I’ve never seen this version before.
His jaw turns to stone. His thumb slows. And then he looks up at me with something I don’t have a word for, because in twenty-six years, my brother has never looked at me like I’m a stranger.
When he holds my eye, for the first time ever, I don’t know what he’s thinking.
“Is this true?” he asks.
“Not in the way it looks,” I say, my stomach roiling.
Logan lets out a sharp laugh. “What does that even mean?”
I rub my temples. “She’s been fake dating Jake to help him fix his PR problems.”
“WHAT?”
“He hit on Doug’s wife last Thanksgiving—he didn’t realize who she was—and Doug told him if he didn’t clean up his image, he’d send him down to the Minors. Jake lost it. It’s a long story, but he begged Scottie to fake date him, because there was a picture of them together around Christmas?—”
“The one where they were kissing?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “He kissed her to get some aggressive fan to leave him alone, but someone took a picture, found out who Scottie was, and put up that story that went viral about Jake dating his best friend’s little sister. It was the first good press he’d gotten in so long, his agent told him to beg Scottie to fake date him. And her family pushed her to say yes.”
Logan shakes his head, blinking. “Am I still dreaming? Her familytoldher to fake date him?”
“I know. It makes me mad just thinking about it.”
“So she’s been fake dating him while you two have been sneaking around?”
“We haven’t been sneaking around. I love her!”
“Every cheater says that,” Logan says.
“It’s not cheating! They’re not an actual couple!”
Logan shows me the article. “Tell that to the rest of the world. No one will believe this.”
“Do you?”
He squeezes his eyes closed. “Yes, and that’s what makes me so—” he curses. “I’m so mad at you. You should have told me.”
“I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“I’m your twin. I’m involved just by being alive,” he says quietly, which is so much worse than him yelling it. “I’ve been watching you lie to my face for a month. I’ve been covering for you whenever you weren’t where you were supposed to be, trying to reassure Coop that you really do care about him. I told myself I was wrong about what I was seeing.” He looks at the floor. “I hate that you did this to me.”
“Logan—”
“I know you love her.” He looks up. “That’s not what I’m mad about.”
“Then what?”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“I’m mad that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. We’ve never kept secrets from each other. Not real ones.” He shakes his head. “This is a real one.”
His pain has always hit me harder than my own. I can’t tell him that I was worried about what a secret like this would do to him. That would be me putting it on his shoulders, anyway. Making his anxiety a part of the equation.
I can’t do that to him.
Especially because, without meaning to, I already did.
