Page 90 of The Facade

Well…so much for Elyse not figuring it out.

But if anyone could be trusted to keep a secret, it would be her. So when she pulled away again, I said, “Whatever you do, don’t tell my brothers. They won’t understand.”

She made a gesture of zipping her lips, and then said, “Secret boyfriend who?”

I smiled gratefully. “Thank you.”

As soon as she left, I looked at my phone and saw Mack’s text:Meet me behind the big oak tree after practice.

I texted him back, glancing at him across the way as I did so.

Me:Yes

And then, since I really couldn’t have anyone else looking at my phone and discovering our secret, I hurried and changed his name in my contact info.

“So,I think Elyse knows about us,” I told Mack after pulling away from the kiss he gave me when I met him at the oak tree.

“What makes you think that?” he asked, wrapping some of my hair around his finger as he played with it. It was a little thing, I knew. Him touching my hair. But I loved that he did it because it was a signal that he was mine. “Did she ask you?”

“Not outright,” I hurried to say. “But she saw me texting you, and I guess I looked a little happier than usual, so it made her think it was a guy. And then, when she saw you look my way in the library earlier, she put two and two together.”

“I looked at you for, like, three seconds.” He shook his head.

“I know.” I shrugged. “But apparently, that was all it took.”

“She must be a mind reader or something.” He chuckled lightheartedly.

“Probably.”

“Well, we almost made it five days with our little secret.” He sighed, combing his fingers through my hair and making chills race across my spine.

“It’s better than four, I suppose.”

“That’s definitely true.” And I loved the little half-smile he got on his lips. “Is she going to tell Ava? Because we all know that if Ava finds out, it’s only a matter of time before Carter finds out and tries to beat me up.”

“She said she’d keep it a secret, and out of all our friends, I trust her the most.” I shrugged. “But I did change your name in my phone. Just in case someone decided to go snooping.”

“You gave me a new name?” He arched a dark eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Alfred,” I said.

“Alfred?” He scrunched up his nose at the thought of being renamed Alfred. “Are you serious?”

“It was the least exciting name I could think of.”

“Well, if you’re going for the boring route—” He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me closer. “—I’m going to go for the exciting route and change your name to Mistress.”

“Mistress?” My jaw dropped open. “You can’t do that. Like, you really can’t. It makes our relationship sound illicit.Illegal.” I shook my head.

“Oh, I have to use it now.” His smile broadened, like he was loving how worked up I was getting over this. “In fact…”

He pushed himself away from the tree and fished his phone out from his back pocket.

“What are you doing?” I asked when he unlocked his screen and started typing something into his phone.

“I’m changing your name to Mistress.”

“But you can’t do that,” I said. “What will people say when they see ‘Mistress’ written across your phone?”

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