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“Yeah. I owe you that much.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I don’t even know where to start. My name is Rowe Prince. I-I mean, I guess you figured that out already?”
I nodded. “I know who you are. What I don’t know is why you did it. Why pretend to be Sterling Chase?”
“It’s kind of a long story. I wanted to get into the gala so I could talk to Justin Hardy, like I told you. I really do have a project I want to pitch to him. That part was true.” His eyes implored me to believe him.
I squeezed his hand tighter. “Christ, sweetheart, what did you think would happen when you actually met Justin and he realized who you were? Did you think he wouldn’t care that you’d been impersonating someone?”
“I never intended to impersonate anyone, I swear! The project…” He blew out a breath. “I’ve spent years working on it, Bash, and weeks and weeks here in New York trying to get an incubator or development company to show an interest in it, starting with Sterling Chase. But one after another, every company’s turned me down flat. I’m running out of money. Out of time. Justin is the last potential contact I have. So I figured, okay, maybe the project doesn’t look great on paper. I don’t have the right credentials or contacts. My cover letter’s not exciting enough. But if I could talk to Justin face-to-face, if I could get him excited about the project, that could make a difference.” Rowe chewed his lip. “So I got an invitation to the gala, I borrowed my cousin’s tux, and I showed up. I didn’t know whose invite I’d gotten until I was already wearing the name badge, and then it was too late. I fell behind a potted plant, and thereyouwere, and…” He shrugged.
“And you got caught up.”
Rowe gave a watery chuckle. “Yes. God. Worse than ever before, yeah. And suddenly, I was talking in a funny voice, and making up stories about Borneo, and giving Miranda Baxter-Hicks fashion advice, and riding in a fancy car, and staying at a swanky hotel, and talking to horses, and kissing in the barn… and I never expected it to go this far.” His big brown eyes were wide and innocent. “You might find this hard to believe, but I’m not a very good liar most of the time.”
I laughed out loud and ran a hand over my face. “God.”
“And I kept saying to myself, ‘You should tell him, Rowe. He seems like a nice guy. Maybe he’d get it.’ But I couldn’t, because…” His face, which had been pale with nerves, flushed pink.
“Because?”
“Well, two reasons, I guess. I kept telling myself it was because I just didn’tknowif you’d get it. Like, what if you were angry? What if I’d blown my opportunity to get this project made because I’d trusted you when I shouldn’t? And I couldn’t take that chance because getting this project made… I’m not just doing it for myself.” He licked his lips. “Do you remember I mentioned my s-sister?”
He stumbled over the word, and I frowned. “Yeah. You said it was complicated.”
“Not so complicated, really.” Rowe’s words came tumbling out of him like he’d been damming them up for an hour. “Daisy died. Ten years ago.”
“What?” I blinked at him in shock. “Shedied?”
He nodded. “It was this random, fluke accident. She was playing softball at school, like she had a hundred times before, and a softball hit her in the chest.” He rubbed his own breastbone and stared at the lamp over my shoulder like his mind was seeing something very different, then went on softly, “She was standing there smiling one minute, on the ground the next. And I kept waiting for her to get up and start screaming at the pitcher, you know? But…” He shook his head sadly. “She didn’t. Later, they told us a million little electrical impulses misfired at once, and her heart stopped. The coach used an AED machine to shock her, but it didn’t work. The ambulance came, and they tried, too, but…” He pulled his hand away so he could wrap his arms around his waist, curling into himself protectively. “It turned out she had a heart condition we didn’t know about. It all happened so fast… Suddenly, it was just over. She was gone. We were fourteen.”
We. Jesus Christ. Daisy was his twin.
“Rowe…” Not for one second did I doubt that he was telling the truth. Liar he might be, but the raw ache in his voice was unmistakable. I reached out to run a finger over his wrist, just a light touch because I couldn’t resist connecting with him physically to make sure he knew I cared. To make sure he knew I heard him deep inside.
Rowe’s voice shook as he continued. “We’d always been a team. The Prince twins, taking on the world. But Daisy was the brave one. The one with all the plans to save the environment, to achieve world peace somehow, to find true love. The one who’d pull me away from my sketchbooks and make me join the three-dimensional world again. After she died, I was… alone. And I didn’t know how to navigate life when the best part of me was gone.”
“That’s not true. Fuck, Rowe, I’m so sorry you went through that, but you’re wrong—”
He smiled a little. “I know. Or, more like, I figured it out eventually. One day after a counseling session, I was sitting outside, and this voice in my head that sounded exactly like my sister said, ‘Listen up, dork face. If part of you died with me, part of me lives with you. So stop wasting our time anddosomething.’ She always used to talk like that, you know? Wasting time, running out of it. Like she somehow knew she wouldn’t have much.”
I tugged on his arm until I had his hand safely gripped between both of mine once again. I wanted to take him in my arms, but I wasn’t sure he’d welcome that. So many facts I’d accumulated about this man slotted into place. The things he’d said to Constance at the gala. Even the things he’d said to the horse back at the barn. Rowe had been crushed by the shitty hand life dealt him—just like Dev had, just like Silas had—but now he was using that loss to propel himself toward something better. To take his idea, whatever it was, and make it a reality.
He let out a shaky breath. “So I got off my ass. I got out the sketchbook I use for design ideas, and I started hatching ideas for this project instead. And when I tell you I had no idea what I was doing, I mean if I’d set out to learn rocket science in Russian, it might have been easier. I had to research the fuck out of things, and teach myself technical shit that still seems over my head sometimes, and be brave enough to ask for help. And once I got it to the point where I thought it could really be something good and useful, something that would help people like Daisy, I saved up my pennies and came to New York—”
“And then put on a tux and went to a gala.” I nodded. “I get it now.”
“I couldn’t nottry, Bash. And I can’t fail. I don’t want to let Daisy down.”
The shell around my own heart cracked.
“I didn’t set out to lie. Not really. I mean, not beyond getting into the gala,” Rowe continued in a rush. “Just find Justin, beg him for a meeting, and leave. And if it had worked out like that, maybe the whole stolen-invite thing would just be a funny story I’d tell at parties.” He scrubbed at his eyes with his free hand. “I mean, if you do something reckless and get caught, people call you a fool. If you do something reckless and succeed, they call you daring and brave. Right?”
I huffed out a laugh. “You might have a point.”
“But anyway, Justinwasn’tthere, and youwere, and you noticed me, and…” Rowe shook his head and stared at our joined hands. “Well, that’s the second reason I didn’t tell you the truth right away.”
“Because I noticed you?” I wrinkled my forehead. “I don’t get it.”
“Ugh.” He tugged on his hand, but I wouldn’t let him go. “You gave me that smile. You were so kind, no matter how ridiculous I was. You did the eyebrow thing that made me go all hot. You made me laugh, even when laughing was the last thing I wanted to do. You brought me those damn prosciutto bites. And it felt like you were on my… myteam, Bash, when I hadn’t had a team in forever. I was caught up,” he whispered. “Caught uptight. And if I told you the truth, all of that would have gone away.Poof. So I was Cinderella, telling myself just one more dance, just one more, just one, before I re-pumpkin-ated.”
