Tyler’s jaw drops. “No way—you’ve got to be kidding. Jack freakingCamerondidn’t get into an Ivy League school? We all thought he was a shoo-in.”
“So did he.” I shake my head ruefully, my stomach starting to sour at the thought of revealing such a personal secret about someone else. Still, Tyler’s magnetic pull, the one that charmed me all those years ago, keeps me talking. “But he still wanted to go somewhere that made people jealous, so that’s how he ended up at UH. He told his friends that he rejected other offers.”
“Didn’t his dad go to Yale?”
“Yep, and that usually helps your chances, but it doesn’t mean it’s definite.” I think back to the look of deflation on Jack’s face, crushed and full of hurt, when his rejection letter came in the mail. I sympathized with him then, knowing what it feels like when something you’ve planned for yourself for so long ends up not working out. A good example is sitting right next to me, right now.
It’s clear that my secret is satisfying enough for the truce, because Tyler looks dumbfounded. “I…Wow. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d have dirt on Jack Cameron, directly from a confidant.” Something about the way he says it ignites a spark of panic in me, and I instinctively reach out and clasp his wrist in my shaking fingers.
“Don’t,”I hiss, “tell anybody. Other than his family, I’m the only one who knows. He’d know it was me.” But my words seem to be falling on deaf ears, because Tyler’s eyes are trained on my fingers, wrapped around his arm. There’s a dull pulse between us, a once-bright spark that lost its magnetism, but only an idiot would deny that it’s still there. Almost like it’s lying in wait.
“Tyler.” I squeeze his wrist for emphasis. “I’m serious. Please.”
As soon as thepleaseleaves my lips, his eyes snap up toward me, refocusing. He nods to himself, but I notice that he doesn’t make any move to slide his arm out from under my grip. “Ofcourse.” His voice is a little bit hoarse. “You know I won’t tell anyone.”
With tension sizzling in the airplane’s recycled air, I’m eager to pivot the conversation. I slowly pry my fingers from Tyler’s arm and shake out my hand. “All right, enough about me and my supposedly groundbreaking secret. What about yours?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it?” There’s an unmistakable challenge in his voice. “I’m not sure you want me to show you up with the World’s Juiciest Secret Award right now.”
This earns him a playful punch on the shoulder. “Just tell me, and then I’ll be the judge of whether your secret is actually better.”
“It definitely is.”
“Then why are you not telling me?”
Tyler scrubs a hand over his face, cringing and clearly regretting his choice of truce activities already. “That fall”—again, he doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to—“before Lucas and Ella moved out to Hawai?i, they were living in his bedroom in the basement. You know, somewhere to stay while they were selling their old place and getting ready for the move out there. But I wasn’t used to having a girl other than my mom living around the house, so I was a little…careless. With the closed doors situation.”
“Oh no.” The secondhand embarrassment is so bad that I findmyselfcringing, and Tyler hasn’t even gotten to the end of the story yet. “You walked in on her changing?” I’m not sure what having a sister-in-law is like, but that definitely sounds like one way to ruin the whole family bonding thing.
He shakes his head solemnly. “I wish that was all it was. Would’ve been way less mortifying.”
“Showering?”
“Also no. But you’re getting close.” He gives me a pointed look, akin to an English teacher trying to lead the class to the answer that’s just out of reach. “I went into Lucas’s room one night to find his spare game controller, but they were a little…occupied.”
“No!” I cover my mouth with my sleeve to muffle my shriek of surprise. “They were, like,busy?”
Tyler’s expression is grim, and if Cranky Lady didn’t have her headphones in, snoring next to us while watchingKnives Out, I’m sure she’d be contributing her two cents as well. “Verybusy. And not under the sheets.”
I shudder, horrified. Tyler looks like he’s seriously considering picking up the barf bag wedged into the seat pouch in front of him.
“Oh my god.” It takes a second to stop wheezing with laugher, trying my best not to cough so I don’t wake up the sleeping toddlers in front of me. “Is that a secret only for me? Or does anyone else know?”
“I only told Delia, right after it happened.” He looks positively mortified, and I bury the sting I feel at the mention of our formerly shared best friend. “I think I needed to get it off my chest so I didn’t have to sit and stew in it anymore. I couldn’t look Lucas or Ella in the eye for a solid month. And to make it worse, Mom thought we were avoiding each other because we had some sort of fight, so she ambushed us both one night at dinner and made us have this whole heart-to-heart about how we’re brothers and will always need to be there for each other, blah blah blah. She thought we were in an argument over something stupid.”
Keeping the laughter in is a full-time job now, and I’m dangerously close to letting out a snort that wakes up the whole plane. “Did you tell her the real reason you weren’t talking?”
Tyler shoots me anAre you kidding?look. “Absolutely not. We let her think that he was mad that I dinged his car when I was trying to park. We came up with it on the fly and I’m surprised Mom didn’t notice, given what terrible liars we both are.”
“That’s amazing.” And so incredibly on-brand for both Tyler and his brother. It’s the kind of story that, if it had happened while we were dating, would’ve had him driving over to my house in the middle of the night and taking me on a late-night slushy run so we could discuss the abject horror of it all. “I mean, it’s definitelynotamazing for you, but this story improved my day tenfold.”
“It gets worse.” He’s grimacing now.
I can’t help but gawk. “How on earth could it get worse?”
Tyler glances around the plane dramatically, even though nobody else here would even know the people we’re talking about. Still, his voice is a hushed whisper when he continues. “A few weeks later…Ella announced she was pregnant.”
“No.”My jaw drops to my lap. “You think…?”
