She Catfished Him With My Face, So This Time He Is Mine novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Pray for Leah

Brooke arrives at Leah's restaurant with flowers and a camera, and Dean comes with a ring box. Leah turns both away in front of the kitchen and logs into Brooke's fake account, where Brooke has just told Miles that Leah wrote the messages.

I was breaking down eight cases of mussels when Brooke walked into the kitchen with a bouquet and her phone held out in front of her.

"Hi, everyone, I'm just checking on my best friend," she said to the screen. "She had a rough morning."

Six line cooks stopped chopping.

My boss stood at the pass with an order slip in his hand and his mouth open.

"Brooke," I said. "You can't film in here."

"Aw, babe, I'm not filming you. I'm filming the love." She put the flowers in my arms. "Say something sweet to everyone watching."

There were two hundred people watching.

I looked at the number in the corner of her screen, and then at the knife in my right hand.

I set the knife down on the board, clean side up, because I was a cook and that was the rule.

Then I took her phone out of her fingers.

"Leah!"

"You said you deleted it." I held the screen toward the cooks so they could see the video of me, standing at the table with my bag in my fist. "You posted it, with a prayer on top."

"I was worried about you."

"You told a man I cry about being single, and then you posted me yelling at him."

My boss put the order slip down.

Brooke's eyes filled.

It was fast and perfect, and for ten years it had worked on me every time.

"I only want you happy," she said.

"Then get out of my kitchen."

Behind her, the back door opened.

Dean Carrow walked in with a small black box in his hand and the same easy smile.

"I was told you work here," he said. "I owe you an apology and a new start."

He opened the box.

Inside was a ring. It wasn't a diamond. It was a thin gold band with a tiny sapphire in it.

"A promise ring," he said. "I want to try again, Leah. Properly this time."

The cooks had gone silent again. Somebody dropped a whisk.

In my first life I had said yes to this ring.

I had worn it through a wedding I barely remembered, and a year of a husband who looked at his phone at dinner.

I closed the box with one finger.

"Dean, listen to me. In two years you're going to be standing at my front door with a bag, and Brooke is going to call you from another city and say she needs you."

His smile went away.

"What are you talking about?"

"You're going to go to her. You'll leave me in the hospital, and you won't come back."

"That's not funny."

"It isn't a joke."

He stared at me. Then his eyes flicked to Brooke, only for a half second, and she gave him the smallest shake of her head.

I saw it.

"Dean's just being sweet," Brooke said quickly. "Leah, you're upset."

"Take the ring," I said to Dean. "And the flowers, and the lie she filmed with this phone."

I pushed the bouquet into his chest.

He took it without a word.

They left together, and my boss was the one who cleared his throat.

"Take your break," he said. "Your friend's kind of a lot."

I went out to the back steps and sat down with my hands shaking.

Then I did the thing I'd been afraid of since the alley.

I knew Brooke's passwords. She'd used the same one since college, her dog's name and the year we met.

I opened the app where she'd made her second account, the one called Harbor Girl with all my pictures.

The password worked.

Two years of messages sat in a long gray column.

The ones from Miles were short at first, then longer, then written almost like letters.

I scrolled to the bottom.

The latest message from him had been sent that morning at 6:40, before the brunch.

You aren't the person I've been talking to, he'd written. I'd like to know who is.

And under it, sent twenty minutes ago, was Brooke's answer.

She's unwell, babe. She wrote those messages as me for two years and I let her. I didn't know how to stop her.

She meant me.

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