A technician dips her brush into pale-pink lacquer and sweeps it across my thumbnail smooth as silk. My pulse hammers.
Miranda adjusts to look at her sister. “He actually was involved with someone last year, though, wasn’t he? I thought it was serious.”
Marisol nods. “I never met her, her name was Lila, I think. Sky, do you have any intel?”
Suddenly, the lights are far too bright.
The technician lifts my hand and turns it gently under the light, examining the shape of my nails before dipping the brush back into a bottle of polish for the second coat. I watch themotion without really seeing it, the smooth stroke of color across my nail suddenly the only thing holding my focus.
Lila?
The name echoes in my mind like a dropped glass.
I blink once, then again, forcing my shoulders to settle back into the cushioned chair as if nothing inside me has shifted.
Because everything absolutely has.
Even before recent events, Zach and I have talked about everything happening in our lives for years. Flights across time zones. Business transactions. Our dating foibles. Hopes. Dreams. Stories about childhood or whatever book one of us was reading.
Everything.
Or at least I believed it was everything.
My voice seems distant when it finally comes out. “He never mentioned anyone named Lila to me.”
The words land casual enough no one notices I’m about to throw up my breakfast.
“So?” Véronique tilts her head slightly from the chair beside Lupe. “What happened, Marisol?”
Marisol lifts one shoulder as the technician begins painting her nails. “He let it fade. Told Julian he was too busy for a relationship.”
“Work as an excuse.” Lupe’s eyebrow rises slowly.
Marisol nods, the corner of her mouth turning down. “Always work.”
I stare down at my hands as the polish dries. Why didn’t he tell me?
Why didn’t she?
Two hours ago I woke wrapped in his arms and he told me this wasn’t a fling. He promised things dangerously close to forever.
My chest seizes.
Did he use the same lines on her?
Soleil swings her legs in the pedicure chair and wrinkles her nose. “Uncle Zach is ridiculous.”
“Yeah. If you love someone,” Sera nods with complete certainty, “you keep them.”
The simplicity resonates more deeply than anything the adults have said.
Tears burn under my eyes. I want to believe in Zach.
Choosing me.
Choosing us.
Yet suddenly a shadow sits in the story I thought I knew.
A relationship he never mentioned with a woman with whose name I’ve never heard.
For the first time since waking beside him, a quiet doubt takes hold.
How much of Zach’s life do I truly know?
And how much have I only assumed he was telling me?
