“Don’t talk to me about lost time,” he grumbles, stealing the last slice of fruit. “At least you’re not as insufferable lately.”
“That makes one of us.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Wiping my sticky hands on my jeans, I rise from the crate I’ve been crouched on for the last thirty minutes. Together, we exit the shed, the sun beating on us all the way to the lot where our trucks sit side by side.
Ash jolts to a stop. Whips his phone out of his pocket. Stares long enough for anxiety to coil behind my ribs.
His dark brows slam together.
“You know the guy in a coma after the party at the athletes’ dorm?”
“What about him?”
A frown slashes across his mouth as his phone buzzes with another incoming message. I can hear the blood rushing in myears, growing louder and louder with every minute that passes. He pries his attention away from the screen. “Apparently, he just tipped the scales in our favor.”
“What do you mean?”
Somber eyes finally connect with mine.
“This morning, he identified the guys who drugged and assaulted him. Combined with the evidence from Dr. Larson’s… They have a warrant to search Marcus and Grant’s dorm.” A glimmer of hope shines back at me. “I’m telling you, Seba. This. Is. It.”
Dear God, please be right.
Sixty-Eight
ANDREA
The footage is grainy—definitely filmed on an older device. It jerks and jostles, then comes to a stop on the ceiling while the arguing escalates into shouts of pain. Acid sloshes in my empty stomach as wet thuds, whimpered groans and panted insults coalesce into a vivid ballad of violence.
Hell. That’s where these fuckers belong.
I close the video and reread the message attached.
Seba:
Terrance named his attackers. Two football players blew some powder in his face then assaulted him. I think you can guess who did it and where they got the drugs…
Four hours have passed since receiving that text. Three hours since updating my evidence log and map. Two hours since Remy called demanding to know why the police were raiding the athletes’ dorm. Two hours since he insinuated the worst possible thing was done to Win. I should’ve said something back then.Why didn’t I fucking say something?
The burn in my core spikes. I wince, massaging the cramp in my abdomen. I just had my period last week. I shouldn’t becramping like this. I need the ibuprofen I took to do its thing and actuallyworkfor once.
Rain pelts the window.
Storms are God’s tears. He’s mourning your choices.
“You think Dad was right about the rain?” I ask, picking lint off the arm of the pink velvet couch I thrifted a few years ago.
My sister’s sigh crackles through the phone speaker. Now that she’s out of the house, we’ve been trying to reconnect. It’s… not as easy as I’d hoped. She’s cautious and I’m evasive. Love still runs between us— that will never disappear— but it’s trapped behind walls of grief and distance. I don’t blame her for resenting me; I left her to fend for herself. Like Seba did to me. But rather than do it in the name of protection, I did it for self-preservation.
The guilt weighs the same.
Burning. Cramping. Burning.
“No,” Lilly murmurs. “I like to think… It’s washing everything clean.”
It’s always difficult to breathe when she speaks. Her feather-soft voice triggers too many memories. It’s sheer curtains dancing in a rare summer breeze, piano hymns tinkling, and counting dead flies on the windowsill. It’s dust and mom’s perfume choking us as we huddle in the back of the closet, hiding from the crash of glasses and booming lectures. It’s inside jokes whispered under blanket forts and dancing barefoot in the wet grass. It’s racing up and down the stairs in a blissfully empty house. It’s all the good of my childhood alongside all of the darkness.
