The Secret (Winslow Brothers 3)

She snorts. “Well, if you ask my father, it’s been a long and winding, quite unnecessary road.”

I save my comments for later, giving her the space to continue.

“I guess you could say I was a bit of a wanderer. I went to college on the West Coast, at Stanford, and then…just kind of stayed out there.”

I hear her getting closer, opening something, and then rearranging the napkin to where it just covers my eyes. Next thing I know, something cold and a little tacky feeling is being spread all over my face.

And I don’t say shit. Because she’s talking and sharing and opening up, and I don’t care what I have to sit through to facilitate its continuation.

I do flinch at the weird feeling, though, and her laugh is nearly evil. “What’s wrong? Want me to stop?”

I shake my head just enough to get my point across without sending whatever she’s painting on me all over my cheeks. “Nope. Keep talking, keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

She giggles again. “Okay, then.” I feel some sort of a brush move over the ridge of my nose, and I wiggle it at the tickle.

“So, what did you do out there?”

“Where?”

“On the West Coast? After school? On the long and winding road.”

She sighs, a laugh mixing in that makes me smile. “A bunch of stuff, really. For a while, I waitressed at a place on Pacific Coast Highway, and then I dabbled in working for some Hollywood insider parties. I was a huge nobody—a nobody to the nobodies, really, but it was fun for a while.”

“And after that?”

She pauses briefly, both in her speech and the movement of her hand, and I hold my breath, willing her to continue. “Well, that’s when all the social media influencer stuff really started to take off, so I got involved in that.”

I chuckle. I don’t want to ruin the mood, but hot damn, I know her father well enough to guess how that went over. “I bet Professor Rose loved that.”

She snorts. Like, actual snot-bubble, saliva-trapped sounds coming from her snorts. “Oh yeah, it was his most cherished dream for his baby girl.”

“Did you like it?”

“Actually? Yeah. For a while, anyway,” she admits, a softness and truth in her voice. “I was good enough at it that it was viable, at least. My YouCam account had reached the point where it was easily paying the bills and just letting me do my thing, but even I knew it wasn’t my long-term goal in life.”

“What is your long-term goal in life, then?”

I can’t actually see her shrug, but I can imagine it. I’ve been watching Rachel Rose avidly enough, for long enough, that I can just about visualize everything she does.

“To be happy, I suppose.”

I smile. “That’s a kick-ass goal.”

“Thanks. I think so too. Nathaniel would prefer I homed in on something a little more specific.”

“You’ll know it when you see it, feel it, experience it. You’ll know then.”

She hums softly, and I wish I could pull off the blindfold, just to get a good look at her eyes. It seems like I could read them if I could see them—like they’d spill all her secrets for her. And damn, do I want to know her secrets.

“Sometimes, I think I’d like to write like my mom did…” She pauses, and the admission feels incredibly vulnerable. Like it’s something she has a hard time admitting out loud.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she answers quietly and rubs something across my lips. “But that’s also what my dad wants me to do, and there’s a lot of…pressure.”

I lift my shoulders and reach up to my face to still her hand for a minute, holding on to it. “So, don’t do it for him. Do it for you, and do it your way. If it’s what you really want, don’t avoid it just for the sake of avoiding him.”

“You don’t understand what he can be like.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” I agree. “But you do, and much to his chagrin, you’ve managed to maintain your independence this long. Why can’t you maintain it while you’re doing what you want?”

She pulls my blindfold off then and leans in to place a gentle kiss to my lips. The taste is sweet and sugary, and for the first time since this little exercise began, I’m starting to wonder what she’s been doing to me.

“Is that…is that strawberry?” I ask, licking my top lip as she pulls away.

She shrugs, and the cutest smile pinches up the bridge of her nose and settles all the way into her eyes. She reaches to the side easily, procuring a mirror I can only deduce she got upstairs and showing me her finished project—my face. Ivory skin, rosy cheeks, and equally pink lips, I’ve been transformed using what appear to be baking supplies.

From the nose down, I look like Little Bo Peep.