Me: Thanks, man.
Closing out of that message, I take a deep breath and open the one from Jason. Unfortunately, my stomach drops when I read what it says.
Jason: Do you ever wonder what things would have been like if we would have gone to that party?
I scrub a hand over my face as my leg starts to bounce. Fuck. Yes.Every single fucking day,I think about it.
All of those peaceful feelings I had from sitting close to Jasmine and watching her, vanish in an instant.
If we had gone, I doubt any of this shit would have happened.
It's all my fault.
CHAPTER 16
JASMINE
Blinking my eyes a few times, I try to make sense of what I'm looking at. It finally registers that it's the TV flashing brightly against the dark background. It slowly comes back to me that I'm at Cam's apartment, and I fell asleep again. The prosecco – though sweet and thoughtful – did make me sleepy.
Sitting up further, I look over to where his bedside lamp is on, but I don't see him there. I glance around, turning toward the kitchen, and that's where I see him, standing with his back to me, leaning against the counter. There's a tiny light above the stove switched on, but it's so small and dim that it barely lights up any of the surrounding area.
I should really get going home, so I push to my feet and pad quietly over to the kitchen.
“Cam,” I murmur when I'm standing just outside the kitchen area. He doesn't respond or move, just stares straight ahead at the fridge with his arms crossed. Actually, it's not the fridge he's staring at, but the one and only photo that's on it. “Everything okay?” I ask. Something looks off about him, but I can't put my finger on what exactly. “Cam?”
“I should have just gone with him that night,” he eventually says in a low voice. “Then everything would be different.”
I have no idea what he's talking about, and it seems more like he's saying it to himself rather than to me, like he hasn't registered my presence.Something is obviously wrong.
What happened while I was asleep?
I take a few steps closer and stop when I'm standing right in front of him.“Do you want to talk about it?”
He hasn't exactly been one to open up and tell me things freely, but I ask anyway. I want him to know that hecantalk to me if he wants to. And besides, he did eventually end up telling me about the racing, so who knows?
His eyes leave the picture and land on my face. That's when I notice how bloodshot they look. Hazy. Glassy. He's looking at me, but it's as if he isn't actuallyseeingme. A second later, he uncrosses his arms and lifts a bottle of brown liquid to his lips. I didn't see the bottle under his folded arms before, but I realize now that that's why he looks the way he does. He's been drinking. But this is different from when he drank the other night.
“If I had gone, he wouldn't be in fucking prison, and my parents wouldn't hate me.”
Wow. I feel like there's a lot to unpack in that statement, but since he's actually speaking and I don't want to scare him off with a bombardment of questions, I try to focus on just the first part.
After glancing over my shoulder at the photo on the fridge, I ask, “Did one of your friends from that photo go to prison?”
His stare is intense as I trail my eyes over his face, noticing that his hair is longer since the first time I met him, and the front now falls messily over his forehead. “My best friend,” he croaks. “Jacob.”
I lift a hand as if to touch him, feeling the need to comfort him somehow, but then end up changing my mind and dropping it again, simply saying, “I'm sorry.” He shakes his head, lifting the bottle to his lips, and takes another big swallow of what I think is bourbon. “What happened?” I ask in a careful tone, not wanting him to think I'm prying too much.
He lets out a humorless laugh. “He was accused of rape.” My eyes widen, but I don't even get a chance to think further about that statement before he speaks again. “But he didn't fucking do it.” His voice comes out a bitter rasp. “Iknowhe didn't.”
The absolute conviction in his voice is enough to have me believe that he knows, or at least believes without a doubt, that his friend didn't do it. It has me wondering how something like that could have happened, though. Was there no evidence or trial?
“So he got accused of rape and went to prison for it?”
“Yep. But if I had said yes to going to that party, it wouldn't have happened.” He takes another drink and then adds, “It's my fault. So while he rots in prison, I'll rot out here.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my heart squeezing tight at his words.
He waves a hand around in the air. “I don't deserve nice things while he's in there. I live my life accordingly.”
