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“Fantastic to hear.”
“What about that maid you were obsessed with?” Victor asks, turning on his stool to face me. “That daughter of our maid from when we were teenagers? Didn’t you once tell us that she was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen? What about someone like her?”
Emma...
I take in a deep breath and try to not let the memory of those years consume me in front of my brother.
Yeah, how much of a coincidence that I discover her in the hospital just days before my brother talks about her?
This is starting to get scary.
“Yeah, I did say something like that,” I reply to Victor. “But that was a long, long time ago.”
“Whatever happened to her?” Victor asks. “Did you ever follow up?”
I shrug. “She disappeared.”
It was good Mother never told anyone else in the family what she discovered about Emma and me - about our birthday liaison on the resort island. She kept that all secret from the family after she fired Emma’s mom. But that meant I was left to mourn that relationship on my own.
But I could never get my brothers involved, I knew that. I also like to keep some elements of my life private, especially back then as a young adult.
“Oh,” Victor replies. “That’s a shame. Although Mother would never approve of you getting with someone like a maid, anyway. No matter how beautiful she might be.”
“No,” I reply with all the strength in me holding back my emotions. “She certainly wouldn’t.”
Emma, Emma, Emma...
34
EMMA
I flick out my phone and double-check my email inbox.
Just in case...
But no. No email yet from the ballet school regarding a potential audition. No confirmation of a date when I might have to go in and perform in front of a scary panel of judges who hold my entire fate in their hands.
So why is my stomach spinning in knots?
I pocket my phone and continue on toward the staff room in the hospital to start my shift.
“This is all too much,” I mutter to myself like a madwoman.
I turn a corner, and then the worst thing that can possibly happenhappens.
I spot August coming straight for me. We lock eyes. The blueness of his seems to penetrate my soul and I’m frozen momentarily under his gaze.
Again?
It’s still crazy to see him here, in the flesh. He’s just so goddamn... tall and perfect.
And it makes me so angry. And confused. And even a tiny bit terrified.
My heart leaps into my throat and I duck into a nearby room to let him pass by.
But he definitely saw me.
Yeah, he most certainly did.
