Chapter Two

Okay so….Update. 

My mother is married. Apparently she and Richard Carter have been dating for over a year and got married a few hours ago and somehow managed to keep it a secret from me, her only child, the person who lives in her house and eats her cereal.

And Jace Carter, swim god and professional jerk, is his son. Which means, and I need you to sit with this the way I had to sit with this, standing in my kitchen at midnight in my ugliest t-shirt and finding out Jace Carter is my stepbrother.

"Absolutely not," I said, the second it clicked.

"Believe me," Jace said, arms crossed, looking at me with barely contained irritation. "I'm thrilled too."

We stood there just glaring at each other while upstairs our parents were probably digging each other's guts without knowing that their children were having a nervous breakdown in real time.

Jace recovered first and he shook his head. "Fine," he said. "We need to have a rule. Rule number one, and honestly the only rule that matters. You have to promise me that nobody at PCU can know about this."

"Excuse me?" I blurted out. “Are you that ashamed of me?”

"You heard me." He said it like it was obvious, like I was slow for not getting there before him. "You know how people talk. You know what they'll do with this. I have a reputation to maintain, and the second this gets out, it's not a story about our parents getting married, it's a story about ME and the alumni boosters who fund half my scholarship. I don't need that."

I wanted to argue. I really did. But annoyingly, he had a point, because I go to the same school and my art classmates gossip almost as much as his swim bros, and the idea of being known as that girl who's stepsiblings with Jace Carter and the envy of the girls who were all into Jace, made my skin crawl.

"Fine," I said. "Nobody finds out, and it’s not like I want people knowing anyway."

"Great," he said, already walking off, "glad we agreed on something."

And that was that. Two strangers under one roof, one very large secret, and absolutely zero interest in being related to each other.

I didn’t sleep that night. My whole life had rearranged itself in the span of one day and my brain refused to stop reminding me about it. I was also thinking about Noah and the way he’d smiled up at the girl who was seducing him with her breasts and not at me.

I got out of bed again, sometimes around four am. I needed to be outside…or anywhere, really. Our house sat up on the hills and had this infinity pool that I was surely going to miss if she sold the house. I stood there for a second just taking in the scenery, now while I still could.

Then I heard the splash but I figured it was nothing. But then I heard a gasp of pain. I looked over the edge of the deck and my stomach flipped for the third time that day. Jace was in the water, but he was thrashing around.

He was moving in a panicked way that didn't at all match the guy who had broken records and won every swim competition. So what the hell was happening? By the time I got to the edge he'd somehow hauled himself halfway out, arms shaking and his chest heaving like he'd swum ten miles instead of ten feet. He collapsed onto the deck, dripping, gasping, and I dropped down next to him without even registering that my knees would hurt on the bare concrete.

“Jace? What… are…hey!” I struggled to find the right words. “Let me go inside and call your dad. I don’t think—”

His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. “Don’t even think about it.” He wasn’t smiling anymore and his eyes had turned to stone.

"Are you insane? You almost drowned in my backyard, I'm not just going to sit here and—" I continued, outraged that he tried to keep something like this a secret.

"Izel." He said and I blinked. I didn’t even realise he knew my name. His eyes found mine, and for the first time since I'd met him there was nothing arrogant in them at all. If anything, he was tired and looked so small.

I sat back on my heels, torn between every instinct telling me to call 911 and the way his grip on my wrist wasn't letting go. "Why," I said slowly, "would you rather almost die in a pool than let someone help you?"

He closed his eyes. Swallowed. And when he opened them again, whatever wall he usually kept up was just... gone.

"Because if this gets out," he said, "they'll take swimming away from me.”