He Fell for My Voice, Not Her Face

My sister forced me to do the talking for her — with Sebastian, the Hargrove heir, whose Instagram she'd gotten through a friend of a friend.

For almost six months I worked him with a soft, sweet voice, and turned the heir everyone called cold and untouchable into a lovesick golden retriever.

Then, carefully, he brought up meeting in person. "Baby, will you wear a white dress that day?" I said yes. Then I turned around and handed the account back to my sister.

On movein day my sister showed up in a white dress at the dropoff circle by the main entrance, and Sebastian locked onto her instantly.

Chapter 1 Before the semester started, I'd scrolled through the school's anonymous app out of habit.

Word was that Sebastian was the most popular guy on the campus confessions page, but that he had never had a girlfriend.

People who knew the heir described him the same way, word for word. Cold. Impossible to get close to. Someone that far out of everyone's reach.

And the second he met my sister, his ears went red. Just how much did Sebastian like Felicity?

A little way off, the two of them were meeting for the first time, talking about something I couldn't hear.

Sebastian took my sister's suitcase for her, polite about it, and walked her in through the main entrance. They were probably official now, weren't they?

Watching them go, I did my best to ignore the ache in my chest. It was normal to have a small feeling like that. That was what I told myself.

For the past six months, the person on the other side of the screen dating Sebastian had been me. Now I had to stand here and watch him meet someone else.

Keep a dog for six months and you get attached. And this was a person I'd talked to constantly, every single day.

I shook my head and stopped the thought before it could go anywhere. They'd met. My part was done.

After I finished checking in, an upperclassman volunteer offered to carry my things over to my dorm. The girls in my suite were bright and bubbly.

After the introductions, one of them asked, "Girl, that black dress is cute. Where'd you get it? Can you still buy it?" I froze for a second. I said I got it in a store, not online.

She laughed and had the sense not to push. I thought about that morning, before we left. Felicity had brought the dress over, stonefaced, and told me to change into it.

It was something she'd bought last year and stopped wearing. Probably the most conservative thing in her closet, and the one she wore the least.

When she saw the doubt all over my face, she explained, impatient about it. "You used my photos the whole time, so there's no way Sebastian recognizes you." "But just in case, you don't wear white for the first few days of school." It was an order, not a request.

When she saw me put it on without arguing, her face softened. "Oh, and one more thing.

Sebastian is going to be your brotherinlaw." "So stay away from him." She shot me a glare of pure distaste. I lowered my eyes. It wasn't worth arguing over.

Instead I said, "Felicity, I did everything I was supposed to. About the rest of the money—" "What's the rush?

It's not going anywhere." She laughed at me, short and dismissive, and leaned against the wardrobe with her arms crossed. Her bright red lips parted. "I'm a little short right now.

I'll send it to you at the end of the month." "Juniper Rourke. You remember what you promised me." Warning delivered, she turned and walked out, chin up like a little princess.

Chapter 2 Right. She'd always been Mom and Dad's little princess. Hadn't she? I finished unpacking, then sat down in the desk chair, worn out, and didn't move for a long time.

One of my suitemates was heading to dinner and asked if I wanted to come. I nodded.

At the dining hall, the two of us got in at the back of the line for the grill station. "So you've already met Sebastian in person.

How come you're not together yet?" The voice came from the line ahead and off to the side, teasing, fishing for details. I looked up.

Felicity was standing in line not far away with an older girl who looked like a close friend of hers. "What, your boyfriend doesn't have to eat dinner with you?" The teasing turned Felicity's face pink.

She shot her friend a look, and the sweetness in her voice was impossible to hide. "Boyfriend?

Who said anything about a boyfriend?" She locked her phone and looked up from the screen. "Sebastian says we just went from talking online to meeting in person, so it isn't good to move too fast." "We're starting out as friends." Her eyebrows pulled together as she said it.

She didn't look happy. "What do you think he actually means by that?

He didn't take one look at me in person and lose interest, did he?" The girl next to her shook her head and said, gently, "Didn't you say the two of you talked great online?

He seems to really care about you." "If you ask me, he just takes this seriously. He treasures you." "That's a good thing. Everything's disposable these days.

A guy going slow is a guy respecting you. Don't overthink it." She sounded like someone with experience, and she had an answer for everything. Felicity nodded, half convinced.

I dropped my eyes. Had Sebastian really said that? The night before they met, he'd been so wound up in our chat.

I'd assumed he would want to make it official with my sister the moment he saw her. Something strange started up in my chest.

Before I could get any further with it, a wave of noise went through the dining hall. I turned toward it.

Sebastian was in the middle of a group of guys, and I picked him out at once. He was too goodlooking not to notice. There was no version of that room where you didn't.

As if he'd felt something, his dark eyes cut across the crowd and landed on me. Exactly on me. Our eyes met and something in me jolted. I pulled the brim of my cap down.

Even with my head down, I could feel him studying me. It went on for a few seconds. Then Felicity's bright voice cut in. "Sebastian, what a coincidence.

I didn't expect to run into you here." She jogged over to him with a smile so sweet it was cloying. "Want to eat with us?" Before Sebastian could answer, the guys around him were already whooping and saying yes for him.

As they passed by, I heard him clearly. "I remember you said you have a younger sister, right?" Felicity didn't seem to have expected him to bring me up.

She froze, and her face went ugly for a moment. "I do. She doesn't go here, though." "She's had a nasty streak since we were kids.

I don't dare have much to do with her." She said it in that soft, fragile way of hers, and neatly steered the conversation somewhere else. I lost my appetite.

When I was born, money was tight at home. My parents took my sister and moved out of state to find work, and left me with my grandmother.

Chapter 3 Maybe because I hadn't grown up around them, my parents didn't feel much of anything for me.

After Grandma died and I came back to live with them, the way they treated me and the way they treated my sister were two completely different things.

If Felicity did something wrong, it was because I'd put her up to it. Me, the one who grew up out in the country. If Felicity got hurt, I got blamed for not looking after her.

They played favorites so openly that Felicity knew nothing would ever happen to her. For years she either hit me or tore into me.

Once I hit senior year of high school, my parents started dropping hints about how there wasn't money at home. How after I graduated I could go get a job and start paying them back.

I could never make it add up. Felicity, who had never cared about school a day in her life, got to sail all the way through to her junior year of college.

And I was the one who had college taken away from me. I cried about it. I screamed about it. It changed nothing. Then one day Felicity came to find me, all secretive about it.

She said she'd gotten the Hargrove heir's Instagram. But her voice was nothing special. Mine was soft and sweet, and that was exactly Sebastian's type.

She wanted me to do the talking for her. Carrying on someone else's online relationship for them is a ridiculous thing to do, and this was for Felicity. I refused, flat out.

Felicity didn't waste time arguing. "Say yes and I'll give you the money. You can keep going to school." She didn't sound like she was lying.

I hesitated, then tested it. "Mom and Dad can't come up with it. You can?" "They can come up with it. They just don't think you're worth spending it on.

Besides, I've been saving birthday money and holiday money and every check a relative ever mailed me since I was little.

It adds up." She put it straight through the middle of me without blinking. Then she held a number up on her fingers. "Fifteen grand.

You make a finsta, you talk to Sebastian until he wants to meet in person, and then you hand me the account." "After that, none of it is your business." It wasn't out of the question.

I thought it over, then countered. "I want twentyfive grand." Felicity looked like she wanted to hit me right there.

I just looked back at her, calm, and she ground it out through her teeth. "Fine. Twentyfive.

I'll give you part of it up front, and the last ten grand after the two of you meet." "And you promise me this.

As long as you live, Sebastian never finds out about our deal, and he never figures out that the person he was talking to online was you." I nodded.

I knew better than anyone what Felicity was calculating. Her grades were bad. School was never going to be her way out.

Money like Sebastian's, though — get your hands on that once and you're set for life. So I started pitching my voice softer and higher, and I dated Sebastian online.

He liked girls with soft voices and sweet dispositions, so I gave him as sweet as sweet gets. I played him exactly right, and it went straight to his head.

He started reporting his schedule to me every morning and giving me a rundown of his day before bed. I became his entire life. Before long I had him trained like a golden retriever.

All I had to do was fake a couple of sniffles and he'd be wrecked over it. He'd have handed me anything. Which is how I conned a lot of money out of him behind Felicity's back.

I was practiced at it. I unsent every message in the thread that mentioned money, one at a time, and acted like nothing had happened.

Even if Sebastian decided "I" was a gold digger, the one who'd take the fall was Felicity, the one who met him in person. Not me.

Besides, she'd been after Sebastian's money from the very beginning. Hadn't she? Once I'd worked that out, conning him felt like the most justified thing in the world.

The day my acceptance letter came, my parents came close to tearing it up. Chapter 4 I blew up at them and said I was going.

My father got so angry he pulled off his belt and hit me with it, and said if he'd known, he never would have had me. Felicity poured gas on it.

She said someone like me had better not tell anyone at school I was her sister. She said it was humiliating. I'd taken her money, so I was willing to go along with it.

On campus, even when I ran into Felicity, I never said a word to her. Then one day Felicity came looking for me, beside herself.

Her eyes were red from crying and her whole face was resentment. "Juniper Rourke. Are you messing with this?" I didn't follow. "Messing with what?" "It's the same account.

It's been my face the whole time, start to finish.

And Sebastian has never once called me baby online again." Felicity was half muttering it, and her face had twisted into something unhinged. "And it's been this long since we met and he's never once brought up being together.

He doesn't talk to me the way he talked to you." "If you're not messing with it, I can't come up with a single reason why." "Give me your phone.

I'm checking it." She'd lost it completely, and she came for my phone like it was hers to take