My Stepbrother Is My Secret novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Cover Story

Nobody moved.

The bounce house generator roared outside.

A kid screamed happily somewhere near the dump truck.

"Shut the door," Mateo said. "Please."

She stepped in and shut it.

Then she leaned against it with her arms folded and looked at the two of us.

"How long?" she asked.

"Since February," I said.

I don't know why I told her.

Maybe because she'd told us first.

"February." She whistled. "Under Pilar's nose. Under her actual roof." She shook her head slowly.

"I've known that woman since my baptism. Nobody gets anything past her."

"She knows," Mateo said.

"She knows?"

"She has pictures. She's using them at the gala."

The goddaughter's face changed.

"Then she doesn't care who you're with," she said. "She cares what it gets her." She turned to me.

"She told my mother I'd be perfect for him. She told my mother I'd make him settle down. She doesn't know about my fiancée."

"Nobody in my family knows."

"We won't tell," I said.

"I know you won't." She almost laughed. "That's the deal."

She picked my witch hat up off the workbench and put it back on my head, crooked.

"Okay," she said.

"Here's what I can do. Tomorrow night your mother's sending us on a date. Dinner downtown, her treat, she's already called the restaurant."

She looked at Mateo.

"So take me to dinner. Then drop me at a bar with good Wi-Fi so I can call Houston for three hours."

Mateo looked at me.

"And then go wherever you want," she said. "I'll text you when I need a ride home."

On Saturday night at nine, my phone buzzed once.

"Back gate. Two minutes."

The silver sedan was out front under the pecan tree, where it always was.

The alley behind my house was dark and full of dogs.

I stood at the chain-link gate in a sweatshirt and bare feet.

The black pickup came down the alley with its headlights off.

He got out in a pressed shirt and a jacket that smelled like her perfume.

"You smell like a cat," I said.

"I smell like a very expensive steakhouse." He stopped at the gate.

"She ordered the most expensive thing on the menu and sent my mother a picture of it."

"I like her."

"I like her too. Open the gate, Cass."

I opened it.

He came through and shut it behind him and stood in my backyard under the clothesline.

"How long do we have?"

"She said three hours." He checked his phone. "She also said not to be stupid."

"Too late."

I took his hand and walked him in my back door, through my little kitchen, down the hall.

The bed was put together now.

My father had come back with the bolts on Tuesday and put it together himself, humming.

I sat on the end of it.

Mateo stood in the doorway.

"I keep thinking about the shed," he said.

"Me too."

"You said you were jealous."

"I was."

"You said you'd never been jealous of anybody in your life."

"I hadn't."

He came and crouched in front of me, so his eyes were lower than mine.

"Then I need to say something before anything else happens," he said. "So you don't think it's because of the bed."

I waited.

"I love you," Mateo said.

He said it plainly.

Something he'd checked twice.

"I've loved you since the storm. Since you knocked on my door with a flashlight and no idea where the breaker was."

"I didn't say it, because saying it in that house felt like handing her something."

He put his hands on my knees. "I'm not in that house. I'm in yours."

My throat closed.

I looked at him for a long time.

I wanted to say it back.

I could feel it sitting right behind my teeth.

But there was something in his face, under the love, that I didn't have a name for yet.

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