Two Wrongs Make a Right (The Wilmot Sisters #1)

by Chloe Liese

It makes me wonder what might have been if we’d seen this side of each other first, if we hadn’t started off so catastrophically. Looking at him now, I experience an odd, absurd hope that in some parallel universe, where the timing wasn’t all wrong, Alternate Bea and Alternate Jamie got it right and are hidden in a little broom closet for the right reasons.

He’s the stuff of sculptures I stared at reverently in European museums, of artwork that made me fall in love with drawing the human form. In nature’s best lighting, Jamie Westenberg—I hate to admit—is nothing short of magnificent.

I’ll admit that in my worst moments, I’m afraid that special someone isn’t out there, and that looking too hard for them is going to confirm it. So, more often than not, I haven’t looked. I’ve stayed in this holding pattern, tired of having so little but afraid of reaching for more.

She beams, all white teeth and sparkling blue-gray-green eyes. The world swims a little. That smile’s a dangerous thing.

A wave of her scent washes over me, and her warm hands burn through my clothes. I swallow roughly, begging my body to cool down. It’s been a year since anyone’s touched me. That’s all this is.

Dammit. First, he’s a baby doctor. Now, he rescues zombie cats in their hour of undead need. Ugh.

Jamie immediately steps closer and slowly clasps my hand, squeezing once. Silence holds between us. The kind of silence that I’m starting to realize he likes as much as I like it, silence that makes space for daydreams, for time and patience to find the right words.

“It means a lot that you didn’t act like you see me differently now.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear as the wind whips it across my face. “I don’t see you differently. I see you better.”

She loves something prickly, a bit daunting to approach at first. It unravels the ever-present anxious knot in my chest, a ball of relief unspooling through my limbs. If she can love that little creature, quills and all, maybe she could— No, not love. Of course not. But perhaps . . . understand me. How rare that would be.

You have to meet a living creature where they are, and love them for who they are, not who you want them to be.”

It’s much easier to kiss someone in the heat of the moment, the way Jamie did at the bowling alley. But now? Now I’m the one who has to kiss him while moonlight bathes his beautiful face in an otherworldly glow and the wind throws my skirt his way, as if nature itself is urging me toward him.

“Don’t downplay your work,” she says fiercely. “Don’t make yourself small just because someone else has.”

“My fake boyfriend isn’t supposed to ruin me for everyone else,” I whisper. Jamie’s eyes fall shut as he drops his forehead to mine. “Sometimes, Beatrice, I want to ruin you for everyone else.”

His laugh dances over my skin. I wrap my arms around him, a smile lighting up my face. I can’t see how bright it is, but I know from how he looks at me. I am incandescent.

I want to tell Jamie that I know so little about my life right now, but what I do know is that tonight, here, with him, is exactly where I want to be. I want Jamie to know that I need to paint him, to make him sit for hours in the apartment’s studio, which I haven’t used in much too long. To turn up the heat, strip him down, and capture the way he looks, like he sees straight to the heart of me. Just like he is now.

“You know it’s okay, right? For someone to see the best in you. For them to like the things you’re way too hard on yourself for.”

“I’m saying, you’re the best kind of chaos I’ve ever met. And while chaos used to terrify me, you make me crave it. I’m saying, even though this is an absurd situation we’ve backed ourselves into . . . I’d do it again in a heartbeat because it’s given me you.”

You’re the best thing in my life, I want to tell her. You’re safe and real and perfectly imperfect. We started as a lie, and now we’re the truest thing I’ve ever known.

I love her. Oh God, I love her. With each pound of my heart, the swell of the string quartet as the music builds, that’s the only thing I hear and feel—I love her. When haven’t I loved her?