Page 138 of The Bachelor

“I’ll have the same, thank you,” Oaklyn said to her.

When it was just the three of us, I studied my sister’s expression. It hadn’t faded even a little, her edges harder than before.

I dug for the right words. Where to start. How to make her understand that betraying her trust and lying had been so fucked up of us, but that it was the only way we had known how to do it.

“I don’t know if you’re going to believe me when I tell you this, but we had every intention of coming to you tonight and telling you about us.” I glanced at Oaklyn, worried that she was on the verge of falling apart. With the way her eyes were filling and her chin was quivering and her posture was sinking even deeper into the chair, I could tell she was seconds from losing it. “As soon as we got on the plane, I was going to text you and find out if you were free this evening. If you weren’t, we were going to tell you tomorrow.”

Hannah tucked her legs beneath her, resting her arms on the armrests. “Sure you were.”

“He’s telling the truth, Han.” Oaklyn’s voice was so soft. “I swear.”

“And what were you going to tell me exactly?” Her eyes penetrated mine. “That you’ve been fucking my best friend behind my back for, what, months now, and you’re going to dump her, just like you do every other woman? Camden”—her head dropped, her arms moving back to her stomach—“I can’t handle you hurting her and treating her like you do all the other women you’ve been with.”

“I’m in love with Oaklyn.” I let that settle in, watching as my sister slowly looked up at me. “Yes, you heard me correctly. I love Oaklyn. She’s nothing like all the other women. She’s the only woman. And the only woman who will ever be in my life again.”

She stared at me, blinking, processing, her gaze gradually moving to Oaklyn. “Why didn’t you tell me? You tell me everything—that’s who we are. We share every single part of our lives with each other. Yet this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you, and you wouldn’t name him. You would barely even talk about him. Why?”

The first tear fell down Oaklyn’s cheek, and I released her hand to catch it.

That simple graze of her skin caused her to look at me, love exploding from her eyes before she glanced back at my sister.

“Because you wouldn’t have understood.” Her answer was honest, raw. And the emotion in her voice and face showed just how hard it was for her to admit that. “Because if I’d told you I was in love with your brother, you would have said to me everything you just said to him. I didn’t want to hear it. If it was a mistake, I didn’t care; I still wanted to make it.” Another tear dripped, but I let that one fall. “Because Camden is the only man I’ve ever wanted to be with. The man I’ve thought about since the day we met as kids. The man I wanted to take my virginity.” She paused to breathe. “If I had said those things to you, you would have looked at me like you’re looking at me right now. You would have tried to stop me. You would have listed every reason why I shouldn’t have those thoughts.” She looked at me one more time and said, “I didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t want to be stopped.”

“This was a better alternative?” Hannah shot back. “To lie? To do it all behind my back? Knowing I would eventually find out?”

“Hannah,” I barked, “be careful how you speak to Oaklyn. She might be your best friend, but she’s the love of my life, and you might not like how things went down, but know this: best friends or not, you will not make her feel worse than she already does.” My teeth ground together. “And you won’t make her feel ashamed of what we did.”

While my sister stewed on those words, I returned to her line of questioning and said, “To answer you, I didn’t think you’d find out. I thought we’d been fairly careful. I was sure that tonight or tomorrow would be the first time you heard or thought of any of this.”

Hannah laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” I voiced.

She grabbed her drink from the table beside her, holding it with both hands, and she leaned forward. “I’ve been watching. I’ve known for a while. And then all the little nuggets you two were dropping just confirmed my suspicions. Exhibit A, when Oaklyn wouldn’t mention who Mystery Man was. Exhibit B, when Craig and I were alone in Ford’s kitchen and he accidentally mentioned your name and the dinner he’d thrown for you two. At your new house, which you hadn’t even told me about yet.” She rolled her eyes. “Exhibit C, when we were all together last and you”—she focused her attention on me—“wouldn’t take your eyes off my best friend. Exhibit D, when you”—she then shifted to Oaklyn—“turned into the heart-eyes emoji whenever I mentioned Camden’s name.”

“Hannah—”

“Oh, I’m not done, brother,” she said, interrupting me. “Exhibit E, what about the last-minute trip to Boston you supposedly took this week, but you booked the private jet to Sedona?” She took a sip and placed her drink down. “That took me all of two seconds to confirm, by the way. If you were really trying to be sneaky, you would have taken a commercial flight. At least, I wouldn’t have access to those flight logs.”

I’d told Craig not to say anything to my cousins, but I’d never mentioned keeping that secret from my sister.

But that was only a small part of the truth that she’d unveiled.

She’d known for a while.

Probably close to the very beginning.

She’d certainly outsmarted me.

Goddamn it.

She crossed her hands in her lap and smiled. “The plaintiff rests.” Her grin was so fucking sly.

“Just like Oaklyn said, if she had told you when things first started between us, you would have tried to stop us. Our beginning was a little unconventional”—I lifted my hand and cupped Oaklyn’s cheek, brushing my thumb over the corner of her lips—“but it was what we needed. Things had to move at our speed, on our timeline. If things had gone down differently, I don’t know if we’d be here now. Together.”

I concentrated on my sister again. “Yes, we did it all behind your back. That’s fucked up. We know that. Oaklyn has been a goddamn wreck over it. It’s made me feel sick because, like my girl, I don’t keep anything from you. And every day, we’ve talked about telling you and what that’d look like and what that’d feel like. Being in a relationship is all we want, but the thing we want equally as much is for you to support us.” I nodded toward Oaklyn. “If she doesn’t have that …” My voice trailed off. “I don’t know what’ll happen to us.”

Before Hannah could respond, Oaklyn said, “You’ve been my sister for more than half of my life, and for just as long, I’ve been crushing on your brother. I can’t imagine how that makes you feel. To know that every time I’m around him, I’m growing more in love with him. That I give him something I’ve never given to another man.”

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