Page 65 of The Princess and the Fraud

There was a thud, and I jumped. “What was that?”

“I sat down.” A beat later, Aaron’s hand came up and brushed along the side of my thigh. It was a simple bat as he felt around for me, but my body tensed. “Might as well sit. You’ll get dizzy from the dark.”

“Is that a thing?”

“I don’t know. But it sounds like it could be.”

I laid my hand against the wall to guide me, sliding to the ground. Thank God I didn’t sit on him—I would’ve preferred death, honestly—but our shoulders brushed as I settled in, just as they had that day on the piano bench. “Sorry,” I said hastily, jerking back until we were no longer touching.

Aaron’s chuckle was ghostly in the elevator.

I laid the towels on my lap and squeezed my fingers into them. “Paige will notice if I don’t come back,” I told him, speaking that thought aloud as if to convince myself. “We won’t be in here long.”

“Could be worse,” he mused, and there was another shifting sound. I imagined him stretching his legs out in front of him. “You could be stuck in here with Fiona.”

“Youcould be stuck in here with Fiona.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I cringed. “Except that probably would’ve worked in your favor.”

Aaron didn’t reply to that. I was almost hyperaware of him beside me. I could hear his light inhale through his nose, the exhale, and it almost made me nervous. He was all comfy and clean-looking, and I was just coming off an eight-hour shift in the restaurant, where I no doubt smelled like food and grease.

But the longer time went on, the thicker the stagnant air became. “Did Fiona enjoy her spa day?”

“I believe so.”

“Have you talked to her since?”

“Yes.”

I waited, but he didn’t go on. “Did you ever find out who sent the?—”

“Do you have any siblings?”

I turned my head in Aaron’s direction, lips parting in disbelief. The subject change couldn’t have been less subtle. Why? Talking about Fiona wasn’tthatdifficult of a conversation. “No, I don’t. It was just my mom and me.”

“No dad?”

“Nope. Lame one-night-stand whose parents gave my mom money to buy him out of being a father.” I snorted a little. “You have siblings, right?”

Aaron hummed a little under his breath. “I have five brothers. My next oldest sibling is thirty-five. Ten years older.” He settled firmer against the side of the elevator; I could feel the panel behind me shift as he leaned against it. “Their age gap is pretty close, though. Forty-one, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, thirty-six.”

His eldest sibling was forty-one and he was twenty-five—it seemed like an extreme jump.Aaron’s always been the odd one out with his brothers, since he’s the youngest. They… they didn’t like him.What Annalise had said made a bit more sense with that age gap. “Were you an accident baby?”

“I was asave the marriagebaby.”

My shoulders dropped.Oh.

“My father had an affair with one of his secretaries. Got her pregnant. My mother stayed, and they had me, and he stayed.” And then Aaron drew in a sharp breath. “I shouldn’t have said any of that. My mother would be horrified to learn that I said it to a…”

I raised an eyebrow. “A staff member?”

“I told you to stop saying that,” Aaron scolded as he knocked a hand against the side of my thigh. I jumped at the contact. “I was going to say a stranger.”

But am I a stranger?I wanted to ask. I didn’t feel like one. The atmosphere in the elevator felt entirely different in the dark. The energy quieter. It felt, I realized, much like it had the night by the fire back in June. That we were just two strangers talking. Before, I’d hogged the mic, shared my problems and laid myself bare.

Tonight, I decided it would be about him.

I turned toward Aaron, imagining I could see his face in the darkness. “Is it a brother or sister? The… other baby.”

“Sister. I think that made it worse for my mom. She always wanted a girl.”

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