Breathe: Clarissa's Story: Person Twins Duet, #1

By Kelsey Elise Sparrow

Clarissa Pierson. Twin. The older one. Sister to several siblings. Friend. Wife.

With one word, my life was no longer my own. Four letters and my sense of self is decimated, all but forgotten. The woman reflected in the mirror is no longer recognizable. I'm sad for her. Yes, that woman is me but I question if it should be.

Questions are all I'm left with as I try and fell to gain something from nothing. It's gone. The love, if there ever was any, laughter, joy or happiness have all been devoured. Snatched away as quickly as an inhale.

My life. My chosen path. My sad, little non-existant future. This is my story. A story that breathes a breath of renewal with one choice.

Me.

I. Choose. Me.

~Happiness can be found. Even if it's the second time around. ~

• Language: English
• Publisher: KES Imaginings, LLC
• Release date: Dec 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215668757

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Kelsey Elise Sparrow

Copyright © 2022 by Kelsey Elise Sparrow

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

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

For information contact :

[e-mail]

https://kelseyelisesparrow.com/

Book by KES Imaginings, LLC

Cover design by: K. Jones

First Edition: Dececember 2022

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Kelsey Elise Sparrow Imaginings.png KES Imaginings, LLC

To my biggest supporter, my Dewdrop. Also, thanks so much to Marie Skye for being the author friend that I’ve always wanted.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/o6dwP5LpoRRa-niLEIRjfHqXFEh2DxU3EFqYWtBdJdy9CmVFLsimeU57qvin68GZ64t_gfkm1ZUnxAa09d3OBxQqQzk9lHB1DPa7Leef8EPyVCUqf_IwGKOZxGIbKrANwCunHQWlgXgiKOBO

Laugh

As much as you breathe

And

Love

As long as you

Live

~ Author unknown

The Links:

Website: http://kelseyelisesparrow.com

Facebook & Twitter: @kelseyesparrow

TikTok & all other social media: @kelseyelisesparrow

Also by Kelsey Elise Sparrow:

The Norton Sisters (complete)

Rayna’s Peace, Zoie’s Purpose, Nyema’s Chance, Chyra’s Truth, Lynnia’s Choice, Wynter’s Tale, Happy Holidays or Not

Stephanie Daniels Duet:

An Author’s Tale, An Author’s Conclusion – TBA

Boardan High

Singling Out Sable, Justice for Jenna, Mean Girls – TBA

Whiskey Sweet Novels

Whiskey’s One True Wish (Intro), A Whiskey Sweet Promise, A Whiskey Sweet Treat, A Whiskey Sweet Revelation - TBA

Inked to the Max

Kentucky Running, Paper Lipstick (Intro), Maximum Velocity

Brighton Royals novels

His Coveted (intro), Pretty Petty Princess – TBA

Mafia Romance

Triple Check, Peace of Italy – Coming soon

Properties of Magic

A Witchling’s Wicked Game (Intro), A Witch’s Last Hope (Prologue) - TBA

Once Upon a Crime

The Red I See – TBA

Anthology

Naughty Knights

KB World – Driven World

Plunge

Pierson Twins Duet

Breathe, Exhale - TBA

IPBS novels:

Dark Lesson, Simone

~Happiness can be found. Even if it's the second time around. ~

Catch your breath as Clarissa learns to control hers. It’s the first thing she should learn to control, then maybe she’ll get a handle on everything else.

Life is funny. It sure has a funny way of showing an individual what type of person they truly are. Hmm, life shows a person all the signs of their weaknesses and sometimes throws them up in their face while beating them down.

In my case, it wasn’t so much ... life. It was the guy in my world. It was the man that I’d chosen to give my body and heart to. At one time, I believed he was absolutely perfect and practically walked on water. I won’t dwell on that now. I’ll come back to it later. I want to share how I got to the point of fighting for every breath before learning how to breathe.

I’m Clarissa Pierson. I’m twenty-four years old, the good twin and this is my story.

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Introduction

He’s ... oh my ... no ... no ... NO! No, no, no, no. He ... he can’t be. You ... you ... wo ... you wouldn’t."

Tears flood my eyes. Gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, breath strangling sobs are torn from my body as I take in this man’s truth. He is a monster. How could I not have seen this before? Maybe I choose to ignore it because of some subconscious thought pattern that I have to make things work with this man because he is my husband?

Be. Lieve. It. Bitch.

It isn’t the first time I’ve heard the word slip from his lips. It isn’t the first time he’s called me a name I hadn’t been gifted by my parents. It is the first time I’ve seen that much hostility accompany it. I think that scares me more than any words he could ever speak to me.

Suddenly, I fear for my life. Before that moment, I thought I should prepare for a fight. With the look that he’s giving me, my world shifts and my fight instincts kick in. This is one battle I have no choice but to win.

Is this truly what has come of my life and this thing we call a marriage?

In the next moment, his hands are wrapped around my throat and that question is no longer my only concern.

* * *

I am a twin. My life has been a walking, living, breathing duet for as long as I’ve been aware of my existence. There is a duality within it that has nothing to do with the woman I share my genes with. I have had a mirror image of myself sharing my space and my journey with me on a daily basis for most of my life. We are the picture perfect, prime examples of dual natures. For every positive quality that I embody, my sister, Alyssa, is the equal and total opposite.

Don’t mistake my description for me putting my sister down. Beneath it all, there is an amazingly caring woman, but she would sooner knock a person’s teeth out of their face before admitting she cares for them. The members of my family are the only individuals that know just how sensitive and loving my sister is. I don’t believe the guy that has been her steady on again-off again guy gets to see that side of her.

With that said, I feel it necessary to state the obvious.

This isn’t one of those stories where there is a good twin and a bad twin or your typical romance. I am not here to present myself as the good one or the bad one—even if that stigma and those titles have been placed at our feet, stamped on our foreheads, and branded on our chests in an idiotic moment with far too much alcohol added in.

There may have been a deep-rooted need to distinguish ourselves at the age of sixteen to go along with that alcohol. One of my closest friend’s mother lied for us in order for the underage versions of ourselves to get the ink on our skin.

The tattoo is an infinity symbol with sister twins forever. On one side, it says, I’m the good one (mine) and on the other side, it says, I’m the bad one (hers). Underneath it are the words Two become one – Duality of Human Nature.

My sister doesn’t truly understand the meaning of the words on opposite sides of our chests or, so she claims. I love her to pieces, but she makes me wonder about her sometimes. I’m sure she feels the same way about me. Or maybe not. I don’t know. We’ve grown apart over the years.

I miss her and some of the insanity she got us involved in. What’s even more shocking are some of the things my name has been attached to or situations I’ve had to deal with because of the woman that is one of my always and forever closest friends.

My belief is that there is a little bit of both of those natures inside all of us. I’ll admit to giving in to that other side on a few occasions, hence the tattoo.  I just so happen to have someone walking around to show me what I look like when I’m being the epitome of the negative side of that nature.

Ain’t life grand that way?

Life is funny. It sure has a funny way of showing an individual what type of person they truly are. It shows all the signs of a person’s weaknesses and sometimes throws them up in their face while beating them down.

In my case, it isn’t so much ... life. It is the guy in it. The man that I’ve chosen to give my body and heart to is the central reason for my living in misery. At one time, I believed he was absolutely perfect and practically walked on water. I won’t dwell on that now. I’ll come back to it. I want to share how I got to the point of fighting for every breath before learning how to breathe.

I’m Clarissa Pierson. I’m twenty-four years old. I’m the good twin and this is my story.

1

Intake

Twenty-four years isn’t a long time to have lived by anyone’s standard. Any person that has lived a mere twenty-four years of life is just under a quarter of a century old. That boils down to one-fourth of a hopeful life expectancy. Interestingly enough, for a while, seeing twenty-five wasn’t my wishful thought for my life. I didn’t believe he—the one that I’m going to get to later—would kill me. No, I figured I would take care of it myself. I’d felt I’d lived quite a few people’s lifetimes of misery in the few years I’ve been granted. It became too much, and I didn’t think enough of myself to fight any longer. That was until the day that I did.

That was a miraculous day, indeed.

Understand. I was born a Pierson—not that I did much with the name, but that’s neither here nor there right now. The members of my family tend to do everything extraordinarily. We have genetically superior individuals in our bloodline. At least that’s another belief of mine. They are highly intelligent, successful, athletic, and driven people. The business mogul, the physicist, the lawyer, the doctor, the numbers cruncher, walking perfection, the golden boy, and me—the coaster are the characters who make up the members of my family.

I am fifth born to Evelyn (the physicist) and Walter (the business mogul) Pierson and younger sister to Jamison (golden boy), Eric (numbers cruncher), Ella (doctor), and Alexander (lawyer). My sister, Alyssa (walking perfection), was born five minutes after I was and rounds out our eight-member unit. Mom said she’d always wanted three kids. She was granted those and then some. Dad initially conceded to just the three even though he’d wanted more. They hadn’t expected the other two pregnancies.

Almost losing my mother on two separate occasions—the first time she’d been hospitalized due to an unknown allergy developed during her second pregnancy which reoccurred during her third—scared my father into the vasectomy seat. A phone call from his mother had him out of the chair and making his way to his dying mother’s bedside before he could have the procedure done. My grandfather had a heart attack that same day and the scare of possibly losing both of his parents at the same time led my mother to consoling my father the only way she knew how when he chose to shut her out for two days. It wasn’t until the positive pregnancy test that Walter Pierson would come clean about the botched appointment.

My father missed his next appointment because my mother had to be rushed to the hospital again. My father not being able to share the bed with my mother nightly for a week led to the conception of the final pregnancy for my parents. That pregnancy would result in the birth of the final set of babies. My mother drove her husband to the appointment that would ensure she would not continue populating the world with any further Piersons the day after she was released from the hospital after having us.

My mother was and still is the center of his peace. He didn’t want to lose her trying to increase the family numbers and refused to fight her when she decided she would be his chauffeur.

The fact that they conceived even when they weren’t really trying is fitting. They had to be great at even creating a family. They couldn’t just stop at three. Nope. My mother and father had to double their hoped-for number and do it in just five pregnancies.

I know. I sound crazy or weird or maybe even whiny. Probably all of the above. I know this. My parents didn’t truly have control over that. If they could, those two would definitely have found a way.

In a nutshell, I feel like I’m on the outside looking in along with everyone else when it comes to my family. That’s one of the attributes I call up to let me know that I was a willing participant in my own misery. Had I not fed the aforementioned issue then maybe, just maybe I could’ve saved myself and my family a whole world of hurt.

Later. Later, I’ll share the other stuff.

My family is filled with some spectacular people. The Pierson name is globally known because of all of the financial institutions with the surname on their placards. Even with that title and association, my family settled down in Kissimmee, Florida. Eight hours, a full eight hours away from Huntersville, North Carolina—the place where I ended up.

My father is the brains behind that money wagon. My mother is the one who took charge and ran with his grand idea. The nuclear physicist stepped away from her career to stand by her husband’s side. The banks, loan centers, and accounting firms that fall under the umbrella of Pierson Industries could bring several countries to their knees.

My brother, Alexander—Alex—is the family lawyer. Don’t let the pretty face fool you. The man is ruthless in the courtroom and any of the boardrooms he sets foot in. That cutthroat nature is something that he inherited from our mother.

The Bad Boy of Law is what he is called. Suited, he is clean cut, suave, and just plain beautiful. I love him dearly and might just be biased because of our familial connection. The slew of females that willingly drop their panties or don’t wear any just to have the opportunity to say he looked their way might prove otherwise.

Pretty much all my siblings share similar features. We all have blonde colored hair, slightly rounded eyes, oval shaped faces, a little dimple in our chins, and lean bodies. My brother, Jamison, is the only one in our family that pretty much snatched all his features from our mother.

Jamison—Jamie to the family—is one of the two that is the dark to our light. The man has the Pierson nose and lips—forever kissable—but most of his features come from the Smythe side of our family. The hazel brown, sensual eyes (or so I’m told by every female that comes into contact with him), cocoa brown hair, sun-kissed-always-tan looking skin and megawatt smile are all her. He’s intelligent, observant, wonderful, and the best big brother I could ever ask for. He’s the one that most consider the dangerous one of our family.

Still, he couldn’t save me. None of them could. I had to save myself.

How can you save someone when you don’t know they need to be saved?

It’s a question that was asked several million times when the truth of my struggle came out. It’s the thing I had to atone for when helping my loved ones come to terms with the truth of my situation.

There’s no way to rally the troops to save someone when you don’t know their location.

I couldn’t send out an S.O.S. because I didn’t know where I fit in when it came to my own skin. Breaking the chains that barred me meant having a purpose and reason to want out of the torment I was living day in and day out.

I wasn’t ready to be rescued. I see that now. My acceptance of my role kept me there. Offering me help back then would’ve been like offering water to a drowning man. I was drowning in a self-created abyss.

When it is an abyss of your own creation, it becomes a box. It is a tight knit, suffocating box for which no oxygen can be found. The suffocation didn’t come until much later. That’s when I physically learned that without oxygen, one cannot take a ...

2

Breath

There once was a time when I couldn’t help but be the center of attention; seen, but never truly wanting to be. As I stated, the Pierson name comes with a certain stigma. Line up the lot of us and see the greatness of the unit. There was no wiggle room or chance for limitation when it came to aspirations or goals. Honors students, captains of teams, award winning, attention garnering hotties each and every one of them. People gravitated towards them and that meant I had that same gravitational pull.

I just tended to gravitate to the ones that were referred to as the nerds of the school, the ones that were the goody two shoes and noted boring of the school. I was the one that everyone depended on to do the right thing. Ainslie Lee Leighton, Cristen Crissy Foster, and Nathaniel Porter fit those profiles. Actually, Nathaniel Porter straddled the fence and straddled it far too well. They are the best things to come out of all my years as a student before I finished college.

Ainslie was head of the science club. Crissy was captain of the math and home economics clubs. Nathaniel was head of the chess club, but also junior captain of the swim team. I was on the pep squad because my sister dared me to try out. Never in a million years did I believe that I would ever make the team.

I met Lee and Crissy during the first day of my first year of grade school. Crissy and I both wore our hair wavy that day—our mother’s choices, not ours. She wore a jumper with multiple colors but the prominent one was a pale green color. The bow that was in her hair was a bright yellow. Yellow is not a color that my light, brown-skinned friend has ever cared for. It’s one she takes offense to since idiot kids at her old school called her high yellow because they were just plain mean-spirited ... idiots. To this day, Crissy’s mom has no clue why my friend broke a girl’s nose at the old school. I learned about the broken nose and Crissy’s hatred of all things yellow that first day.

Here, you can have mine. It’s pink. Yuck!

I kind of like pink. Yellow looks better on you than it does on me.

She was probably right. Wearing yellow has always brightened my spirits.

Huh! Come to think of it, I haven’t worn that color in quite some time. I might have to rectify that soon.

We exchanged hair bows and made sure we were together for the rest of the day. The two of us met Ainslie at lunch. She was seated all by herself and didn’t look as if she liked what she had to eat. Crissy and I were sitting together looking through the things we had packed. I’ve never been a bologna and salami lover. I would rather have turkey and cheese or peanut butter no jelly unless it’s with apple butter. My mom knew that. I figured I must’ve picked up my sister’s bag, but my name was written on the outside. My sister’s favorite sandwich is bologna and, salami with American cheese in the middle sliced in two halves.

As I’d looked around, Ainslie had been looking at her peanut butter sandwich as if she was debating throwing it away. After getting her attention, I lifted my sandwich in offering. The smile that spread across her face let me know that I’d found my lunch swapping partner from that moment on. Suddenly, the fact that I was mistaken, yet again, for my sister didn’t bother me because I had someone that would enjoy the mistake and offer something better.

I kind of miss the days of my mother making the wrong lunch for me and swapping them out with Ainslie. We made a game of it. It started out with us guessing what was in the bag before we swapped things out. We had so much fun.

Nathaniel didn’t join our group until much later. We were in the fourth grade and riding our bikes to school the day we met Nathaniel Porter. We’d seen him around, but we didn’t have classes with him. Plus, he lived in a different area before he moved into the neighborhood, we all lived in.

We met the day that I had the only physical fight of my young life—outside of my siblings. I’d been standing at a stop sign when I felt a hand connect with my back. I barely caught myself as I fell forward. My bike did crash to the ground. I turned to see who the culprit was.

James Hornsby, Violet Hornsby’s older brother, stood right behind me. He stood a couple inches taller than me and his little snot of a sister was right behind him.

That’s her. That’s the one that said, ‘All people with ‘horn’ in their names go to the bad place where the devil lives.’ I told you she rides her bike home.

What? What was she talking about? I hadn’t even seen the little brat that day. My sister ... Alyssa was the one who had class with her.

"You’re wrong. I didn’t see you or talk to you today."

Liar! the little snit yelled, and her brother moved forward.

That was all it took for me to begin to defend myself.

I did mention that I’m the fifth child, didn’t I?

Being number five means that person gets to do a lot of watching when their brothers are horsing around. My older sister, Ella, also wanted to make sure that I knew how to combat the idiocy of my brothers when they wanted to roughhouse. For those reasons, I know how to defend myself.

James came at me, and I moved so I could twist to take him down. Once he was on the ground, I pummeled his face. His crazy sister grabbed my hair and pulled so I slipped a bit in my position above him. He took that opportunity and ran with it. I mean he literally ran. I was running after him when my eyes connected with Nathaniel’s. He was leaning against his family’s mailbox watching the exchange between James and me. As James ran by, Nathaniel stuck his foot out. Nothing will ever erase the sight of seeing James’ slightly rounded body stumbling as he fell face forward onto the ground. I halted for a moment as Nathaniel attempted but failed to hide his laughter.

I made a move toward James but was caught around the waist and pulled back.

Whoa there, Scare Bear. I think he’s had enough.

I was so fixated on the slight squeak of his voice and what he’d called me that I forgot all about James.

What did you call me?

Oh. Sorry. Me and my sister were making up Care Bear names. I guess I’m still doing it.

Why? Why would anyone want to be Scare Bear?

Why were you beating up that poor, defenseless bigger kid?

That made me snort. I told him what I was doing, my name, and why that kid wasn’t the one who should’ve been looked at as the defenseless one. He said something else that made me snort and I knew. I knew then that I had a friend for life. There weren’t many people outside of my family who could cause me to snort. It usually meant that I found that person funny. My laugh always made me feel weird and out of place. I never felt that way with the three of them. After that day, Nathaniel rode or walked with us to school just about every day.

That day was one of the most eventful days of my childhood. Everything else was relatively normal. My days as a youth were just like anyone else’s, especially those that have older siblings. We each have our battle scars from fights and emotional scars from arguments. We dealt with the same things pretty much any other young person did. It didn’t matter that we came from a rich family. We still fussed, fought, hurt, and hoped for better situations in our young lives.

The scars of my childhood pale in comparison to those of my teen years. The scars of my teen years are decimated by the scars of young adult life.

Multiply that and you have ...

3

Twin Breaths

My family—The Piersons—are the very essence of a competitive bunch. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone given their roles and statuses. It would shock and awe people if any of them didn’t meet with the standards as expected.

Enter Clarissa Pierson.

I am the lone soul in the family that doesn’t see the point of making everything a competition. I am the one person who chooses not to be walking perfection like the rest of my siblings. At one point, I believed I had a comrade in arms when it came to my stance against the Pierson Competitive Nature. It has always been me and my twin against the world, until it wasn’t.

Things changed when we entered high school. My sister suddenly gained a different voice. That voice didn’t agree with my take on things and tried her best to fashion some form of situation where we were pitted against one another every chance she could. It was supposed to be all in the name of fun. She hated it when I wouldn’t take the bait. My need not to have us become frenemies was to ensure that I wouldn’t give in to her goading.

The determined little cretin that she is learned exactly what button to push. The only way she ever coaxed me into entertaining any of her cockamamie plans was by daring me to do things.

Dares are my downfall as proven by my less than graceful introduction to Theodore Corbin. Dares—mainly my sister’s—have been my Achilles heel for as long as I could recall. On every occasion, I give in to completing one of them and learn immediately or at a later date that I will regret giving in. I should probably have thought through some of the things my twin would dare me to do or participate in before actually doing them. I never have.

A dare is what got me into the mess that would have me living through a special type of hell for the better part of my early twenties. I can’t recall one dare that made me happier for completing it. Nor has one ever had me enjoying going through with my sister’s dare feeling like it was well worth the torment, not one in all of the years that I have known and loved my sister.

My twin and I made sure that all of our classes—except for our language classes—were separate when we were in high school. The only time we would see each other at school is in passing. It was during one of these passing where I was supposed to complete the dare that she’d come up with the night before.

Meeting Theodore Corbin was a dare that I would regret every day after learning the truth about the man that I had fallen in love with. He was good because he didn’t show his true self until he had inserted himself deep into my psyche. Before that, he was this wonderful man that I couldn’t help but feel I had to have in my life.

Let me say that it wasn’t something that happened overnight for us. It was kind of a winding road that started with a dare to get me to talk to the one guy I couldn’t get the nerve up to actually talk to.

Clare, you have to do it now or you forfeit.

I turn to face my twin as she bites her lip to stave off the laughter I know she desperately wants to release.

What did I ever do to make you hate me as much as you must if you are willing to dare me to do this?

My mirror image looks back at me, blinks, then heaves an exaggerated breath before rolling her eyes at me.

You know full well I don’t hate you, Clare. Besides, hating even the slightest part of you would mean I hate myself in some way. We both know that’s not ever going to be the case.

Of course not. Turning, I face the small crowd that