The Charade: A Billionaire/Fake Relationship Romance (Eden Falls Academy)
The Charade: Chapter 35

I WENT to bed after crying angry, frustrated tears into my pillow for a while. But instead of finding sleep, my mind just ran on an endless loop of worrying about Carter being my brother, worrying about how everyone at school was going to react when they found out about it, and then worrying about how everything was going to work.

Would my mom finally fess up to everything? Would Mr. Hastings request a DNA test? What would Mrs. Hastings do? Would Cambrielle and Nash be excited? Would Elyse and I have to leave the school dorm and move in with the Hastings family since we were related?

Where would Elyse and I sleep? Would it be in the same wing as the rest of the Hastings kids? Or would we be put on the other side of the house because they knew Carter and I had a complicated relationship and would need some space to figure things out?

Or would our mom take us out of the school and away from Eden Falls because she really didn’t want us to have any kind of association with Mr. Hastings?

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well Monday night because my brain just wanted to worry about all the possible scenarios that might arise from this.

Elyse and I agreed before we went down to breakfast the next morning that we wouldn’t tell anyone about what we’d discovered the night before. We didn’t have any for-sure answers yet, and so until we did, we didn’t want to trigger any of the gossip mills at the school.

When I sat next to Carter during math, I asked him if he’d heard anything from his dad. He shook his head and said, ‘Nothing yet.’

I released a long sigh, not sure how I felt about his dad staying silent just like my mom. As long as I didn’t know for sure, there was still hope that this was all just a huge misunderstanding. That my dad could still be some random one-night stand and it didn’t happen on my mom’s high school reunion night. There was still hope that I wasn’t in love with my half-brother.

But being in limbo wasn’t exactly that great, either, because I couldn’t fully relax. As long as everything was still up in the air, I couldn’t really make plans for what to do next.

Carter cleared his throat, bringing me back to the present. ‘I, um, I should probably let you know that I’m not going to be able to make it to our tutoring session after school today.’

‘You’re not?’ I looked up at him, my chest sinking a little.

He nodded. ‘I had some things come up.’

I studied his face, trying to figure out if he was just making up excuses for why he couldn’t spend time alone with me today, when so far this year he’d never had anything interfere with our tutoring sessions. Was this his way of breaking things off?

Was sitting at the same table with me disgusting to him now?

He was sitting as far as he could from me. Whereas over the past few weeks, we couldn’t seem to sit close enough during math, with our thighs glued together and our fingers entangled under the table so we could hold hands while Mrs. Simmons taught in the front of the room.

Carter must have noticed that I’d just realized how he was hugging the other end of the table because he sent me an apologetic look.

But he didn’t move to scoot closer, either.

I pressed my lips together and nodded slowly before saying, ‘I’ll see if Elyse can work with me after school.’

She had taken Statistics the year before and was in Calculus right now, but she was smart enough that she’d probably remember the material and could help me if I needed it.

I ENDED up not needing much assistance from Elyse with my math homework, so I took that as a good sign that maybe I was finally understanding this math thing for once in my life. If tutoring me was too difficult for Carter to bear from here on out, maybe I would be fine math-wise and not need his help anymore.

Or maybe the school could assign me someone new. A girl this time, so I wouldn’t be at risk of falling in love with another math tutor who might be related to me, since apparently, I had bad luck with that.

Carter didn’t show up to our Thursday tutoring session, either. He didn’t give me a heads up or anything about it this time. He simply just didn’t show up, and I ended up waiting in the library for a full hour after my texts to him had gone unanswered.

When we had our regularly scheduled study session with everyone that evening, Carter didn’t show again. He usually came to our Thursday night study sessions, so I could only assume his absence had something to do with me.

‘Do you know where Carter is tonight?’ I asked Cambrielle as we worked on our AP Biology assignment. Even though Cambrielle was a grade below us all, she was another Hastings family genius and was taking a lot of the AP classes that everyone else did this year.

‘I think he’s hanging out with Mack and Hunter tonight.’ she said with a shrug. ‘Mack’s mom hasn’t been doing so well this week, and I think he needed some time to blow off steam.’

So maybe he wasn’t avoiding me? But this was the first time I’d heard anything about Mrs. Aarden being sick.

I frowned. ‘What’s going on with Mack’s mom?’

Cambrielle shifted in her seat, an uncomfortable expression crossing her face before she said, ‘She has cancer.’

‘What?’ I couldn’t keep from asking as a feeling of shock flooded me.

I looked at Elyse who seemed just as surprised by this fact. I knew I’d been living in my own little bubble with Carter ever since school started, but was I really that bad of a friend to not even notice that anything was going on with Mack?

He always seemed so upbeat most of the time—always the first guy to crack a joke when we were hanging out.

I never would have guessed that he had anything going on that was bothering him aside from the regular things a teenage guy worried about.

Cambrielle seemed to realize that this was the first I’d ever heard of it, so she explained, ‘His mom had a brain tumor a long time ago, like before I was born. They were able to remove it back then and she was really healthy for a long time. But they found another one this summer, and this one is harder to treat.’

‘So…is she dying then?’ I asked, my stomach and chest feeling with dread.

Wasn’t Mack’s dad, like, a neurosurgeon or something?

Scarlett, who had looked up from her studying, set her pencil down on her notebook and said, ‘Mack doesn’t really like to talk about it. I think he’s been hoping that if he doesn’t talk about it, then it’ll make it so it’s not as real. But yeah, it’s not good.’ Scarlett swallowed, eyeing Cambrielle briefly for confirmation. ‘I think the doctors say that she’ll be lucky if she makes it to Thanksgiving.’

Oh no.

Tears instantly pricked at my eyes as I thought about what that meant for Mack. I looked across the table to Elyse and saw she had tears in her eyes as well.

‘I wish I’d known,’ I said, wiping at my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket.

Cambrielle let out a shaky breath, looking torn up about the subject herself. ‘It’s been rough on Mack.’

As I watched her try to keep her lips from trembling with emotion, I realized that she could be having a hard time with this as well. She was next-door neighbors to the Aardens. Their dads were best friends. She was probably a lot closer to Mack and his family than the rest of us.

And now that I thought about it, she and Mack did seem to have a special sort of relationship. Mack was always teasing her and her brothers about taking her out on dates to Eden Falls version of ‘make-out point.’

But was it possible there was something going on behind the scenes that no one had picked up on?

Because for all of the flirting Mack did at school—even flirting with Elyse and me on occasion—I had yet to see him go on a date.

But then again, dating was probably the last thing a person wanted to focus on when he was worried about seeing his mom at Christmas.

Oh Mack. My heart hurt for him just thinking about it.

Cambrielle blew out another long breath before forcing a smile and saying, ‘Anyway, that’s where all the guys are tonight. I’m just hoping the soirée this weekend will help cheer everyone up a little.’

Right.

The soirée.

As in, the party where I had hoped to flirt and dance with Carter all night.

The party where I would now be forced to watch him hold other girls from school in his arms instead as he led them around the dance floor.

Suddenly, the soirée didn’t sound like so much fun anymore.

If I didn’t know how much work Cambrielle and her mom had put into planning it, I’d probably look for an excuse not to go. But since she might just be calling me sister in the near future, I should probably try to not start things off on the wrong foot—even though it was going to be complete torture to see how amazing Carter looked in his suit and know I could never touch him the way I wanted to ever again.

‘Did you still want all of us to come over early to get ready together?’ Elyse asked Cambrielle, jumping on the subject change.

‘Yes.’ Cambrielle’s eyes lit up, seeming grateful for the opportunity to discuss something other than Mack and his situation. ‘I’m just dying for you all to see my dress.’

‘Did you end up going with the purple one you showed me last week?’ Elyse asked.

Cambrielle nodded. ‘We just got it back from the tailor this week and it’s going to be epic.’

They continued chatting about all the plans Cambrielle had made for the evening. And though Elyse seemed more than excited for the party our possible half-sister had planned, I only half-listened as they discussed the decorations and the live string quartet Cambrielle and her mom had secured for the event.

Who knew, maybe everything would be all cleared up by the party and there would be some other explanation for who my biological father was that had nothing to do with Mr. Hastings or anyone else in Eden Falls. Maybe the party would be one of the highlights of my senior year, and I’d get to dance the night away with Carter and laugh over the hysteria of the past few days.

But I’d learned a long time ago to not get my hopes up too high where the truth about my father was concerned, so I’d just be holding my breath until then.

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