Author's Notes:
WARNING: Far be it from me to dissuade potential readers, but this submission does exceed the ability of some to consume such a wordy, cerebral piece of literature. If you're looking for a detailed, boring description of all characters in the first three paragraphs followed almost immediately by sex, this will disappoint you. You may want to skip it entirely.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and locations are fictional or fictionalized and any that are similar to real persons, living or dead, places or circumstances are purely coincidental.
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Dillon Wendover smiled when he caught sight of his son stepping off the bus. The fact that his daughter didn't follow immediately didn't worry Dillon at all. The twins were close, but not close enough to spend a field trip joined at the hips.
Cage scanned the parking lot and waved when he spotted Dillon in the car, then started toward him just as his sister, Kota, stepped off the bus.
Field trips for upperclassmen may be unusual these days, but the private school they attended usually followed its own path to a good education.
Dillon could see his son grin as he reached for the front passenger door, and Kota stiffened and came to a halt a few steps behind him.
"Just opening the door for an older lady," Cage chuckled back at his sister.
As the older sibling, Kota insisted the front seat belonged to her. It was her birthright.
Cage had given up years ago on the argument that seven minutes didn't grant anyone a birthright.
Kota faked a smile and fake scratched the bridge of her nose with her middle finger before she got in the front seat. She ignored the hand her brother proffered to assist her.
"How was the museum?" Dillon asked once he got them out of the parking lot and on their way home.
"Fine," his children mumbled in unison without looking up from their phones.
Dillon shook his head and grinned.
With normal children, if he could even call them children anymore since they had already turned eighteen, he would have insisted they put their phones down and engage with him, or each other at the very least, but his weren't normal children.
If he even muttered the word
valedictorian
they would immediately glare at each other.
Neither one of them had any desire to share
that
honor with the other, but as graduation day drew closer it looked more certain they would.
"How're you and Dean these days, Kota?" Cage goaded his sister without looking up from his phone.
"Friends," she mumbled a nearly silent reply.
"Hmm, friends?"
"Friends," Kota emphasized.
Dillon had heard that boy's name before, on more than one occasion, and always regarding his daughter's acquaintance with him.
He had even overheard the twins discussing Dean in the context of Cage warning his sister that if she ever tried to sneak Dean into her room he'd rat her out, but that may have been in jest. Neither of his children had ever been a tattletail. On the surface, people would label them as competitive, but in truth, he couldn't imagine two people with a stronger emotional bond.
Kota had simply rolled her eyes and made a face of disgust at her brother in response.
The fact that Kota never talked about Dean outside of Cage bringing him up and her facial expressions when he did, were the only things that gave Dillon any confidence that wasn't a situation he needed to worry too much about.
####
"Hey! Do you mind?" Cage growled at Kota.
"I don't mind. Don't let me interrupt you," his sister giggled from the doorway of Cage's bedroom.
Cage rebuckled his belt and zipped his pants..
"Knocking is nice."
"I don't expect you to knock on my door when it's open."
Kota looked amused as she leaned her shoulder against his door frame with her ankles crossed, and grinned.
"The door was closed," Cage huffed a little, and raised his eyebrows in a question.
"Then why did it open when I pushed it without using the knob?"
"Unlatched isn't the same as open, Kota."
"Whatever," she shrugged. "It's not like I haven't seen you naked before. Why do you always insinuate I have some kind of romance going on with Dean? You know I don't like him, not like that, and not like any way."
Cage watched his sister's eyes drift down across his chest, pause ever so briefly at his waist, then focus on his loafers.
"It's been fifteen years since we've seen each other naked, and that wasn't our choice. Dad made us take baths together under the pretense it saved money. I think it was just easier for him."
"Fourteen. We took baths together until we were four," Kota corrected her brother.
Kota's eyes appeared to be focused on Cage's shoes still, so he took the opportunity to get a look at her, starting with her penny loafers that matched his, along her long, slender calves covered in white, knee-high socks, her pleated black skirt that almost revealed the bottom of her knees, and up her torso surrounded by her loose, black, uniform jacket over a white oxford shirt to her dirty-blond, straight hair, cut just above her shoulders.
Cage had seen old pictures of their mother, and knew that he and his sister got their looks from her. She had straight, dirty-blond hair, green eyes, and a tall, thin build, just like her twin children. She was almost as tall as their dad in her bare feet, just like Kota. Their dad was, and still is, a muscular man with wavy, dark brown hair and brown eyes.
"Can you just stop making Dad think I have even a little bit of interest in Dean? It's getting annoying."
"I know he doesn't get you all hot and bothered, but you talk to him, and that makes him think you like him."
"His social skills are worse than yours, Cage, and he's only the third smartest person in our class."
"Yeah, but you don't really need to worry about him taking away your salutatorian honors."
"In your dreams. You need to be the one worried about losing that to him. Anyway, Dean's coming over tomorrow. We got assigned that biology project together, and we need to work on it together, unfortunately."
"So you and Dean will be doing some biology? A guy like him, you probably need to worry about his biologicals coming out prematurely and making a mess in his pants."
"That's disgusting, Cage. We're gonna be at the kitchen table and we won't be getting anywhere near each other's biology. Can you just lay off the talk about me and Dean? I would really like Dad to think I have
some
standards."
"Okay, I'll figure out somebody else, probably a football player with broad shoulders and a big dick, to hassle you about."
"You act like that's somehow worse than the big tits and butts on the bleach-blond cheerleaders you drool over."
"Yeah, cheerleaders are hot."
"So are football players," Kota giggled. "You can go back to whatever you were doing now if you're done with me."
"You barged into
