Page 98 of The Charade

I knew I should probably be disgusted with myself for even thinking it, but if I wasn't worried about the repercussions for her, I knew I would gladly kiss her again.

Kiss her every day until my lips were swollen and her delicate skin was chaffed, and they would have to literally lock me behind bars to get me to stop.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I was going to have to move out of the country and put an ocean between us to keep myself from acting irrationally.

I was just trying to figure out a way to ask her to run away with me when a loud gasp sounded behind us.

Ava's hands, which had been sliding up my back the moment before went still, and she took a sharp intake of breath when she saw who had walked in on us.

I turned my head over my shoulder, to see who'd caught us, and found Ava's look-alike.

Elyse.

And though it was dark and I couldn't see everything clearly, I could tell from the way she stood with her hand to her chest and her mouth hanging open that she was shocked.

Shocked that Ava and I would be entangled in each other’s arms this way when we knew the possibility of who we might be to each other.

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. I didn't want to release Ava yet—because I could hold her in my arms forever and still never get enough—but I forced myself to let her go and stepped away.

"So…" Ava said to her sister as she readjusted her dress until it rested over her hips more comfortably. "I guess you saw that."

"Yeah," Elyse said, still seeming shocked. "I-I did."

I blew out a long breath because I really didn't know how I could explain any of this in a way to make us look good in front of Elyse—like we hadn't just been kissing each other when we knew it was highly possible we were related.

Ava didn't seem to want to say anything about it either, so we just waited for Elyse to explain her reason for coming here.

"So, um," Elyse said after realizing we weren't going to address the big, fat elephant in the room. "Mom just texted me to say that she’s here and that she’s ready to talk to us in Mr. Hastings’s office."

42

Ava

When Elyseand I walked into Mr. Hastings’s office a few minutes later, I expected to find our mom with Mr. Hastings and Mr. Aarden. Instead, we walked in to find only her sitting on one of the brown leather chairs.

"Hi girls." She stood up and moved to hug us.

I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to hug this woman who had been ignoring my calls and texts all week, so when she opened her arms for me after hugging Elyse, I just gave her a sort of side hug.

A flash of pain crossed her face after my rejection, but she replaced it with a wary smile. She gestured to a leather sofa against the wall, saying, "Go ahead and take a seat."

I sat next to my sister, set my hands in my lap, and waited expectantly for my mom to explain herself.

"So," she said, drawing in a deep breath. "I guess we all probably know why I'm here, so I'll just get right down to what I have to say to you two." Her brown eyes looked sorrowful. "And well, I guess it's pretty obvious to all of us that we probably should have had this conversation a long time ago."

You think?

I considered saying that out loud and putting up a big stink about how she was about seventeen and a half years too late for this conversation, but since she was actually finally promising answers, I kept my mouth shut.

She smoothed her hands along her black pencil skirt and sighed. "I'm not exactly sure how to start this, so I'll go back to the beginning and hope it explains why I made the choices that I did concerning you two and your biological father."

"If you're going to tell us about how you and Mr. Hastings dated in high school, we already figured that out," I told her, wanting to just cut to the chase. I didn't need a long drawn-out explanation about how they'd been in love at one time and all that crap.

Just give me the details, woman.

"Okay," my mom said, seeming a bit surprised at the mention of her previous relationship with Carter's dad. "Does that mean you also know that before I started dating Joel, there was also a short time when I dated Brendon?"

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