Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

It didn’t work.

Eventually she talked herself into making breakfast, though she wasn’t hungry. Then she talked herself into showering and dressing to go hiking, though hiking didn’t appeal, either.

Around eleven, she finished blow-drying her hair and padded to Dylan’s bedroom door. “You awake?”

He answered with a grunt.

“Blueberry muffins are on the counter,” she told him. “But if your tastes tend more toward the savory on this fine morning, we also have enough chicken noodle soup to soothe a thousand head colds.”

“I’ll eat the muffins.”

“Okay. Fair warning—we’re out of orange juice.”

As she was crossing the living room, her peripheral vision registered movement through her front window. She glanced toward it just in time to see Sebastian come to a solemn stop on her walkway.

Their eyes met and a crescendo of need, love, caution, joy, and pain exploded inside. Why had he come? To make amends? To say good-bye?

She loved him. However, her elation warred with practicality. Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself. You are a woman of logic and reason. Stay logical. Stay reasonable.

She pulled on a pink athletic jacket, stepped outside, and gestured for Sebastian to follow her. They came to a stop on the patch of driveway in front of the closed mouth of the garage. This position would give them at least partial privacy from Dylan, should he rouse himself from his room.

Sebastian wore a severe black wool coat over an untucked white business shirt and dark jeans. The hue of the coat matched the hue of his hair. His bruise had turned purple.

Behind him, the sky widened, hazy and pewter. The ice-tipped breeze paled his unsmiling face. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Obviously, the observant doctor could tell that she was off her game. “Physically, I’m fine. My bruise was less severe than yours, because it’s almost gone. Emotionally, though, I’m as unhappy as I’ve ever been. I’ve hardly slept the last two nights.”

“Why?”

“The state of our relationship. But also because I discovered the identity of Bonnie O’Reilly.”

“And?”

“She’s my friend Tess. They’re . . . one and the same.”

“What?”

She described how she’d come to realize Bonnie was Tess. “A woman I’ve trusted for years switched me at birth. She took Jonathan Brookside’s baby—me—and gave me to Erica and Todd Montgomery. Which was a terrible thing to do. Yet, she did it for reasons I can somewhat understand. In summation, I don’t know what to think—”

“Leah.” Sebastian nodded toward the corner of the garage.

She swung in the direction he’d indicated and saw Dylan standing there.

Dylan. Had heard her.

Undiluted horror washed through her.

Dylan’s face leached white. His car keys dangled from his hand. “I was going to get orange juice.”

Because he threw his stuff down in the mudroom, he always exited through the back door and walked around the garage to his parking spot on the street. She’d been so fixated on Sebastian that she hadn’t heard him.

“You were switched at birth?” Dylan asked.

No. She didn’t want him to know! Until now, she’d been so careful to shield him.

“Dylan,” she began. Her voice sounded unnatural, rattled. “Let’s go inside and talk about this—”

“Were you switched at birth?” he asked, angry now.

She pursed her lips and sought for an escape route that would enable her to give anything other than a direct answer. “Let’s go inside.”

“I don’t want to go inside!” He gestured sharply. The keys made a jangling sound. “It’s a simple question.”

“Watch it,” Sebastian warned Dylan in a low tone.

“Were . . . you . . . switched . . . at . . . birth?” Dylan asked her, as if she were hard of hearing.

She looked at him pleadingly. “Yes.”

“I’m not your brother?”

“You most definitely are my broth—”

“But I’m not, by blood?”

“There are more important things than blood—”

With a guttural sound of frustration, he stormed down the driveway toward his truck.

“Come back!” she ordered.

He didn’t slow.

“Dylan,” Sebastian called.

He didn’t slow.

She jogged downhill, but her brother was pulling away when she reached the road. He peeled out and sped away.

Anguish slid down the back of her legs, weakening them. “Slow down!” He was upset and driving much too fast. “Slow down!” she yelled.

His truck disappeared around the bend.

“Dylan!” she couldn’t stop herself from screaming, even though she knew he couldn’t hear.

His engine growled. A horn blared. Brakes screeched. Then she heard the sickening noise of crunching metal.

Quiet.

She opened her mouth, but no voice or breath emerged. To the bottom of her soul there was nothing, nothing but immobilizing fear.

Sebastian was beside her, hurrying her to his car. She was in the passenger seat. He was driving them around the curve. Dylan’s blue truck had rammed into a tree. Another car, a sedan, had pulled onto the opposite side of the road.

Leah was out of Sebastian’s Mercedes before it had come to a stop and running the way she always did in her anxiety dreams many times before. Leaden legs. Too slow.

The grandfatherly driver of the sedan was also rushing toward Dylan, but Leah dashed past the older man and got there first. Dylan’s window was down.

He looked fine. No blood. Unharmed.

Relief hit her like a visceral thing.

But then Dylan, who was leaning back against his headrest, rolled his face toward her, and she saw panic in his dark eyes. He made a high-pitched rasping sound that told her he was fighting to get air. “Can’t . . . breathe.” The words were barely audible.

She tried to jerk open his door, but the impact had warped it. “Sebastian!”

“I’m here.”

“He can’t breathe.”

Sebastian leaned inside the truck. “Can you move your hands and feet?”

Dylan gave a desperate nod.

Sebastian reached in, hooked his arms around Dylan’s upper body, and pulled him through the opening. Leah caught his legs. They lay Dylan on a flat stretch of earth and dropped to their knees beside him.

“Leah,” Dylan wheezed, looking at her the way he had when he was little and scared.

“It’s okay,” she told him, though she was dying inside. She wrapped her hand around his. “You’re going to be fine.”

Sebastian rested his ear on Dylan’s chest. Then, gently, he probed Dylan’s throat.