Accidentally His

Chapter 3: REVELATION

The room service had come, the food had arrived... silver lids over hot plates, champagne poured, strawberries dusted with sugar like we were the goddamn cover of a relationship ad. Jack pulled me into his lap, kissed my neck, fed me bites like we were in love. I smiled through it. All of it. Played the role to perfection. Because I had no plan. No next step. No clue how to get out of a fantasy I built with my own bare hands.

He talked about a new art exhibit opening next weekend. Asked if I’d go with him. I said yes. Of course I said yes. That’s what you say when you’re too deep in a lie to backtrack without detonating the whole house. My fork trembled in my hand. I told him it was from excitement.

Jack kissed my temple and said something about fate. I nearly choked.

I kept thinking: There’s got to be an explanation. There has to be.

I didn’t let myself consider the alternative... not yet. I wasn’t ready to admit I might have chased the wrong man. That the face I’d glued to that moment in the river might’ve been a stranger’s. That I’d spent half a decade reshaping my body, my life, my soul to be seen by someone who didn’t remember me. Maybe someone who wasn’t even there.

No. That couldn’t be true. I was sure it was him. I’d seen his face. I knew that jawline. Those eyes. The way his mouth twisted when he smiled. I’d know that face anywhere. Wouldn’t I?

My chest felt tight. My palms were sweating. I drank my champagne too fast and told myself I’d fix this. Figure it out. Find the truth. But not now. Not in front of him. Not while his arm was around my waist and his voice was in my ear and he was looking at me like he wanted to keep me.

So I leaned into him.

And I smiled.

And I pretended I wasn’t slowly realizing I had no idea who the f**k I just slept with.

He talked while we ate. About the art world. About some startup deal his friend just closed. About the villa his father was pressuring him to buy in the south of France. I nodded, laughed, asked questions like a good girl, all while my eyes traced the length of his arms and neck, searching for something... anything... that looked like a memory. The mole. That small, stupid, precious dot that wasn’t there. I had to stop myself from crawling back into his lap just to lift his shirt and double-check his lower back one more time. But I couldn’t. Not without looking completely unhinged. So I smiled and poured more champagne and told him I liked the idea of France, that villas were sexy, that he’d look good in linen. He grinned and kissed my jaw and said he loved how effortlessly I belonged in his life. The irony nearly choked me.

He offered to call me a car. I told him I’d rather walk. I needed the air. Needed to clear my head. He looked a little surprised, a little disappointed, but didn’t push. Instead, he kissed me hard before I left, one hand cupping my face like I was delicate and precious, and whispered, “Let’s do this again soon.”

I smiled and said, “Definitely.”

What I meant was: I need to go home and figure out who the f**k you are.

The moment I was out of his apartment and far enough down the street, I pulled out my phone again. I couldn’t stop myself. I searched for every photo I’d saved of him... the magazine covers, the party shots, the blurry pictures taken from a distance. I zoomed in on every one that showed his back. No mole. No sign of it. Just skin. My head was spinning. Could I really have gotten it this wrong? Could my memory be that distorted? I told myself it was the trauma. Maybe near-drowning messed with my brain. Maybe I projected the face. Maybe the mole wasn’t real at all. But that wasn’t true. I remembered it too vividly. Too clearly. There had been a mole. I’d seen it. I’d fixated on it for years.

So if Jack didn’t have it… then there was only one other option.

I didn’t let myself think it all the way through. Not yet. My mind hovered on the edge of a possibility I wasn’t ready to face. It felt too fragile, too big. Like once I named it, I wouldn’t be able to un-name it. I pushed it down, stuffed it into a corner of my mind and walked faster, heels clacking against the pavement like I had somewhere important to be, like I wasn’t just running from the collapse of the fantasy I built my entire self around.

By the time I got back to my apartment, I was shaking. Not visibly. Just inside. That buzz under the skin that never stops unless you cry or scream or sleep, and I wasn’t ready for any of those yet. I showered like it would rinse the mistake off me. Put on fresh lipstick like it could seal my doubts behind a better mouth. I curled up on the couch with my laptop and opened everything... Google, social media, news archives. Every mention of Jack Glasgow from the last ten years. Every image. Every video.

And then I saw it.

One sentence. A throwaway line in a Vanity Fair profile from four years ago.

“Jack is the public face of the family, while his twin brother, Ryan, has always preferred to stay out of the spotlight.”

My stomach flipped.

Twin. Brother.

There it was. The answer. The key. The beginning of the real story.

I sat frozen, rereading it four times just to be sure. I hadn’t made it up. I wasn’t crazy. There were two of them. Two men with the same face. And one of them had a mole.

Jack was the one I’d slept with. The one in all the pictures. The one I chased and caught.

But the boy from the river?

The one with the mole?

The one who saved me?

That had been Ryan.