Page 2 of The Facade

Sure, asking Ben out before I revealed my true identity probably wasn’t the greatest plan, but it was all about baby steps at this point. I mean, he would be graduating at the end of the year, and since we were already in the last week of October, there wasn’t a whole lot of time left for me to get up the nerve to make something happen.

And if my plan totally bombed and I completely humiliated myself in front of Ben, no one would be the wiser because no one would know it was me.

“Will you give us any hints about your costume?” Elyse asked, searching my face with her golden-brown eyes. “Is it a real person, or maybe a character from a movie?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, but this secret is going to remain locked down tight until we’re at the party. I’m not even letting Carter or Nash know.”

Carter and Nash were my older brothers who also attended our school.

“Well, aren’t you mysterious,” Scarlett said.

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

Elyse seemed to realize that I wasn’t going to give any hints because she turned to Scarlett and asked her what she was planning to dress up as.

Scarlett poked at her salad with her fork. “I’m trying to convince Hunter here to dress up like an astronaut so I can be the pretty alien he finds on Mars.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “But so far he’s pretty set on not dressing up.”

Hunter glanced over at his best friend with a smirk on his lips and said, “When I’m already dressed as the coolest person in the room, why would I dress up like anything else?”

“Why indeed?” Scarlett shook her head, a slight smile lifting her lips at Hunter’s cocky statement. But when Hunter went back to looking at his phone, she glanced at Elyse and me and said, “I’ll keep working on him.”

The rest of our friends joined us at the table with their lunch trays, so we made room for them. My older brother Carter and his girlfriend, Ava—who was Elyse’s identical twin—sat on the side where Scarlett and Hunter were.

Carter’s best friend Mack, who was also our next-door neighbor, slipped into the spot on my left. And Elyse scooted closer to me to make room for my other brother Nash.

That’s right, my brothers and I actually chose to sit at the same table during lunch because we got along, strangely enough.

Now how did I come to havetwobrothers who were both seniors but not twins, despite the fact that they shared the same dirty-blond hair and aqua-blue eyes?

Well, that’s a long story, but basically, we all had the same dad—the famous billionaire businessman Joel Hastings—but while Nash and I were full-blooded siblings born a year apart, my dad got Carter’s mom pregnant a few months before he married my mom, so Carter was only seven months older than Nash.

Yep, my dad wasn’t just good at making money in his early twenties. He was also accomplished at producing heirs as well.

So my dad had three kids all born within a year and a half of each other in addition to being the stepfather to my oldest brother, Ian, who came from my mom’s first marriage.

Things were crazy when we were younger, and my parents had to hire a full-time nanny to help with all the chaos my brothers and I created. But we were all best friends now, and I knew that when Nash and Carter graduated at the end of the year, leaving me all alone for my senior year, I was going to miss them.

I was going to miss all my friends actually, since yep, you guessed it, they were all seniors and I was the only junior among us.

“So I was just asking Cambrielle and Elyse what they were going to wear to the Halloween dance,” Scarlett said once everyone had gotten themselves situated around the table. “What are the rest of you planning to dress up like?”

“I was thinking that I’d probably just go as myself,” Mack’s deep voice sounded from beside me. “I mean, why dress up when I could just go as the coolest person I know?”

“Hey, that’s what I said,” Hunter said with a smile, slipping his phone into his pocket now that the rest of the crew had joined us.

“Great minds.” Mack held out a hand to give Hunter a fist bump across the table.

Hunter bumped his fist against Mack’s knuckles. Bemused, I just shook my head, because while I loved my brothers’ best friends, they did have a certain arrogance to them.

Though, I guess I couldn’t really blame them. They were all basically the princes of Eden Falls Academy—popular, confident, and belonged to the nation’s wealthiest families. And while I was definitely not attracted to my brothers—becauseew—I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Hunter and Mack were super cute.

So cute that when we were all in middle school, I’d totally had a huge crush on Mack.

I’d gotten over that crush eventually, and moved on to liking other guys like Ben, of course. But yeah, Mack, Hunter, and my brothers did have most of the female population at our school crushing on them.

And yes, they knew it, too.

It must be nice knowing so many people wanted you.

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