Chapter 10
777 Words
The secret had rules.
They made them late one night, texting across the hall, the wall between their rooms suddenly the thinnest thing in the world.
No touching where anyone could see. No looks held too long at dinner. No telling anyone. Behave normal in public — which, for them, meant going back to the fake bickering that had everyone convinced they could barely stand each other.
It worked. Mostly.
The problem was the house.
The house was full of small moments that nobody else would notice. His hand brushing her back as he passed behind her in the kitchen. Her foot against his under the table. The way they'd both reach for the same thing and let their fingers touch for one second too long.
Tiny, secret, everywhere.
"You're going to get us caught," Aria whispered one morning.
He'd just set a coffee down in front of her — made the way she liked it, which he'd learned without being told — and let his hand rest near hers on the counter a beat too long.
"Nobody's looking," he murmured.
"Your mom is right there."
"My mom is reading. She's not looking."
But he moved his hand, because she was right, and because getting caught was the one thing that could end this before it even started.
The hardest part was the dinner table.
Every night, the four of them. The parents talking about wedding plans, growing happier and more settled by the day, completely unaware that their two kids were holding the biggest secret in the house under the same roof.
"We were thinking a spring wedding," Victoria said one night, glowing. "Small. Just close family. You two would stand up with us, of course."
Aria's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
Stand up with them. At the wedding. As brother and sister.
She felt Cayden go still beside her.
"That sounds nice," Aria managed.
"Yeah," Cayden said. "Nice."
Under the table, his hand found her knee and stayed there — not flirtatious this time, just steadying, the two of them anchoring each other through a moment that drove home exactly how impossible this all was.
Later, in the dark hallway, he caught her hand.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
"The wedding thing got to me," she admitted. "Standing up there. Pretending. While we're—"
"I know."
"It's going to keep getting harder, isn't it."
He pulled her into his room, eased the door almost shut, and held her in the dark.
"Yeah," he said into her hair. "It probably is."
"So why are we doing this?"
He pulled back just enough to look at her.
"Because I tried not doing it," he said. "And it was worse."
She rested her forehead against his chest and let herself stay there for a moment, in the one place in the house where they didn't have to pretend.
His room had become that — the one room with the door that locked, the one place they could be the people they actually were instead of the brother and sister everyone else saw.
"I found something out today," she said.
"What?"
"Priya thinks I hate you."
He laughed, low and quiet.
"Good. The bickering's working."
"She said, and I quote, I don't know how you live with someone that insufferable."
"I am a little insufferable."
"You're a lot insufferable."
"You like it."
She did. That was the problem. She liked all of it — the secret and the danger and the way the most impossible person in her life had turned out to be the one she'd been trying to remember for eight months.
A sound downstairs.
They both froze.
Footsteps. The creak of the bottom stair.
Aria slipped out of his room and was halfway to her own door when Daniel appeared at the top of the stairs.
"Hey, kiddo," he said. "You're up late."
"Couldn't sleep," she said. "Going now."
"Night."
"Night, Dad."
She went into her room and closed the door and pressed her back against it, heart pounding.
Too close.
Across the hall, she heard Cayden's door click shut.
Her phone lit up.
That was close, his text said.
I know, she sent back.
A pause. Then: Worth it though.
She looked at the message in the dark, and despite the fear still buzzing under her skin, she smiled.
Worth it though, she typed back.
And put the phone down, and lay in the dark, and listened to the quiet house that had no idea what it was holding.
For now, the secret was safe.
But secrets in a house this small never stayed safe for long.
And theirs had only just begun.
- Writer
