I needed that protection for what was to come.
I heard distant male voices as I quietly entered the suite. I paused a moment just inside the door.
“… a bloody mess,” I heard Evan say. “She’s so fragile, after everything that’s happened.”
“Don’t you think she deserves to know the truth?”
I realized it was Wes Ryder on the balcony with Evan. I could make out their tall figures through the billowing, partially translucent curtains.
“No one deserves to know something that awful,” Evan said loudly. “Jesus, what if—”
“What?” Wes asked when Evan abruptly cut himself off.
“What if she couldn’t take it? What if she harms herself when she hears the news? It’d be my fault. For bringing her to this Godforsaken place. All of it. Do you have any idea what she’s gone though, these past few days? Christ, what a nightmare. I love her, and yet I’ve done this to her. I have wronged her in ways I never imagined,” I heard him say, even though his voice was muffled.
A tendril of pain wormed its way through the insulation of my denial. It burrowed into my chest at the desperation I heard in Evan’s voice.
“It’s not as if any of this is her fault. Anna is innocent. She doesn’t deserve to suffer,” Wes said heavily.
Silently, I backed out of the hotel room and closed the door.
I walked down the hallway to an exit door and stood on the staircase landing. I quickly texted Evan that I’d decided to have breakfast, and that I’d be back in a half hour or so.
Then I waited, with the exit door slightly cracked open.
Ten minutes later, I heard a door open down the hallway. The elevator dinged, and I dared to peek out. I saw Wes Ryder stepping onto the elevator.
We were only on the third floor. I rushed down the stairs. I caught up to him as he walked down the sidewalk next to the parking lot.
“Wes!”
He turned around, looking surprised, and then acutely discomfited to see me running after him.
“Anna.”
“Hi,” I said, coming to a stop and running my fingers through my mussed hair. I smiled. He blinked and glanced away skittishly. “I thought that was you. Did you come to visit us?”
“I did, yes,” he said, his gaze jumping to my face and off it, once again. I understood better now why he was always so uncomfortable around me, why his glances were both hungry and haunted at once. Maybe he hadn’t just been in love with Elizabeth once.
Perhaps he still was.
“How are you?” I asked him, recalling that I’d felt angry with him for keeping my resemblance to Elizabeth to himself, upon Evan’s request. I needed to make it clear I’d forgiven him, if I were to convince him to give me his news. He waved his hand, as if to say the question had been inconsequential. He seemed embarrassed.
“This has all been one hell of a mess, hasn’t it?” I asked softly. “No one would believe it if I tried to tell them the story.”
He shook his head and shoved his hands into his pockets. I thought I saw his lips move in a silent curse.
“I don’t know what to say, Anna, except I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything, except keep the fact that I’m Elizabeth and I are doubles. Evan asked you to keep quiet about it, and you have a much longer history of friendship with him than you do me,” I reasoned.
He looked unconvinced and uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. He was sweating again, and he looked pale.
“Did you tell Evan the results? Of the genetic test?”
He swallowed thickly and looked back at the hotel. I had the impression of a trapped animal. Somehow, I knew that he was about to say that he’d prefer that Evan give me the news.
“I’m stronger than Evan thinks I am,” I said before he could utter a syllable. “It was my cells that were tested. Noah took them from me against my will. He drugged me to do it. I could make a big deal about the fact that Noah, Evan, and you decided to have the testing done without my consent. But I want to know the results, too. So I’m not going to complain. I deserve those results, above anyone else. Surely you know that, Wes,” I said more gently, persuasion thick in my tone.