Come As You Are Read online

  I want to be that cupcake.

  That cupcake really is orgasmic.

  After I leave, I call Mr. Galloway and update him.

  “Glad to hear it’s going well, and don’t forget, we have that opening coming up soon. If you deliver, we can create a beat. You could be the reporter to make it happen.”

  That’s exactly what I want. “I’ll make it happen, sir.”

  “Excellent. I’m told the advertising team is working overtime on the cause. As long as we get the ad support, we can start regular coverage.”

  Images of watchmakers and cologne purveyors flash before my eyes. If there’s any publication that can drum up the necessary ad money, it’s Up Next. That’s what they do—land big money in sponsors, making it possible to write these deep features and hopefully keep covering technology.

  “It’s going to be an exciting industry to follow,” I say, then I take stock of that comment for a second. Do I think it’s exciting because I care for Flynn? Or is it exciting in and of itself?

  But the memory of the tea brewing and the soundtrack to Aladdin playing flashes before me, calling for attention. They were cool, plain and simple. This is a huge growth area. “I should have the piece done shortly. I’ve finished all the interviews with people who have worked with him and those who compete with him, as well as analysts and experts. I just need two more short interviews with him, and one with his brother. I should be finished shortly after. I’ll turn it in a few days early.”

  “Excellent. I hope you’ll impress me. If you do, that will go a long way.”

  I terribly want to impress him, to win him over.

  The trouble is, every time I see the subject of my article, it’s harder and harder for me to be objective as I write about the man I’m falling for.

  19

  Flynn

  * * *

  We are officially freaking her out. It’s a trick we’ve employed since we were kids, and we probably will till the end of time. It honestly never gets old.

  Sabrina’s eyes drift from Dylan to me and back as we stand near the bleachers at the softball field in Central Park. We are the spitting image of each other. Being identical twins, it’s not hard to look exactly like my brother.

  But today, since we’re on the same softball team, the doppelgänger effect is operating at full power. We’re in matching outfits—white shirts, blue sleeves, with the Katherine’s jeweler’s logo on the back of our gear. We both wear cargo shorts.

  Sabrina’s hazel eyes are painted with the astonishment I’ve seen so many times when people meet us together.

  Her index finger drifts from me to him and back. “If you didn’t have black glasses, I’m not entirely sure I could tell you apart. But I think I could.”

  Naturally, that’s the cue for our next trick, something we did to our mom and our sister. We turn around, exchange eyeglasses, switch spots, do it again, then pivot once more to face Sabrina, playing our own game of three-card Monte. Two-Card twins.

  She makes a stop sign with her hand. “Stop. It’s too freaky.”

  “We freaked our Mom out all the time too,” Dylan says, laughing.

  Sabrina peers studiously at my twin. Her lips curve up. She points to Dylan’s wedding band. “Another way I can tell you apart is the wedding band. I hope you don’t pull the twin switcheroo trick on your wife?”

  He cracks up. “I would never do that to Evie. Plus, I feel like she could tell us apart because I’m ultimately more strapping and studly than my brother. I have more in certain areas.”

  I scoff at my brother, clapping him on the back. “Oh, that’s a good one.”

  “Wait.” Sabrina lowers her voice to a whisper. “Do identical twins have the same size . . .?”

  I laugh. “Actually, I don’t know because we haven’t compared. Ever.”

  Chuckling, she turns away from us briefly, perhaps to cover up that she’s laughing harder now. She tamps it down, clears her throat and taps her watch. “Love the party tricks, but can we chat now?”

  The game starts in thirty minutes, so we sit with Sabrina on the metal bleachers, and she interviews us about starting and selling our first company, and what we learned. Sometimes, we finish each other’s sentences.

  “What do you think makes Flynn a visionary?” she asks Dylan.

  He tries to suppress a smile. “He has twenty—”

  I jump in, shaking my head. “—eight thousand vision.”

  “Just like—”

  I point at Dylan. “—him.”

  Sabrina’s lips twitch like she’s trying to rein in a grin.

  When we’re done, Dylan says he needs to stretch before the game, so he heads to the field. She watches him then swings her gaze to me. “It’s funny to meet him after knowing you.”

  I arch an eyebrow, curious. “How so?”

  “This might sound weird, but you don’t seem like a twin when it’s just us chatting. But with him, you absolutely are.”

  “Did you expect me to seem like a twin?”

  “I think I did. Because it’s so much a part of your identity, or at least what’s been written about you. You’re always identified online as the Parker twins because of your first company, but when I’m with you, I don’t think of you that way.”

  “How do you think of me?”

  She nibbles on the corner of her lip, considering the question, it seems. “When it’s just you and me, I can see who you are shining through. You’re this fascinating, brilliant, thoughtful, creative man, and it’s hard for me to see how you ever shared credit with anyone.”

  “Keep thinking of me that way. I did everything on my own. It was all me.” I wink.

  “It’s more that you’re so uniquely you, from the pineapple to the poetry to the wordplay to your jokes. That’s you. Flynn Parker. Not Flynn the twin.” She holds her palms like scales, raising then lowering. “Then when I see you with your brother, you have this whole other twin-ness to you. It’s not a bad thing; it’s just different.”

  “Would you be different if I met your brother?”

  “We’re not twins. I’m five years older. He’s twenty-three.”

  “Right, but you’re close, aren’t you?”

  “Very much so. He’s amazing. He’s one of the reasons I wanted this opportunity so badly.”

  “In what way?”

  “I support my brother. I help pay his bills for school.”

  “You do?”

  She nods, a smile spreading instantly. “He’s going to divinity school, getting a master’s.”

  I take a moment to absorb the enormity of what she does for him. It’s hard enough to pay bills on her own, but to help the person she adores? “That’s amazing. I’m floored. What an incredible thing to do.”

  “I kind of raised him,” she says, a note of pride in her voice.

  “You did?”

  “We never knew our dad. He didn’t ever live with us. I suspect he knocked up our mom twice, and that was the extent of his role in her life. As for her, she started to check out when my brother was ten or eleven. I looked out for him after that.”

  “How did she check out?”

  She swallows and looks away. “She . . . well, let’s just say she doesn’t have the best track record with the law.”

  My eyes widen. “What happened, may I ask?”

  She counts off on her fingers. “Petty theft, shoplifting, then grand theft. She started by stealing small items from stores, then from rich neighborhoods—silver, china, expensive objects. Soon, she moved on to jewelry.”

  She says it all so matter-of-factly, but as someone raised by a happily married couple in a crime-free family, it’s hard to imagine this upbringing as normal. But that’s what’s shocking to me—this is Sabrina’s normal. It’s also what she’s strived to separate herself from, I surmise.

  “That must have been incredibly hard.”

  “She’s been in and out of jail most of my adult life. If she’s not in jail, she’s asking me for money.
She gambles a lot. She does what she wants, and she blasts into town asking for more. I do everything I can to avoid her, but she usually finds a way to show up when I least want her to.”

  I drag a hand over my jaw. “Damn. That’s tough, but it’s amazing that you help your brother.”

  The mention of her brother brings a radiance to her eyes. They sparkle when she talks about him. “She left for good when he was fifteen. He’s the reason I went to school in New York. I had a bunch of scholarships, but I needed to stay close and look after him. The only thing she left was the tiny condo she’d owned. I lived there with him when I was in college since he was still in high school. He was the most important thing to me—he still is—and he wound up doing a beautiful thing with his life.”

  Her smile is so warm and earnest it reaches someplace far inside me, finding a home. It makes me care even more for her, when I’m already wading into the deep end, so deep that my don’t-get-involved-with-work-associates rule is close to breaking. “Kevin is my hero. He has the biggest heart, and the strongest sense of right and wrong.”

  As she tells me about him, a stone of guilt digs against my ribs. Guilt for thinking she was after me for money. Guilt for wondering about her motives. She’s so genuinely focused on her brother, so giving of herself, and with the short straw she drew with her mom, I can’t see her in the same category as the women in my past.

  “You’re good people,” I say, silently exonerating myself from doubting her a week ago. I don’t doubt her anymore. I know who she is.

  She blushes. “Thanks. Speaking of good people and maybe not-so-good people, what do you think of Kermit La Franchi? He asked my best friend how the story was going. Isn’t that odd?”

  I swallow hard, the pleasant balloon of our conversation now popped. “Sabrina, I think he knows about us.”

  She cringes. “What?”

  I tell her what happened in the hall after she hightailed it from the party, wishing I didn’t have to be the bearer of bad news. “He asked me for an interview too. I held him off, but he called Jennica and is trying to weasel his way in.”

  “That’s why he said I stole his scoop. Which is ridiculous. But are you going to do one with him?”

  “He’s determined, and Jennica convinced me since he’s becoming quite a playmaker in this space. But I won’t be talking to him until we’re done.”

  She fidgets with her earring, twisting a daisy-petal stud back and forth. “What if he knows Bob Galloway? What if he says something to him about what he thinks happened with us at the party?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Fear seems to flash across her eyes. “He’s Evil Kermit.”

  “That was just a part he played,” I say, trying to reassure her, though I’m not entirely sure there’s nothing to worry about.

  “I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone.”

  And that—that I understand. “We’ll deny it. He has no evidence. All he knows is I had your halo, and that doesn’t prove anything. I don’t want you to lose this chance with the article and Up Next. I know how much it means to you.”

  Her lips quiver, then she presses them together. Her voice is a feather when she speaks again. “Stop it. Stop being so sweet and thoughtful.”

  “I’m not being sweet and thoughtful. It’s just how I feel.”

  “And how you feel is because you’re good and generous, and I wish I didn’t have a job on the line.”

  “Me too.” As I glance at the field where Carson tosses the softball to Jennica as they warm up, I know we all have something on the line.

  I do my best at Haven to take away my employees’ worries by treating them well, treating them like family. I wish I could take away Sabrina’s worries. I wish I could do something to make her life easier. I don’t know what it would be though.

  Grabbing my glove, I vow to try and figure it out as I play the game today.

  “Wait.” She reaches for my shirtsleeve, her voice dropping to that low, sultry tone that absolutely obliterates my resolve. “Do you want to know how I could tell you and your brother apart?”

  “How?”

  She zeroes in on my face, her voice barely audible. “Your lips. I’d recognize them anywhere.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because they drew me to you. They’re the reason I talked to you that night. I wanted to kiss you as soon as I saw you.”

  I ache with desire. It fills every cell in my body. “I wanted to kiss you. I wanted it so fucking much.”

  And God, I want it again.

  I want it again so badly that I strike out all three times I’m at the plate, because my mind is on what I can’t have.

  The woman I’m falling for.

  When the softball game is over, we head to a café. Ostensibly, she wants to talk about the future of tech, and we touch on that briefly, but mostly we just chat. She tells me more about her mom. She talks about Ray too, how devastated she was when he left her but how her work as a reporter was critical to her moving on. She poured herself into her job, and as she tells me this, I understand even more of what makes her tick—who she is beneath the mask she wore the night I met her.

  “Remember the dress I wore to the costume party? The angel wings?”

  “Yes. They were satin or something soft.”

  “Chiffon. That was my unused wedding dress. Everything was ready, then he called and said he was leaving the country.”

  My jaw tightens. “Do you think he was cheating on you?”

  “It’s possible. He might have been lured by gambling, by another woman, or by his own unhappiness. I don’t actually know.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  She pauses, seeming to consider the question. “For the longest time, I did. I wanted to understand. But ultimately, I had to accept that maybe this is one of those things I won’t ever have an answer to, just questions. So, I’ve learned to let it go. It’s an unsolved mystery, and I learned from it.”

  “What did you learn?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t say that she never wants to get involved with a man again.

  “I learned I won’t always have the answers, and that’s okay.” She offers a small smile. “What about you?”

  “I learned to be cautious about who I trust.” I take a breath and tell her about Annie, and how the end of that relationship hurt but how I walked away from it knowing that leaving was the only choice.

  Sabrina meets my gaze, her hazel eyes fierce. She stabs the table with her finger. “She did not deserve you. I mean that, Flynn. She didn’t deserve you at all. No one does unless they love you for you. Unless they love you no matter what you have or don’t have.”

  When she says that, I start to believe we could be that way—we could be a no-matter-what. That’s what scares me and, honestly, kind of thrills me at the same time. A no-matter-what with her—I feel the potent possibility in my chest, thrumming in my veins.

  As we drain our iced coffees, her phone rings. It’s FaceTime. She glances at the screen, and her face lights up. I’ve never seen her like this. Absolute delight spreads across her features as she declares, “It’s Kevin!”

  I tip my chin to the phone. “Answer it.”

  She shakes her head. “No, I can call him back later.”

  “Sabrina, you can talk to your brother. It’s totally fine. I get it.”

  “Are you sure?” she asks nervously.

  The phone rings again. “Answer it, or I’ll answer it for you.”

  With a grin, she slides her thumb across the screen and says, “Hey, Kevin. I’m here with Flynn.”

  The fact that she didn’t need to introduce me says she’s already told him about me. That has to be a good sign. I sit a little taller. She shows me the phone, and I say hello to her brother, a baby-faced blond with a straight nose and kind eyes.

  “Hey, Flynn. Nice to finally meet you.”

  “Good to meet you. Sabrina has told me a lot about you,” I say. “She thinks you’re the cat’s meow.”r />
  Kevin meows. “And the pajamas too. Also, thank you. I’m glad to hear she said good things to you.”

  Sabrina peers at the screen. “Hey, can I call you later when I finish this interview?”

  “Sure.” Kevin scratches his head. “You’re doing another one?”

  Her answer comes at the speed of light. “Yes.”

  “How often do you guys do interviews? Hasn’t this kind of been going on for forever?”

  Sabrina glances at me over the top of the phone, a guilty-as-charged look in her eyes before she returns her focus to her brother. “Kevin, stop saying things you shouldn’t be saying right now. I love you, and I’ll talk to you later.”

  When she clicks end, I cluck my tongue. “We don’t really need to talk this much for the story. Do we?”

  Sabrina shakes her head. “I don’t think we do. I kind of have everything I need already.”

  “Really?” Perhaps she can hear the disappointment in my voice. If she can’t, she should have her hearing checked.

  “Well,” she says, tapping her chin, “I suppose there are a couple more things I wanted to ask you.”

  “I guess we should talk again tomorrow?”

  “Definitely.”

  We make plans for the next day.

  20

  Sabrina

  * * *

  Since I’ve had so many interviews with other people, it’s only natural that I need to talk to Flynn after I speak with the others.

  To check for his reaction.

  To glean his response.

  Or, really, to spend more time with him.

  Flynn is a pattern I want to make over and over. He’s a word I never tire of using. He’s a song I can blast in my earbuds all night long.

  All day too.

  With Flynn, it’s like we have an endless well of topics for conversation. Dip a hand in it, pick another item, and chat, chat, chat.

  The next evening, when we leave the café where we’ve been talking, we wander past a store window display that catches my eye.

  A zombie mask. A gangster suit. A cheerleader. Dorothy, complete with her blue gingham dress and ruby-red slippers.