Me: Yeah. I just crashed for a little nap, but I’m about to order some room service.
Noah: I’m having something delivered to your room. I know it won’t make up for the chef, but … I hope it helps a little.
Me: Oooh, how mysterious. Do I get any hints?
Noah: Nope.
Me: Ugh. Fine. HOW EXCITING. I’ll let you know when it gets here.
I grinned, hopping out of bed to change into my pajamas while I waited for my surprise. Less than ten minutes later, there was a knock on my room door. When I swung the door open, my mouth fell open.
“Surprise.”
My husband stood in the hallway, a shit-eating grin on his handsome face and a small suitcase next to him.
“You’re here?” I whispered.
His eyes softened, drinking in every inch of me—messy bun at the top of my head, scraggly pajamas that I’d had for a decade. “Where else would I be for our anniversary?”
I threw myself at him, and he swept me up in his arms, slanting his mouth over mine in a ferocious kiss.
One week away from him, and it had felt like a year. My arms clutched tight around his muscular shoulders, and I reveled in the smell and feel and taste of him. The way his lips felt under mine, the hot sweep of his tongue in my mouth, and the strength in his body as he held me to him.
Noah walked us into the hotel room, kicking the door shut behind him.
I ran my hands over his chest and along his side, and he slid his palm underneath my pajamas, cupping my breast as I whimpered. The edge of his thumb tracked a tight circle over the tight flesh, and in less than thirty seconds, I was ready to let my husband bang me against the hotel room wall.
He was here. In Arizona. Because I had to miss our anniversary and was sad about it.
Slowly, I cupped his face and gentled the kiss. Noah’s hand coasted over my waist, and up along my back, holding me tight against the warm frame of his body.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I said against his mouth.
Noah heard the wobbly tears in my voice and pulled back, sliding his hand over the side of my face.
His smile was small, just a hint of a grin, and it was my favorite of all his smiles.
That was the smile he gave me when he was trying to figure out how to tell me just how much he loved me. I knew that after five years.
“Are you kidding?” His eyes traced over my face, touching the longest on my mouth. “You started talking about beds and the things you wanted to do in them.”
I laughed. “That did the trick?”
He hummed. “Then I went snooping.”
Noah dipped his knees, running the edge of his nose over the line of my jaw and inhaling slowly.
“Did you?” I whispered.
“I found that black lace thing in your drawer. You failed to mention that when you told me about our anniversary plans.” My laugh was watery, because the love I felt for him was just so stupid big and wonderful, and his thumb tracked away the tear that slid down my cheek. “When we got off the phone, I checked the departure times at SeaTac. There was a direct flight leaving two hours later.”
I grinned. “How much did that ticket cost?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. And I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be with you. Nothing else mattered.”
I broke away from our kiss, breathless and heart-happy. “Great answer,” I whispered.
He knelt over me on the bed as he laid me down, and I kissed him again, sighing into the sleek soft feel of his lips.
Maybe nothing went the way I’d planned it, but somehow … it was exactly, utterly, perfectly us.
Volume 2: Faked
FAKED
Dedication
To Fiona Cole,
Without her willingness to listen to my ranty voice messages about fictional people, this book would have turned out very, very differently.
#dreamteam
CLAIRE
I didn’t always have a crush on Finn Davis. There were about ten minutes there, back in seventh grade when he showed up, that he really pissed me off.
Not because of anything he did, per se. Because he’s always been the same guy. Quiet and observant when he was in public, a knife-sharp sense of humor and playful personality when he was with people who knew him the best. No, Finn was the recipient of my thirteen-year-old rage for those ten minutes because he was the reason I hated being a twin for the first time in my life.
Lia and I were identical. Teachers and fellow students often confused us if they didn’t know us well.
On that day in seventh grade, when the principal brought Finn into our classroom, Lia and I met him at the same time. But there was something about her, some energy buzzing at an undetectable level, that drew his attention and made him feel comfortable.
They’d been best friends ever since.
And I hated that I looked like her—exactly like her—and was still different enough that the sweet, shy new boy in class, the one with a cute smile and long legs, didn’t look twice at me.
I didn’t think about that day much anymore. It was eight years ago, and Finn was such a fixture in our family that my crush had lessened to a low-lying simmer. Barely detectable unless you held your hand directly over the heat.
But then I opened stupid Facebook. And saw a picture of him in his stupid “I’m going to be a doctor someday and don’t I look good in blue” scrubs, and I felt my heart die all the deaths from how cute he looked.
So now I couldn’t stop thinking about the day he appeared.
Couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Which is why I avoided my sister by locking myself in my room to study. I was so afraid that after all the years of locking up the butterflies that wanted to flutter through my veins at the sight of him, she’d take one look at me and know.
It worked, too, for a while.
When I felt my fingers burn with the urge to pull up the picture again to stare at his smile, at his dimples, and pretend I’d be a great doctor’s wife someday, I pulled up the one thing on social media guaranteed to stop any sort of heart flutters.
I searched for social media updates from our mother, Brooke, which was even more pathetic than my crush on Finn.
Crossing my arms on the surface of my desk, I dropped my forehead down, banging it a couple of times for good measure.
That was how I was sitting when my bedroom door burst open.
“What’s your problem?” Lia asked.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.