Prologue

Amelia

Sometimes the end of everything sneaks up on you when you least expect it. 

I read that once, in a Gloria Diamond novel. Only she was referring to an asteroid. For me, the end came as a 32 DD red lace bra. 

It happened on a rare rainy day in LA, two months after my thirty-third birthday. Two days after my mother had died. 

She had collapsed quite suddenly in her garden, my mother. And forty-eight hours later, I found myself numb and standing in the open doorway of my walk-in closet in my underwear. I knew I needed something to wear to the funeral home to discuss arrangements, but I couldn’t figure out how to step inside the closet and choose what that should be. Young woman with newly dead mother. It was a role I didn’t yet understand and didn’t want. I stared at all my clothes blindly, as if I’d never seen any of them before. 

“How about this?” Jase stepped around me, walked into the closet and pulled out a hanger with a simple black shift dress. Was it mine? I had no memory of buying it. The tags were still on. 

“She hated black,” I reminded him. My mother had been in love with color, from the pink azaleas in her garden to the color-splattered abstract art she made in her studio to the bright orange plates she’d serve us brunch on each Sunday. 

Jase raised his eyebrows, and I took the dress from him, ripped off the tags and quickly slipped into it. I glanced at myself in the floor-length mirror. The dress was shapeless, and I looked pale and powerless. 

Jase walked up behind me and hugged me, whispering one more apology over not being able to accompany me this morning. His shooting schedule was intense. The director would get mad if he called out last minute. 

“It’s fine,” I told him, again. Work was work. And he had fought so hard to get this far. It wasn’t like I could be mad he hadn’t planned ahead. No one could’ve expected my healthy fifty-eight-year-old mother to collapse in her azaleas when shooting schedules had been made. I’d just wrapped shooting on a supporting role in an indie film, so luckily my schedule this week was clear. My mother always had impeccable timing. 

“Are you sure?” Jase released the words slowly, tickling my ear with his breath. When I nodded, he spun me around, planted a gentle kiss on my forehead. He took a step back, nodded approvingly as he glanced over the blah black dress, then flashed what I knew by then was his TV-doctor sexy grin. The smile was an apology, or a promise, or maybe by then it was more like a tic. Since he’d taken on the role of heart surgeon/ heartthrob on the überpopular Seattle Med last year, my boyfriend’s face had become familiar to every woman in America. But it had come to feel strangely unfamiliar to me. 

“I’ll be okay,” I heard myself saying. And in spite of everything, I was still a good actress. I sold it. 

“I know,” he said easily. Then he shouted after me as I walked out: “Call me if you need anything, though.” 

“I won’t,” I yelled back. 

But it turned out, I did need something. 

Halfway to Pasadena on the 10, I realized I hadn’t grabbed my wallet, and I called Jase to see if he had time before the shoot to drop it off, or if he could at least text me a picture of my credit card so I had the number to pay. But Jase didn’t pick up, and if he’d already left for his shoot, he’d be no help. 

I sighed and got off the next exit on the freeway to circle back. I knew I would be late for the appointment now; my mother had abhorred lateness and, more, she had never understood what she termed my spaciness—a lifetime of forgotten wallets and missing socks. But then it hit me, she would never know about this. A dead woman couldn’t get angry. And suddenly I had to pull off to the side of the on-ramp because I couldn’t see the road through my tears. 

By the time I made it back to our apartment again, my face was puffy from crying, and I clutched a crumpled tissue in my hand as I unlocked the door. I was blowing my nose as I walked inside, so I almost didn’t notice that random red bra strewn across the floor until my foot caught on it in my path to the bedroom. 

And even then, I disentangled it from my foot, picked it up and tossed it aside. I couldn’t process what it was, why it was there. I kept on walking like an idiot to my bedroom; all I knew in that moment was that my wallet was still sitting on my dresser. I opened my bedroom door and suddenly everything—and nothing—made sense. Jase was lying on our bed completely naked, a blonde woman with too-bronze skin, also completely naked, straddling on top of him. 

“Jase?” I ran toward the bed and said his name like I was in some stupid movie of the week, and I was too naive to understand what was happening. What had been happening, right in front of me. 

The naked woman turned at the sound of my voice and then I recognized her: Celeste Templeton, Jase’s gorgeous twenty-two-year-old Seattle Med costar. 

I had this weird moment after she turned where I was nearly eye level with her breasts, and I found myself wondering if they were real. They couldn’t be. No one had authentic breasts that large and that perfectly symmetrical. Did they? 

“Shit, Melly. It’s not what you think,” Jase said. But he didn’t move right away, and neither did she. Until she finally shifted off him to grab a blanket and I noticed her breasts barely moved. Definitely fake. I was trapped inside some awful cliché, and all I wanted to do was run. I had to get out. 

“I forgot my wallet,” I finally heard myself saying, my voice coming from somewhere far away, above me, apart from me, the way it did when I auditioned for a role. I grabbed my wallet from the dresser and tore out of the room, then out of our apartment. 

Just as I stepped outside, it started to rain. It had been raining on and off all week, and rain had been forecasted for today too. But I stood there, letting the water wash over me because, of course, I’d forgotten my umbrella too. And there was no way I was going back inside for it now. 

Water flattened my curls and ran down my face, pelted my arms and soaked my ugly dress. My skin felt both numb and raw at once. But I stood there, in the rain, as the understanding hit me, that everything I was and everything I thought I knew, suddenly it was gone, just like that.

Excerpted from THE GREATESE LIE OF ALL by Jillian Cantor, Copyright © 2024 by Jillian Cantor. Published by Park Row Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

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PROLOGUE

THE NIGHT OF KAMILAH VEGA AND LIAM KANE’S FIRST ENGAGEMENT PARTY

LEO VEGA ALREADY KNEW WHAT WAS IN STORE FOR HIM WHEN HE knocked on the door in front of him, but he did it anyway. The situation was too important for him to ignore. 

“What?” the grumpy voice said from the other side. 

“It’s me,” he said. 

“I know who it is. I have a camera doorbell.” Leo could practically hear the eye roll. “What do you want?” 

“We need to talk.” 

“I’m not really in the mood to talk.” 

Leo knew that he had two options if he wanted to be let in: be annoying or be cajoling. There was a fifty-fifty chance with either option. It all depended on whether the person on the other side of the door was more pissed or more hurt. His best guess was pissed because of the hurt. He went for cajoling, praying it worked. “Come on. Open the door. I just want to check on you.” 

There was noticeably less anger when the voice responded, “I’m fine.” 

“I need to see you with my own eyes.” 

A snort slash growl. He moved close and put his forehead against the door. “Please, bombón,” he said in a deep murmur. “Let me see you.” 

A hiss of annoyed breath filtered through the door, but it had obviously worked. 

He heard the locks being disengaged and he stepped back when the door swung open. There she stood, still in the body-hugging dress she’d worn to his sister’s disastrous engagement party. She looked almost as perfect as she had when she’d first walked in and nearly caused him to stroke out on the floor, except for one thing. All the immaculate makeup on her face was gone and her eyes were swollen and red rimmed. 

He knew there was a good chance she’d push him away, but he couldn’t stop his response. He stepped into the apartment and palmed her damp cheek. “Come here.” He pulled her into a hug and was mildly surprised when she let him. “Ay, mi Sofi.” 

Sofi didn’t respond, she just buried her face in his neck and squeezed him. 

He tightened his hold on her and firmly told himself to ignore the way her body felt against his, but it was impossible. It always was. It had been since they were teens. Sofia Santana just did something to him on every single level. To attempt to ignore her was like trying to ignore being tased. Even if he managed to shut his thoughts down, his body wasn’t going to let him not react to the inundation of sensation. 

“What happened?” he asked after a few minutes of silence. “All I could understand from a blubbering Kamilah is that you left because you’re mad at her.”

Sofi pulled back. A scowl appeared on her face. “Of course it’s all because of me, right?”

Leo frowned. “I didn’t say that. I’m just trying to understand what happened.” It was hard for him to believe that she hadn’t known about this whole fake engagement stunt either. He’d figured that she had to be in on it too. Kamilah and Sofi did everything together from the moment they met. It was often annoying to him just how close they were. 

“She lied to me,” Sofi said. 

“She lied to all of us,” he pointed out. He was angry about that too, but Sofi wasn’t the type to get so upset about something like this. At the end of the day Kamilah and Liam faking an engagement to keep their grandpas from selling the family businesses they wanted to run didn’t really affect Sofi that much. It wasn’t like she had a stake in either business, not like Leo did. 

Sofi pushed away from him. “Not about that,” she scoffed. “I knew about that stupid shit with Liam. I warned her about that blowing up in her face, but she did it anyway.” Leo suddenly remembered something else that had come up. Something that had affected Sofi. “You didn’t know she’d turned down the scholarship in Paris,” he concluded. Kamilah and Sofi had planned to move to Paris together after high school, but when their abuela got sick, Kamilah lied to everyone and told them she hadn’t gotten the scholarship that would have made the move possible. 

Sofi actually growled in anger. “Can you believe that bullshit?” She stalked down the short hallway into her living room. “Not only did we say we were going to do that since middle school, but we had plans. Firm plans. I had a school lined up! We were looking at apartments!” 

Leo could understand how that would be frustrating at the very least, more likely heartbreaking. “Why didn’t you just go anyway?” 

Sofi let out a bark of unamused laughter. “Have you met my mother? You think she was going to be okay with me going to Europe by myself? She didn’t want me to go even with Kamilah, but once Kamilah wasn’t an option…” 

Leo knew Sofi’s mother pretty well and Alicia Santana was not someone you ignored when she put her foot down. However, she wasn’t an unreasonable person and she trusted her daughter. “I don’t know, bombón. I think she would’ve come around eventually.” 

“You don’t get it, Leo. Once Kamilah said she wasn’t accepted, everything changed for me. I had to—” She cut herself off. “Forget it. That’s not the point. The point is that not only did she lie to me, she kept this a secret for twelve years.” 

Leo wasn’t exactly as upset about the situation as he could be. The truth was that he’d been keeping a secret from his sister for longer than that. So had Sofi. “I understand how learning all this would upset you, but Sofi, come on.” 

She spun on her heel and gave him a look that said, You’d better not be saying what I think you’re saying, while her mouth said, “Come on, what?” 

He gestured between the two of them. 

Sofi arched a brow. 

“Are you really going to make me say it?” 

She crossed her arms and looked him up and down. “I guess you’d better because I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gave her a look. She couldn’t be serious. 

“Sofi…” She pursed her lips. Leo sucked his teeth. “Sofi, we’ve been together on and off for how long now? Since you were like fifteen?” 

“First of all, we kissed once when I was fifteen and then nothing happened again until much later. Second of all, we have never been together, we have sex when we are both single, bored, and horny, which is not the same thing.” 

Leo didn’t let the hurt that statement caused distract him. “Yet, never once did you mention it to Kamilah and you forbid me from telling anyone about it, because you don’t want it to get back to her.” 

“I don’t want you telling everyone and their momma about it, because who I sleep with is nobody’s fucking business but mine.” 

Leo had to roll his eyes at that. She was so weird about people “knowing her business.” She tended to think that her life was so interesting that it was some sort of gossip fodder. It was ridiculous. She worked at her father’s company, went grocery shopping with her mom every week, and liked to go dancing with her friends on the weekend. Her life was not that different from plenty of women he knew. Shit, their secret relationship (because it was a fucking relationship) was probably the most interesting thing about her life. “You never want her to find out, because you know she’ll be upset about you lying to her. Sort of how you’re mad now.” 

“Are you really throwing this in my face right now?” 

“All I’m saying is that it’s not easy to tell people stuff you know will hurt them, so maybe you should give her a break.” 

Her eyes widened. “Give her a break,” she murmured to herself. When she looked at him, there was anger and shock in her expression. “You really are standing in front of me not only defending her, but trying to guilt me out of feeling my own emotions right now.” 

“I just think given the circumstances we both owe her—” “I. Don’t. Owe. Her. Shit.” She accentuated each word with a clap of her hands then paused, screwed up her face, and shook her head as if disgusted. “I don’t owe you shit either. Why am I even having this conversation with you?” 

“Sof—” “I should’ve known that at the end of the day you were going to pick her side over mine.” 

“How do you figure?” 

“Because, Leo, that’s how your family operates. Y’all are all open and friendly and welcoming until something happens. Then you close rank like a bunch of elephants circling around the weakest members of the herd. It happens every time Big Sam and your tía Iris break up. It happened when Chase left Kamilah. Y’all still barely talk to your tía Alba’s husband after he said Puerto Rico should become a state.” 

“Not true,” Leo argued. “He said that Puerto Ricans on the island wouldn’t be able to run a country without the US, so they needed to be a state which is different than just saying that Puerto Rico should be a state. And we hardly liked his conceited and low-key racist ass before that. Plus, you were just as mad about that as the rest of us were!” 

“That’s not the point, Leo!” she yelled at him. “Then what is your point,” he yelled back. “Because you aren’t making any fucking sense.” 

“My point is that I’m done. I have no interest in doing this with you, your sister, or anyone else in your family.” 

Leo froze. His body going cold. “What does that mean?” 

“That means that I’m not making up with Kamilah. I’m not coming around El Coquí anymore.” She paused and looked him right in the eyes. “I don’t want you coming here anymore either.” 

Leo scoffed. “You always say that and then you text to ask me what I’m doing and tell me to come over.” 

She passed by him to open her door. “Yeah well, why don’t you go home and wait for that message?” 

“Sofi,” he began. 

“Bye, Leo. Have a nice life.” Leo growled. He hated when she pulled that dismissive shit with him and she knew it. “You have to be the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” he called.

“Didn’t I already tell you goodbye?” 

“One of these days, you’re going to push me too far and I’m not going to come back.” 

“Maybe I’ll be lucky and today will be the day.” 

Annoyed that she was being so stubborn and unreasonable, Leo stormed out the door. It closed with a snick behind him and Leo fought the urge to flip it off. Instead he stomped down the stairs to the front door of the building. He hated that Sofi did this to him. She’d push him away just to prove that she could. But she didn’t actually want him to go anywhere, which was why she always called him back. She’d do it again this time too. He knew she would, because—no matter how much they fought—they couldn’t live without each other. 

This was not an ending. It was only an intermission.

Excerpted from SLEEPING WITH THE FRENEMY by Natalie Caña, Copyright © 2024 by Natalie Caña. Published by Mira, an imprint of HarperCollins.

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