Page 145 of The Ruse

And when Elyse slipped her arms behind my neck to pull me close, I had that unexpected feeling that I’d had the last time she’d been in my arms.

The feeling like I was home.

I hadn’t felt like I’d had a home in such a long time.

I’d had places where I’dlived. Places that I could go to hide from the rest of the world.

But they’d never felt like a home that was actually mine. Those homes had always belonged to someone else.

My aunt Vivian’s home had gotten close. And when she’d told me I could call it home and be the place where I could spend my holidays and summer vacations, it had felt right.

But it still wasn’tquitethere.

In this moment with Elyse, I finally realized why.

Because home didn’t always have to be a place. It wasn’t always a specific location that you could mark with an “X” on a map.

Sometimes, home was a feeling. A rare moment in time where you were wrapped in a cocoon of safety and love and acceptance from someone else you cared deeply about.

Someone you loved.

It was having someone know about the good and the bad parts and not just loving you in spite of them. It was having them love you because of the person they had shaped you to be.

Elyse and I still had so many more things to learn about each other—I had so many things I wanted to share with her. But I knew that Icouldshare those things with her because of who she was as a person.

She was the girl with a heart of gold, who had a weakness for loving broken things.

Which wasn’t really a weakness at all in my book.

It was her strength.

EPILOGUE

SCARLETT

“Doidentical twins run in your family or something?” I asked Elyse after poking my head through the curtains to look out at the audience. It was opening night forThe Phantom of the Opera, and as the head of the school newspaper, I had a backstage pass to interview the cast before the musical started.

Not that I’d needed to come backstage to talk to them really, since they were all my best friends and we had already talked about everything earlier. But it was fun being back here and soaking up some of the high energy everyone was putting off as they rushed around to make sure everything was ready for the performance.

“Why do you ask that?” Elyse glanced at me briefly. She was helping Asher put on the gray beard he had to wear while he played the aged version of Raoul at the beginning of the musical. She was already dressed in a red dancer’s costume—a corset leotard thing with long gold fringe for the skirt, with her hair half up and curled.

“Because there are two super hot guys sitting next to your mom and dad that I’ve never seen before.” I opened the curtain a crack and pointed toward the two boys our age that I didn’t recognize.

“My grandma was a twin,” Elyse said, frowning as she stepped up beside me to take a peek through the break in the curtains. “But my mom was an only child, so I don’t have any cousins on that side.”

Asher put a top hat on his head and came to see what we were looking at, draping his arm behind Elyse.

A few seconds later, they both seemed to notice the two guys at the same time because they smiled and said, “That’s Jace and Logan.”

“Jace and Logan?” I asked, not recognizing the names.

Elyse nodded. “They are actuallyAsher’scousins.” She pointed toward the right. “Which is why they’re sitting with Asher’s brother and his aunt and uncle.”

“So identical twins run inbothof your families?” I asked.

“I guess?” Elyse said, glancing up at Asher who was still looking out at the audience.

“Well, you guys better just plan on automatically having twins when you get married because those are some crazy odds.”

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