“It was a mistake,” he says quietly. “But I stopped. As soon as I realized I could distract you with my most embarrassing secret, I did that instead.”
“Your secret?”
“What I just told you,” he prompts. “About when I was a kid.”
I search my mind, but all that’s there is the memory of his mouth teasing at mine.
“When you peed your pants in the cafeteria?” I guess.
“I wish.” There’s rustling in the tent as he stretches his legs out and leans back on his arms. “It would mean my most embarrassing moment lasted for minutes instead of years. And that I’d actually been able to go to a school and eat lunch in a cafeteria like a normal kid.”
“Hmm.” I’m not going to ask. It’s what he wants, and he’s already proven he’s more than capable of playing me like a piano. Well, he can press that key all he wants, but there’s no sound coming out of this mouth. As if I care about some silly little embarrassment that happened to Lucas Deiss years before we even met. An embarrassment that apparently lasted for years. Something so traumatizing that he’d admit to its impact all this time later.
I can’t imagine what it could be. Not that I need to. Imagine it, that is. But really. Mac once stole his clothes while he was showering at the campus gym. I saw Deiss walking back to the dorm afterward, dangling a notebook over his nether regions as he chatted casually in the courtyard with Professor Cordero. If his bare butt flashing a game of touch football didn’t rank as an embarrassment, whatever did must have been really bad.
I hold my breath, but it’s not enough to keep the words inside. “What was it?”
“This is between the two of us,” Deiss says in a low voice. “The others don’t know.”
“Not even Mac?”
“Definitely not Mac.” There’s an edge of seriousness to his voice.
“But Phoebe knows.” It’s inconceivable that Lucas Deiss would share something with me that he hasn’t already told someone else. I’ve never been the kind of person people confess their secrets to. I don’t have the required warmth. Or maybe it’s simply because I’m incapable of sharing in return.
“Nobody knows,” he says. “And if anyone finds out, I’ll know they heard it from you.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” I’d never. Just because people don’t trust me with their secrets doesn’t mean I don’t know how to keep them.
“I know you wouldn’t. I just need you to understand how important this is. It would pretty much be the worst thing in the world if everyone found out I used to be a child star.” His voice catches on the last words like his body physically objects to the use of them.
“You used to be . . .” I trail off, trying to wrap my brain around what Deiss has just said. All I can picture is a shorter version of him in profile, too cool to bother turning toward the camera.
“The baby in Family Fun.” His nod draws my eyes back to his. “Well, at first, I was the baby. Then I became the toddler who said cheesy one-liners and took baths in front of a million viewers.”
“No.” My hand goes over my mouth, but a giggle sneaks around it. I lean forward, searching his face, but it’s too dark to find any sign of resemblance. Even in my memory, there’s none. But there wouldn’t be, would there? Deiss has always had long hair or a beard. “Are you telling me you were Noah Riley?”
“For eight long seasons. It was funnn-tastic,” he says dryly, using Noah’s famous catch phrase. “Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. The thing about pretending everyone is family for that long is that they really become one. At least that’s how it felt as a kid. I got to grow up with a brother and sister, even though technically I was an only child. And I had two extra parents who could spoil me rotten because they got to hand me off to my real parents at the end of each day.”
My head spins. Lucas Deiss is a former child star. That’s why he’s always been so tight-lipped about his past. Why would he tell me this? And why, after all this time, would he choose to tell me now?
To distract me. This was Deiss’s version of throwing himself on his own sword. And it’s worked. The elephants seem suddenly tiny in comparison to such massive news.
“But I used to watch that show.” I can still hear the theme song in my head, if not every individual word. “I’d remember if I’d seen your name in the credits. Brandon Davis played the part. He was super famous.”