Page 53 of Fool Me Twice

Finally, I got my tongue working. “She is not in the picture anymore.”

Confusion flashed in her eyes, quickly followed by disappointment. “Yeah, that’s what you said before.”

And what more could I say? No one in my life, other than Melba and one or two others, knew the truth about Sebastián.

Sebastián himself, certainly, had no clue.

I couldn’t just wake up one day and start telling a different story.

“She left.” I wiped my mouth with my napkin.

“I see,” Georgia murmured.

I tried not to cringe. If only Georgia hadn’t asked the question; if only she’d let sleeping dogs lie…

But I knew this wasn’t her fault. She was only curious and trying to help. She deserved full disclosure, but unfortunately I could not give that to her.

For the last eight years, I had been living a lie. I hadn’t meant for things to go that way; it had merely been a natural progression. The more time went by, though, the harder it became to come back from the road I had paved for myself.

“You don’t want to tell Sebastián that?” Georgia asked.

“He knows that.”

“Is that all he knows?” she pressed, not unkindly.

I cleared my throat. “It has never been an issue before.”

“Well, it seems like it’s becoming an issue now.”

When I didn’t respond, she raised her hands. “But it’s none of my business. I’ll be quiet about it now.”

“No. It is fine. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right, Rodrigo.” She caught sight of the time on the wall clock. “I need to head to bed, anyway. Good night.”

“Good night.” I waited until she was all the way upstairs to add, in a whisper, “I’m sorry.”

CHAPTER15

GEORGIA

“Why not demand he tell you the truth?” a very blurry Maddie asked on my laptop screen.

“Demand?” With a laugh, I rolled onto my back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “You make it sound so easy.”

“For you, it is. He would give you the moon if you asked.”

I rolled back to look at her. “That doesn’t mean I want to take advantage of his feelings. Anyway, he seemed so sad when he brought Sebastián’s mom up. So… frozen. And Sebastián was so unhappy as well. Like he’s just waiting for his dad to pick up on a cue.”

“Poor kid.” Maddie’s video froze on a frame of her turning away, but the audio kept going. “Parenting is so hard.”

“How do you know if you don’t have kids?”

Her video finally caught up with her as she sat on her couch. “It being hard is the reason I don’t have kids.”

Sighing, I raked my fingers through my hair. “I just want to help, but it’s also not my place. I’m here for work.”

“It sounds like you’re getting really attached to him, though.”

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