now and leaving the past behind us, far away from the horrors of our childhood years, far away from the stifling conditions where we’d spent our teenage life.

The sense of unrestricted freedom we had earned tasted like infinity. The best thing about it was that she was with me.

In and out and through hell—she was with me. That was all that mattered.

Chapter 2: Tania

Something in me changed after Tim’s death.

But who else could I have turned to other than Trevor?

I drifted along with my brother’s whims, not because I wanted to, but because my spirit had gone dormant.

Even sex seemed like a going-through-the-motions thing for a while, or just another activity with which I could free-fall into oblivion.

At least I had Trevor as a tangible source of support. Even though what he did to Tim hurt big time.

It dug a hole in my heart bigger than the size of hell itself that I could never get justice for Tim, if I didn’t want any harm or trouble to befall my beloved brother.

In a haze of self-abnegation and ennui, I enrolled both of us at Romneya Community College in the picturesque city of Anaheim, California. UCLA was a bit too busy and popular and competitive for my liking. Trevor said he didn’t mind being wherever as long as the weather was good.

You’d think the sun would be enough to cheer up a person. But it did nothing to lift the weight of conscience.

Flo wasn’t on my conscience too much. Her existence had become a pollutant in our lives so we had to remove her from the picture. Elijah and Naomi were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Blue-eyed Billy too—it was pitiful for the family concerned, but it could have been any another four-year-old boy named Billy.

Dad, I didn’t bother with either. He never meant much to me after Trevor helped reveal the true colors of his blackened heart.

Uncle Bruno was also unfortunate and unlucky—we didn’t really mean to kill him.

But Tim? Whose only criminal offenses were squatting in abandoned or foreclosed homes, stealing because he needed to survive, and his occasional sartorial quirks? I could never get him back or undo the damage that was done there.

I always thought a person was more sensitive to the weather conditions if they grew up in a place with the four seasons. Trevor hated the seasons—he liked for it to be summertime all the time. I liked summer too but I didn’t hate the seasons as much as he did.

I liked watching the leaves change color...things frosting over and going icy cold...watching all that fade and melt away when the first warmth of spring permeated the vicinity. I guess it reminded me of many things: life and death, cold and warmth, routine and something more free-form.

It was all different sides of the same coin, wasn’t it?

I guess thinking of the seasons helped me come to some level of peace with the fact that my brother, whom I loved, was also the killer of my first real love.

I mean, Tim and I didn’t love each other because we were twins or siblings.

I don’t think my brother ever understood that.

When the news of Tim broke out in the Punta Gorda print media, I was still grieving and far from forgiving Trevor for what he had done. I would have kept some of the news clippings if I thought I could hide it from Trevor. But he’d know if I was doing something like that. He could always tell when I was hiding something from him, especially if it was something deep in my heart and psyche.

I didn’t even get to keep the portrait Tim had done of me.

You saw that portrait Tim drew, didn’t you? I asked Trevor a couple of days after Tim’s demise.

Uh-huh.

I knew from Trevor’s tone that the portrait was gone forever. I didn’t bother to ask when Trevor had snuck into my room to get rid of it. What was done was done, and there some things I couldn’t change even if I wanted to.

At least I had a digital photo of the portrait Tim did of and for me—I made sure to keep it in an ultra-secret folder on my thumb drive and phone so Trevor would never get the chance to delete that cherished memento. I made a back-up copy in my email’s draft folder and in another one of my spare email accounts, just in case.

What Trevor did made me question whether he had a soul. Like, I thought we were twin souls, with an innate understanding of each other’s most intimate wants, needs and fears. If he had known how much pain it would cause me, how could he have still done it to me?

Just before we left Punta Gorda, I came across the newspaper article I’d saved on a memorial service that was held for Tim.

Friends Pay Respects to Murdered Homeless Man, ran the headline.

Oh, how I wanted to drive a knife through my own chest as I re-read the article:

Friends Pay Respects to Murdered Homeless Man

Punta Gorda, FL.—Monday night, mourners paid their respects to a forty-five year old homeless man killed in mid-November.

A jogger found the body of Timothy J. Holt near the entrance of Marina Park in Southwest Florida. Since the murder, investigators have arrested a twenty-year old suspect who they believe may have had details about Holt’s murder. The suspect was later released according to Punta Gorda City Police Chief Desmond Forte. The suspect is not being named because police have not charged him with any crimes.

Punta Gorda Police said they are continuing to search for leads after the questioning of two persons of interest did not lead to any arrests.

Holt was stabbed multiple times on the night of November 15. Police said the murder marked the first homicide in this vicinity of Punta Gorda in nearly three years.

In Palm Drive on Monday, dozens of friends held a memorial service for Holt. A pastor shared Holt’s favorite Bible verses, friends exchanged their favorite memories, and everyone participated in a candlelight vigil.

Friends say Holt was a man with a huge heart who will be dearly missed.

"He wouldn’t hurt a fly, you know. He was very kind and loving, and he didn’t deserve this," said Holt’s high school friend, Amy.

"We’d see him around sometimes, standing on the street. He had a good singing voice. I felt a little bit of an emptiness when I heard about what happened, but I will see him again," said Holt’s street musician friend, Bob Goldfarb.

Holt was extremely prideful of his unique way of life, and his favorite band, Nirvana.

They couldn’t even get his age right. But I never knew his favorite Bible verses were from the book of Proverbs. Hell, I didn’t even know he read the holy book.

Perhaps the worst thing about the article was the kind, smiling photo of Tim. The photo was set in a standard black photo frame. I don’t think I cried harder than at that moment, when I realized I had helped put an end to a man who had shared his giving heart with me.

One of the reasons I settled on the city of Anaheim was because there was a Disneyland there. I thought they might have openings for us to get a part-time job so we could pay the bills. The pretty, escapist surroundings might be a good thing. And the locale could double up as a convenient place for impromptu things Trevor and I felt like getting ourselves involved in.

College dorms were out of the question because our close relations would certainly come under scrutiny by faculty members or other students living on campus.

We ended up renting a small studio apartment at Cherry Creek Apartments, which was within walking distance to Romneya Community College. I preferred going to a community college first because it meant we had to go somewhere else after two years. The more we moved around, the better—that was the logic I followed anyway, since it was something that seemed to have worked to our favor in the past.

To fit in a little better, I told myself that I was going to be a slightly popular kind of student. If not popular, then cool and street-smart, without being as anti-social as I was in high school. I didn’t want to be stand-offish anymore. Because I had nothing to hide—except for what I kept hidden with Trevor. We had our own secret little world to always fall back on and escape into.

I just rolled with it even though deep down inside I sometimes felt I was just floating and drifting around into the next phase of my life, not really knowing where I was going. Not that I needed to know. I was happy enough to have Trevor beside me.

Things were surely decadent. Trevor called them the best years of his life.

There’s enough material to write a whole book about it, Trevor said once about our first year college exploits. We could make a ton of money off it.

I thought he was just joking at first until he did the unthinkable.

I didn’t see it coming. I mean, sure, things got a little out of hand at times. Eventually I thought we were both having tons of fun and