Faked (Ward Family #2)(19)

With a smile, he set the cat back down.

The lighting was dim because I liked it that way when I was home alone, so only two table lamps illuminated the room. Because of that, when Bauer finally faced me, hands tucked into his pants pockets again, it cast shadows under his cheekbones. He looked dark and terrifying even though his lips were still smiling in my direction.

His head tilted. "Why are you talking as if you didn't pull it off?"

"You knew," I explained. "Eventually, at least."

"Right away, actually."

That had my mouth falling open slightly. "Seriously?"

He leaned in to study the framed pictures on the bookcase next to him, candid shots of me and my three sisters. "Seriously. Lia wouldn't have been so shaken by it."

Great. The unflappable Lia. A girl always loved to be called The One Who Was Shook.

"I don't mean that in a negative way, princess."

"Can you stop calling me that?" I asked wearily.

Bauer took a few steps toward me, and I had to fight every instinct to back away.

"Even in those pajamas," he murmured. "You've got that look to you. I can't help it."

"Spoken like a true man. I can't help it," I mimicked his deep voice.

He tipped his head back and laughed deeply.

That laugh made me unaccountably nervous, and I couldn't pinpoint why. Maybe because I didn't want to make Bauer Davis laugh. I didn't want to have him in my apartment, looking slightly rumpled and more casual than he had earlier when he picked me up.

"What do you want, Bauer?" I asked.

His eyes warmed slightly at my use of his name. I didn't want that either.

He scratched the side of his scruff-covered face. "Right now, I want to know why you're looking at me like that, princess."

I tipped my head back and sighed. "For some reason, I feel like the quiet little girl on the playground who just caught the attention of the mysterious cool guy in class who never pays attention to anyone."

My honesty took me by surprise.

Not because I wasn't a generally honest person. But I'd barely given the thought any time to process, and boom, there it tumbled out of my mouth.

Bauer hummed. "Not far off, I guess. But you have to admit, the fact that I met you because you inexplicably showed up to a public event trying to pass yourself off as your twin sister makes you pretty intriguing."

I rolled my lips together.

"And you're not going to tell me why you did that?"

"My sister asked me to," I answered honestly, after only the slightest hesitation. "She had a lecture she couldn't miss tonight, but she knew how important this was to Finn and your parents."

The way his gaze searched my face, I felt like I was being subjected to the human equivalent of a lie detector test.

"So you only did this because Lia asked you to." His tone was chock-full of skepticism, and I couldn't blame him.

"Yup."

"Okay then." He picked up a framed picture of the two of us taken at Logan's last game as a player. We were just barely stepping into our teenage years, a phase when absolutely no one could tell us apart if we didn't want them to. It was taken before Finn came into our lives, before there was a single thing my sister had that I wanted. Even if she didn't have Finn in the way I wanted him, he was still hers.

And I was ending the night exactly the same way as I started it, without any firsthand knowledge of what it was like to be the sole recipient of his attention. My lips pinched tight because I hated the self-pity. It was pointless and ineffective.

Nothing, absolutely nothing was gained from feeling sorry for yourself when it came to circumstances outside of our control. That was a valuable lesson I'd learned from Brooke leaving, and Logan stepping up to take care of us.

What was the point of bemoaning Brooke's leaving? There wasn't one.

What was the point of feeling sad because the one boy I liked didn't look at me that way? There wasn't one.

Bauer carefully set down the frame. "It must be strange to look at someone else and see your own face looking back at you."

Was it? I looked at Lia and saw Lia. I knew our family was the same. Finn probably was too. But to someone like Bauer, who didn't know me at all and really didn't know my sister well, it must have seemed strange. But that was the thing about being a twin, wasn't it? We were a novelty.

"I guess I'm pretty used to it by now."

He nodded.

"Bauer," I said gently. "What do you want? I know you didn't come to talk about the ins and outs of being an identical twin."

"Well …" He paused and gave me a lopsided grin. "I kinda did."

My brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I need you to pretend to be Lia again."

"You ... what now?"

He squared his shoulders and opened his mouth to say something when Lia burst through the door.

Her eyes widened dramatically at the sight of Bauer, then they flipped to me and blinked a few times at the sight of my pajamas.

Bauer crossed his arms over his chest and leveled a dry look in her direction.

She slipped her backpack off her shoulder and let it fall with a thump on the floor. "Shit," she whispered.