Chapter 1

Midnight. My phone buzzed with a text and an attached photo from my best friend.

"Chloe, didn't know you and your man were into this kind of thing. A brand-new themed love hotel downtown? Wild."

I stared at the screen, my entire body freezing up.

In the photo, a girl was clinging tightly to Ethan's arm.

They were walking out of the hotel lobby, wrapped up in each other, completely lost in their own world.

Except that night, I was stuck at the office working overtime.

At one in the morning, I was still in the conference room revising project proposals.

My stomach sank into a cold, dark pit.

Because I knew exactly who that girl was.

My identical twin sister, Clara.

I just never imagined that Clara—the woman who always prided herself on being a fiercely independent career woman, someone who mocked dating and bragged about staying single—would do this.

She was wearing my favorite emerald-green slip dress.

Around her neck was the custom pendant Ethan had given me.

She disguised herself as me.

And she threw herself into my boyfriend's arms.

By the time I saw the photo, it was long past midnight.

I walked into our bedroom and stared down at Ethan, who was fast asleep.

A part of me wanted to shake him awake and scream at him.

Clara and I shared virtually the same face, but I had a tiny, distinct birthmark right above my collarbone.

Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention would notice it instantly.

Did Ethan truly not realize the woman he took to a love motel was Clara?

Or was he just playing dumb?

If I confronted him right now, he would definitely deny everything.

Tossed around by nausea and betrayal, I couldn't sleep. I slipped quietly into the study.

I opened my laptop and started digging through Clara's and Ethan's social media and emails, hunting for any trace of their secret affair.

Sure enough, on an anonymous burner account Clara ran, I found a post:

[I never imagined my twin sister’s boyfriend would turn out to be my high school first love.]

[Seeing him again after all these years, my heart still raced like crazy.]

[I pretended to be my sister and went to a hotel with him. Even in bed, the spark between us was just as intense as before.]

[I want to ask him: is he only dating my sister because he could never get over me?]

Attached was a photo of their fingers tightly intertwined on white hotel sheets.

My chest constricted with a sharp, agonizing ache.

Clara and I had gone to different colleges in different states, rarely seeing each other since.

I had never once known that Ethan was her high school sweetheart.

Suddenly, everything clicked.

I finally understood why Ethan had pursued me so relentlessly the moment he first laid eyes on me.

All this time, I had just been living in my sister's shadow.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I scrolled to her next update.

[On our second date, he confessed that he had seen right through my disguise from the start.]

[He told me he never really forgot me. But he insisted he loves my sister now.]

[Then why didn't he push me away? Why did he keep seeing me? Why did he keep sleeping with me?]

[I thought I had moved on. But hearing him say he loves my sister made me desperate to take him back.]

[Please, tell me: should I steal him back?]

I gripped my phone until my knuckles turned white, my whole body trembling violently.

Ethan had always seemed so devoted to me.

Whenever I had bad cramps, he would brew warm milk and sit by my side, gently rubbing my stomach.

On my birthday, he gave me a custom-made necklace engraved with my name.

Yet beneath all that tenderness, a piece of his heart had always belonged to someone else.