Page 86 of Hypnotized By Love

Not believing him, I went into the front hallway to get Sierra’s phone and sent my sister a text telling her that Mason knew who I was.

She immediately sent me back a selfie of her laughing.

Angry, I called.

“Hello, Savannah’s phone.”

“This is not funny. Did you tell him that I was coming over here tonight?”

“Savannah, on Nana’s life, I promise you that I did not tell him about my plan. I wanted you to have the chance to talk to him as me. I thought that would feel safer to you.”

She was telling the truth. As kids we’d made an agreement that if either of us promised on our grandma’s life, the other one had to take it seriously.

“Fine. I believe you. But I have to go.”

“Call me and tell me everything he says and how he knew—” I hung up on her before she could finish her sentence.

I walked back into the family room. “I’ve just confirmed that Sierra didn’t tell you, so how did you know it was me?”

The amused smile fell off his face, and that look was back, the one I didn’t understand but that made me feel tingly and floaty. “Savannah Rose Sinclair, I could be robbed of every single one of my senses and I would still know you.”

I drew in a sharp breath, my heart flitting around my chest in response to his words. “You can’t say—”

Now he was the one cutting me off. “Do you think I don’t see you? Don’t know you? I see everything, Sinclair. The good and the bad. I know how kind and compassionate you are. How loving. How loyal. How smart and talented and driven and funny you are. But I also know that you can hold a serious grudge and get angry too quickly and jump to conclusions before you have all the facts.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he didn’t let me speak.

“I know that you thought you had to be the perfect daughter for your parents. That you needed to be the best at everything so that your mom and dad didn’t have to worry about you the way they worried about Sierra. How often you felt alone because they had to give her all of their attention. That some of the anger you have comes from how mad you were at your sister’s disorder and how helpless you felt as she struggled. How much harder all of it had to be on you because this was your identical twin going through it.”

I nodded, biting my lower lip. “That day I went to see her in the hospital? It felt like part of me was dying. I didn’t know how I’d ever feel whole again if she was gone.”

He got up and walked over to where I stood. He reached out and rubbed his hands along my upper arms. “I know. I know becausethat’s how I’ve felt without you in my life. Like half of me has been missing for years, and I didn’t feel whole again until I saw you in that Starbucks.”

“How do you know me like this?” I asked, not able to stop the tears that started to fall. He reached up to gently wipe my tears away with his thumbs.

“Because I’ve been in love with you since we were fifteen years old,” he told me, and everything in the entire world came to a screeching halt. Blood pounded so hard in my ears that for a moment I couldn’t hear anything else.

I was light-headed. “What?”

“I love you, Sinclair. You had to know that.”

My mouth opened and shut several times before I finally managed to say, “I did not know that.”

We sat there in silence as I digested this information. My instinct was to flee—to run away from what he was feeling, what I was feeling, because my sister was right and I was a coward. I talked a good game, giving her advice on what she should be doing in her love life, but I had always been a scaredy-cat.

Right now? I was the most scared I’d ever felt.

And I also felt like it was time for the truth. “I’m mad at you because you’re the one who told the whole school that Mr. Landry and I were having sex.”

Now it was his turn to look completely shocked. “I was not. I did not do that.”

“It was the night after the district-level debate.” Mr. Landry had been our debate coach and had run the club. “He and I were in his classroom, and he was comforting me because I’d lost. He was hugging me, telling me it was okay.”

Mason’s face was blank, as if he were trying to place the memory.

“He was probably holding me a little too close,” I admitted. “Nothing ever happened between us, but looking back as an adult,I can see that he acted inappropriately with me. Mr. Landry had a small group of favorites, all girls and all a bit naive. He would have me stay after class or after a debate and find innocent ways to touch me, which I wasn’t uncomfortable with at the time because I didn’t know any better, but when he hugged me like that? Even I knew that it crossed a line. And you walked in and saw us. The next day, the whole school was talking about how he and I were sleeping together. It completely ruined my senior year. Even now I sometimes walk through town and am still that girl who hooked up with a teacher. You utterly destroyed my reputation. And I was so angry with you for that. Still am.”

Mr. Landry had been fired, and I had guessed it was due to that rumor. Or maybe he’d been inappropriate with someone else.

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