Too Late to Love Me novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Trending

I put on my sweater inside out and went to the window.

Down on Cedar Street, Regan stood on the curb in a white coat, holding a phone on a little stick.

Two friends from her sorority flanked her with their own phones up.

The counter in the corner of her screen read forty-one thousand viewers, and it was rising.

"Zachary Aldridge has a secret twin," she told the camera, in her sweetest voice.

"My family has been hiding something, you guys, and I can't keep it in."

"He's up there right now with his girlfriend."

"It's an Aldridge scandal, and I think you deserve to know."

Zane came to stand behind me in his unbuttoned shirt.

His chest was marked with the red print of my fingers, and I felt my face heat.

"She's guessing," he said.

"Your family can't have kept a twin secret for twenty-three years, and she knows it."

"She wants you to say something stupid on camera."

"Then I'll say something smart," I said.

I pulled on my jeans and my boots.

I held out my hand to him, and he looked at it.

"You can touch me now," I said.

"The rule's off."

"It's been off since the stairs."

He took my hand.

His was warm and rough and shook very slightly, and I felt that all the way up my arm.

Hattie met us on the second landing with a pizza box in one hand and the mallet in the other.

"I came to see the show," she said.

"I brought snacks."

We walked out into the cold afternoon together, the three of us.

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