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For all the Evies out there—you’re not alone.

Chapter One

EVIE

After twenty-two years, I’d come to the realization that people only saw what you let them see. Or, more apt, what they wanted to see. Generally the pretty, skin-deep things that didn’t make them uncomfortable. They didn’t look for the messy, ugly parts … the dark, twisted secrets hidden away. The skeletons inevitably buried in everyone’s closets.

They definitely didn’t see the bones I had concealed in mine, buried under years of dirty secrets and lies and the hundreds of miles separating me from the truth.

That fact was a comfort on nights like these—nights where I felt like the biggest fraud. Because I knew all these people surrounding me with their fake smiles and their pretentious small talk weren’t really looking. Not at anything more than what I was wearing, how close Eric and I were standing, how many times I smiled, or how many glasses of wine I had.

At a fund-raiser for Kirkland & Caine, I smiled and laughed, engaged in meaningless small talk. On the arm of my fiancé, dressed in a sparkly dress that cost more than what my rent used to be, I did nothing more than pretend. Put on the pretense of a person I’d invented from the ground up. Not a person I ever was or ever would be, if I had the option.

Funny thing—options weren’t plentiful when you were in my shoes. Not when you were running from everything you’d ever known. Not when your life was in danger if you ever stopped.

Like always at events like this, Eric didn’t leave my side the entire night, letting my hand rest in the crook of his elbow as he led us from group to group, making the rounds and putting in face time. These kinds of things only came up a few times a year—this was only the third I’d ever had to attend—and even though they were relatively infrequent, they still made me uneasy. I couldn’t help my eyes from darting to all the corners of the rooms, checking for the exits, scrutinizing the attendees, the waitstaff, the bartenders. Looking for anything suspicious, anything out of the ordinary. After all this time, I couldn’t imagine that the people who would give just about anything to see me found and caught would grab me in a public place. They wouldn’t make such a spectacle. They’d be quiet about it, maybe come for me at my house or while I was getting into my car in a secluded parking lot. Someplace the noise and commotion would go unnoticed.

They were professionals, after all.

Even knowing this, I was on edge. The whole night, I was twitchy and jumpy, waiting for something I knew wouldn’t come—not here. And I couldn’t even say it was because I felt something in my gut, a voice that told me something was off. Because that voice was never silent, forever by my side, forever whispering and reminding me of all the ways I’d screwed up, of all the ways I could screw up if I stepped even slightly out of line. If I didn’t preserve this façade to the utmost detail. Of the lives I could ruin if my truth ever came out.

If I was ever found.

Eric leaned down, his lips right by my ear, his hand resting on top of the one I had clutched to his elbow. The familiar, woodsy scent of him calmed me, and I reminded myself to relax. To breathe. His voice wasn’t much over a whisper, just loud enough for me to hear in the din. “Not much longer. You want another glass of wine?”

After a year together, ten months of which we’d been engaged, he’d nearly perfected being able to read me. Nearly.

A bright burst of light echoed from off to our right as a photographer snapped pictures of the crowd, and I flinched. It was the barest of movements, just my fingers tightening on Eric’s arm, but he didn’t wait for my response to his question before he flagged down one of the waitstaff and grabbed a glass of wine from the tray. He passed it to me with a smile pasted on his face. Had to keep up pretenses, because people were watching. Someone was always watching.

His voice was low, soothing, as he said, “We’ll head home soon. Fifteen more minutes.”

He’d always been considerate of how much time we had to spend at these events. He thought I had social anxiety disorder, that the reason I didn’t do well in crowds was because of that. I had a prescription for Prozac that I got filled every month. A tiny green-and-white capsule I flushed down the toilet every morning.

He had no idea the real reason I was twitchy, the real reason I hated doing anything in public, was because I wasn’t who I said I was. I wasn’t Genevieve Meyer, recent graduate of U of M with a degree in Journalism—the one tiny piece of my old life I’d allowed to seep through. Originally from Miami and the only child of deceased parents.

Everything he knew of my life now was a lie. Every facet of it a fabrication erected from my imagination. Every ounce of it created and built through more steps than I was aware of, even now. Even five years later.

No, I wasn’t Genevieve Meyer, fiancée of Eric Caine, the up-and-coming lawyer and son of a former senior partner at the biggest law firm in Minneapolis and current Republican senator from Minnesota.

I hated yoga, though I took a class four times a week. I’d rather have a beer than drink wine, but I dutifully sipped my red. I’d be more comfortable cleaning my grandiose home than I was living in it.

But after this long, after five years—two hundred seventy-three weeks; one thousand, nine hundred and seventeen days—I’d gotten used to the lying, to the pretense of my new life.

So used to it, it was getting harder to tell what was the truth and what was a lie.

*   *   *

The light on the front porch shone in greeting when we pulled into our driveway nearly an hour later. It was a trek to get downtown, but this suburb was one of the best in the city, and Eric thought it would look better if we settled out here. Thought it would look better to everyone else watching one of the most eligible bachelors in the city go off the market.

He pulled into the garage, then came around and opened the car door for me, his hand on the small of my back as he led me into the house. It was clean—clean and sterile—Jane, our housekeeper, having been there earlier in the day. The house and furnishings weren’t at all what I would normally choose, but it was nice enough.

And it was something Eric took pride in, which was enough incentive for me to smile and keep my opinions to myself. My successful fiancé was eleven years older than me. Someone with whom, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have anything in common. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and despite our age difference, we meshed seamlessly.