Chapter 17

Sofia

His words change my blood to ice water in an instant. He knows.

“I can explain,” I say in a hush, moving deeper into the kitchen. I don’t want the kids to hear. Their footsteps thunder across the upstairs hallway and disappear into one of the carpeted bedrooms, but I’m sure they’ll be back down any second. They wanted to raid the downstairs game room and find something to play with me. “I know that it sounds bad, but I did what I had to do. I was only trying to save my sister. Either of you would have done the same for each other.”

Lucas scoffs. “James,” he says, nodding toward his brother. “Why don’t you go watch the kids?”

“Because they’re ten and five,” James replies flatly. “They don’t need me to, and more importantly, I don’t want to.”

“Then just get the hell out of here,” Lucas growls at his brother. But his eyes never leave me. “I need to talk to Maggie in private.”

I gulp and almost plead with James to stay. He pushes up from his stool and marches out of the kitchen, glowering down at me as he passes.

My eyes twist back to Lucas. Now it’s just me and him in the kitchen.

I’ve never seen his gaze like this before. It’s dark, angry.

“Come on,” he commands, thrusting open the door to the finished basement and nodding down the carpeted steps. “I don’t want the kids to hear.”

I pull a deep, cleansing breath through my lungs and follow him downstairs. We reach the basement, with a circular couch and a flat screen TV that is still playing Netflix. Annoyed, Lucas snatches up a remote and turns the thing off.

I purse my lips and bind my hands together, not wanting to cry, knowing this was too good to be true. I knew this would happen, didn’t I? So, I can’t be sad. I knew this was coming all along.

“Are you going to turn me in?” I ask, voice trembling. “Or just kick me out?” There’s no way he’ll let me stay. Not under the same roof as his children. I’m hopeful, but not stupid.

Lucas whirls on me and swallows, eyes hard. Unforgiving. “I don’t fucking know, Mag—Sofia,” he hisses. “I don’t fucking know what I’m going to do. How dare you put me in this kind of position?”

I open my mouth to defend myself, and it takes a while for words to start coming out. “I—It—I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I didn’t realize what I was doing. I just saw Fig leaving, and she left the door open. There was an investigator looking for me. I didn’t expect you to really hire me. I wanted to be out of sight for as long as possible. The luck of it all was so incredible.”

“Yeah, the luck of it all for you,” Lucas snaps. “You being here isn’t so lucky for me.”

I purse my lips together and ignore the way my heart aches. “Sure,” I breathe, thinking of the stolen glances, thinking of him buried deep inside me only last night. But I was bad luck. He wishes he’d never met me at all. “I’m sorry. I should have just left, but the background check cleared. And you were offering me cash and a place to stay. It was never supposed to go on this long. I just kept faking it for one more day.” My heart squeezes hard in my chest. “I didn’t expect you. I didn’t expect us.”

“There can be no ‘us’ if I never even knew you,” Lucas seethes. “Who the hell are you? Who is Sofia Marshall?”

“Nobody,” I promise him, meaning it. “I’m a girl with a twin sister.”

“Did you really get your degree in child psychology?”

“No,” I say.

“Did you ever work as a babysitter for either of those references?”

“That was Maggie, too,” I whisper. “I never got my degree. I went backpacking through Europe and India, and I wrote a travel blog. I came back here and I,” I wince, because I don’t have anything better to tell him. He’s the president of a company, and here I am, with my backpacking blog and my stupid old retail job. “I came back here to America and I started managing a store in the mall. I applied to colleges, but I never ended up registering for anything. We found out Maggie had this tumor in her hand, but she didn’t have any insurance. She was still in school. No job. No way to pay for it.”

Lucas nods, and some empathy finally filters into his eyes. “So, you had to do it. You had to do it for her treatments.”

I nod, and my heart aches to even talk about her. I miss her so much, and the next time I see her, it’ll probably be through Plexiglas. “That’s why we get away with so much,” I whisper. “Because we look exactly alike. Except Maggie has cancer. That’s the main difference.” I shake my head.

In spite of everything that has happened to me as a result of the fraud, my eyes cloud with tears at the memory of Maggie’s struggle. I still have no regrets, even if he kicks me out, right now, even if he calls the cops. I don’t care. Maggie received her chemotherapy treatments and her follow-ups for over a year before I was caught. She’s better now because of me. So, it was all worth it. She’s cancer-free.

“I don’t know how I got caught,” I go on. “But they put a fraud investigator on my account and he figured it out pretty quickly, once he knew that we were twins. She must’ve filled out a form wrong or something. One slip. That’s all it takes sometimes.”

Lucas swallows and settles down onto the basement couch, looking less certain of all his anger and accusations. “I didn’t know that,” he says. “James just told me that you were wanted for fraud. But I didn’t know it was so your sister could get chemo.”

I shrug. “Does it matter? Laws are laws. I committed hard fraud. Healthcare fraud, for fuck’s sake. I broke federal law, and that means I’ll wind up in jail for this.”

Lucas’ rich brown eyes pan up to me. “It matters,” he assures me. “It matters to me.” His chest rises and falls with a deep breath. “But I don’t know what we’re going to do about it.”

What we’re going to do?

“You can’t let me stay,” I say.

It’s true. Didn’t he just finish an ugly custody battle with Astrid? If she were to find out my true identity, she could use that to take him back to court and try to get the kids again. “I have enough cash to get by for a while. Just let me go. That’s all I ask. Just don’t call anybody.”

Lucas stands and drives a hand through his dark hair, marching back and forth. “You don’t have a car,” he reminds me, as if I don’t remember that. “You barely have any money. You don’t know anyone in Fallaway Peak, and that investigator is looking for you.”

“The investigator assigned to my case has been here already,” I say. “Twice. I never answered the door. It’s already over, Lucas.”

Lucas freezes in his pacing. His eyes flick to me from over his broad shoulder. “They know you’re here?”

“I don’t think so,” I rush. “If they knew that I was here, Callahan could’ve gotten a warrant. His name is Agent Finn Callahan. I’m from Ohio.” Why not go ahead and untangle the entire ball of yarn for him? Let’s open up the closet. Let all the skeletons out. “Callahan has been following me for weeks. I needed to use credit cards and my bank card to get this far, and before all my accounts got frozen, he could follow the trail. Right to Fallaway Peak. It was rainy, and I went off the road. Went into the woods. And, by some miracle, I found you.”

“Fuuuck.” He laughs unexpectedly and shakes a finger at me, like I’m such a little scamp. “You—damn it. You didn’t know anything about Graytech. You never fucking spoke to Rachel. That is kind of amazing.”

I shake my head and Lucas’s palm massages over his forehead. “I let a complete stranger sleep in my guestroom and take my kids to school,” he mutters. “I gave you cash, gave you gate codes, gave you a key. I went raw and came inside this total stranger.” Each word brings a fresh cold pang to my heart. It’s acoustic and tinny. Empty. “What the hell is going on with me?”

“Stop saying that,” I whisper. “Stop calling me a total stranger, Lucas. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything. I just tricked you. That’s all.”

Lucas grimaces and nods. “We need to do something,” he mutters. “You can’t live under your sister’s name forever. It’s going to ruin both your lives, and you’ll be caught. You’ll get caught someday. This town could fit on the head of a pin. Damn it.” His jaw tightens, and Lucas shakes his head. “Damn it,” he repeats. “There’s no other way. You have to deal with this. You can’t keep running.”

I know that’s true. I’ve only been delaying the inevitable. Lucas is going to turn me in. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the only way he can protect the kids. It’s the only way he can protect himself. And it’s my destiny. I deserve it. I conned Priority Platinum out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am a fraud. I close my eyes and swallow. “All right,” I breathe. “Do whatever you think is right, Lucas. I won’t stop you.”