The moChapteriment the SATs were over, I slept with Chase Walker for the first time.
In the heat of it all, I gasped out loud–only to hear him whisper a name that wasn’t mine.
“Maddie…”
But my name is Sierra. Maddie is my twin sister.
AM
I blinked, stunned, and looked up at him. “Who did you just say?”
Chase kept moving, lowering his head to kiss my eyelids. “Sierra,” he murmured, his voice thick, “don’t get distracted. You’re enjoying this, right?”
His rhythm quickened, driving away every ounce of doubt I had left.
Chase was a jock–strong, tireless, and always creative. My body trembled uncontrollably beneath
him. I tried to push him away. “Don’t…”
He leaned into my ear, voice hoarse with desire. “Baby, let’s try it on top this time.”
That night, he wore me down–again and again–until I was crying, begging, shaking, and still he
didn’t stop.
Not until sunrise did he finally stumble into the bathroom, satisfied.
I lay there, too sore to move, my limbs aching like they didn’t belong to me.
Then his phone on the nightstand started blowing up with notification pings.
Instinctively, I glanced at the screen–and froze.
[Congrats, Walker! You finally got some last night!]
My heart dropped. I couldn’t stop myself. I unlocked his phone and opened the group chat.
What I saw made my entire body go numb.
He’d sent a photo of the bloodstained hotel bedsheet. In the middle of the night.
The messages came in a flood:
[Holy crap, Chase–you really did it with Sierra? I thought you were into Maddie?]
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”
[C’mon, they’re twins. Same face, same body. He’s just warming up with Sierra before he goes all in with Maddie, Practice makes perfect, right?]
[Exactly. He’s in love with Maddie. Sierra’s just a stand–in so he doesn’t screw it up with the real thing.]
Every word felt like a slap.
I’d spent hours wondering why Chase liked me. I’d imagined a thousand reasons–none of them
this.
Chase wasn’t just a jock. He was the school’s golden boy, surrounded by friends and admiration.
I was the quiet one. The bookworm everyone ignored.
We shouldn’t have had anything in common. But one day back in junior year, during gym, I’d accidentally bled through my pants from my period.
Chase had taken off his team jacket and wrapped it around my waist.
Since then, he’d left breakfast on my desk every morning. Tucked handwritten notes in my school
loker.
I’d fallen–hard. But I never understood why someone like him would choose someone like me.
So one day I asked, “What do you like about me?”
He smiled and said, “Because you’re you.”
That first love, the kind you believe will last forever–I’d given it my all.
I thought losing my virginity to him meant something.
Turns out, it was just a performance. A carefully orchestrated “first time,” for his benefit.
I clenched my fists so tightly my knuckles turned white, my palms streaked with red. But nothing hurt more than my heart.
The water stopped running. I rushed to put his phone back and pretend nothing happened.
The door opened. Chase walked out, dripping water, a towel slung low on his hips. His tanned skin glistened with drops, muscles sculpted and bare.
“You’re up. Hungry?”
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He came to the bed, voice gentle, eyes dark with something I couldn’t name. He glanced down at the
bruises on my collarbone.
I couldn’t answer. All I could hear was the echo of his voice last night–calling me Maddie.
“I’m not hungry.”
He saw the redness at the corners of my eyes and immediately pulled me into his arms. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to–I just… I was new to this. I’ll get better. We can keep practicing.”
His hand slid under my shirt again.
I flinched away. “Don’t. I’m sore.”
He paused, then slowly smoothed down my wrinkled collar, his voice soft with guilt. “I lost control last night. Have some rest, I’ll go downstairs and grab you breakfast.”
He got dressed and left.
I stared at the blood on the white sheets and felt my entire body go hollow.
For two years, we’d been secretly dating. I’d hidden everything from my teachers, from my friends.
I did everything he asked, said yes to everything.
bited.
He wanted Columbia, so I made it my dream too.
He held my hand under the desk during class; I blushed and kept reciting vocab.
He asked to meet me behind the field after study hall; I gave him my first kiss.
Now the exams were over, he wanted a symbolic “rite of passage,” and I gave him everything.
I thought it was love.
But it was just rehearsal.
If Maddie was who he loved from the beginning, then I didn’t want to love him anymore. I didn’t want to be the stand–in.
I got dressed and left the hotel.
At a pharmacy down the street, I awkwardly asked the clerk for emergency contraceptive pills.
She eyed me up and down, frowning, and pulled a box from the shelf. “You should’ve had your
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boyfriend use protection. These are awful for your body, you know.”
My face burned. I could barely speak.
There were condoms in the drawer beside the bed. I’d told Chase to grab a box.
But he’d just moaned in my ear, red–eyed and desperate.
“Sierra… it feels weird with that stuff on. Please, just this once. I swear I won’t go too far.
I gave in.
And now here I was, buying back my freedom one pill at a time.
“Thanks,” I told the clerk as I paid. “Just this once.
Never again.
Never again would I believe anything Chase Walker said.
