Page 13 of Drown in You

Instead, I turn the sound off on my app notifications and lock the screen.

I’m ghosting her when she needs me the most. Ghosting my best friend.

Sienna is a no-show at our parents' wedding. The tight knot in my chest loosens. Maybe she changed her mind. She’s staying with her mom and I won’t expose my secret after all. I won’t lose her.

At the reception in the hotel, my family bombards me with questions about hockey and classes and girlfriends. Doesn’t help that a lot of hockey players marry young, so everyone expects me to find a college sweetheart who will become my wife.

By the time I escape to the hotel bar, I want to rip off the stiff, starchy suit and down a bottle of their hardest liquor.

I grab a stool and nearly mutter a prayer when the bartender doesn’t ask for my ID. He must read the need for a drink all over my face.

Sienna texted me a bunch of times since the reception started, explaining the car troubles she had before she could leave for her father’s wedding and how she showed up late to the reception and now can’t gather up the courage to go in there.

I wish I could be the support she needs. Hold out my arm and help her face her father and all those strangers, but I can’t. I slip my phone back into my pocket.

When I glimpse the only other person at the bar adjacent to me, my breath catches. Somebody who’s having a worse night than I am.

A few empty glasses sit in front of her that she must have downed before the bartender could clear them away. The glass in her hand is half empty, the liquid inside dark and promising a blackout.

She’s heartbreakingly gorgeous. Long, soft brown hair drifting in waves down her back, delicate nose, and a round face that’ll keep her looking twenty for the next ten years. Her lips and nails are painted a vibrant red like she’s planning on meeting someone here. A girl who keeps glancing at her phone like she got stood up.

Or like she’s on the run from whatever asshole gave her that nasty bruise on her temple.

Her piercing green eyes land on me.

The moment I’ve been anticipating since Ma announced the wedding. I’m not the mystery man behind the mask anymore, and she’s not just a pretty face online. She’s real.

Sienna Carter.

Except she wasn’t supposed to show up battered and bruised. My teeth grind together, fists clenching. Who the fuck did that to her? I’ll kill him.

Her lips purse and she stands, heels clicking with every step.

She flops onto the stool beside me, her dress rising dangerously high on her thighs clad in dark tights. My mouth goes dry. Never in a million years would I have imagined meeting her looking like this.

“It’s rude to stare.” She sighs, taking another swig from her glass. Her voice is this delicate soprano, soft and breathy and I want to hear it again. Need to.

“So I’ve heard.” I snatch the whiskey in front of me and take a sip.

Up close, she’s even more beautiful. Natural beauty hidden under a thick layer of makeup—a failed attempt to conceal the nasty bruise.

Now is my chance to come clean. Tell her who I am, reveal Ten’s true identity. I’m not actually from California. I used an app to text you from a number with a California area code. I wear a mask so you never find out who I really am. Now I’m your stepbrother.

I pull out the disposable camera and set it in front of her. She picks it up tentatively, a confused but delighted smile crawling across her lips. “What’s this for?”

Heart pounding in my ears, I try to force my tongue to form the words. But all that comes out is: “They’re passing them out at the reception. I swiped one.” I gesture to her dress. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“If I was here for the reception, why would I be out here with you?” She snaps a photo of me, and despite that bruise and whatever hell she’s been through, she’s still managing to smile at someone she believes to be a stranger.

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

When she catches me staring at that bruise, she sighs. “Before you ask, I fell.”

God, she’s a terrible liar. No way in hell she got that bruise from a fall. No way in hell that bruise isn’t related to exactly why she’s here in the first place. But I play along. “Yeah? Where at?”

“On ice.” She smiles sweetly, and those red lips make my cock twitch. Fuck.

Don’t imagine them wrapped around your dick, don’t imagine them wrapped around your dick—I’m one hundred percent imagining them wrapped around my dick. Wouldn’t be the first time. “You skate?”

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