She’s right. I am a bad liar. I’m also bad at keeping stuff from her. Because as different as we are, Rachel isn’t just my sister; she’s my best friend. I don’t think I’ve ever kept anything from her in my life. Obviously, the skeletons I have in my closet right now are killing me.
I take in a breath and hold it. She leans in. I can’t show her everything, but one or two little details can’t hurt.
“Do you remember, years ago when we went to the charity gala at the Phoenix?” I ask.
“Of course. That was the night Dylan humiliated you in front of the whole room. Asshole. Then, you were whisked away by the mysterious masked man. The Phantom, I think I called him,” she giggles.
I don’t say anything else. For a moment, I just stare at my sister as she stirs her drink, and I wait. I watch as her eyes widen and her mouth opens in realization. She looks at Damien, back at me, at Damien, and at me again.
“Wait,” she says. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” her voice crescendos with the realization, and she slaps her hand over her mouth. Then she leans in. “Did you know?”
“No,” I shake my head.
“Did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That makes sense though. He owns multiple hotels. The Redwood, the Bellissimo, and the Phoenix. This is crazy!” Rachel’s palms are flat against her cheeks as she continues to process it all. “Damien is the Phantom.”
“Damien is the Phantom,” I echo.
“Does he know now?” she asks.
“Yeah. We talked about it,” I admit, looking over at him and Luca again. He is holding Luca so he can press his hand to the glass where a turtle is swimming by. My heart does a backflip.
“And?” she presses.
“And…nothing has changed. I still work at the Redwood.”
“Yeah, okay. He takes you, your sister, and your kid to dinner. Everything is exactly the same,” she says. When she gasps, my eyes rip from Luca and Damien back to her. “Wait. The Phantom is your baby daddy!”
“Shh!” I urge her, leaning in to shut my sister up.
“He doesn’t know?!” she whisper-yells.
“No. Not yet.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
My cheeks grow warm as people start to stare. Our aggressive attempt to be quiet is only drawing more attention, and it’s only a matter of time before Damien notices too. “I don’t know yet. I am still trying to figure that out. He doesn’t want kids. He’s told me more than once that he’s not a family man.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asks, nodding over to them. “Because I call bullshit.”
“Rachel,” I say sternly, pulling her eyes back to me. “He can’t know. Not right now.”
“Not right now?”
“It’s just…complicated,” I answer.
“How is it complicated? You fucked a sexy ass man who happened to be a hotel owner five years ago and wound up pregnant. Then five years later, you got a job at another hotel, and as fate would have it, your boss turns out to be the mystery man from five years ago, and your son’s father. It’s not complicated so much as it is–”
“Six years,” I state. “A disaster.”
“Messy. But messy isn’t bad; it’s just–”
“A nightmare.”
“Stop putting words in my mouth,” Rachel says.
