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I follow her into the kitchen and slide into a seat at the dining table while she prepares the drinks. I rest my head in my hands and listen to the sound of my heart beating. Why do I feel like I’m losing control?
But I already know the answer to that. It’s because of him. Listening to him talk about Karly and how much he wanted to help her nearly killed me. I wanted so badly to hurt him. How dare he make out that he tried to help her? I know the truth; I know what happened. How stupid does he think I am? He doesn’t get to feel terrible about a death he caused.
“I’m guessing this is about your cousin?”
I look up as Heather sits next to me. She slides a mug of cocoa over to me. Wrapping my fingers around its warmth, I nod.
“She told me what happened. I knew about everything. The baby.” I clear my throat. Heather’s eyes widen, but she quickly regains her composure.
“Um, wow, okay.” She blushes. “I’m sorry, I just thought that because you’re still with him you mustn’t have known….”
I glance at her, confused. She knows about Noah and I? How could she?
“You were close with her?” I ask.
She nods. “We were very close. I know she never wanted to hurt you, Zara. She felt awful about what happened with Dillon, and she tried to break it off, but then when she got pregnant…”
Her voice trails off as I stare at her, confused. I have no idea what the hell she’s going on about. What does Dillon have to do with anything? Her face pales.
“Oh, God,” she mumbles. “You didn’t know.”
“Know what?” I ask, my frustration mounting. “What the hell is going on, Heather? What does Dillon have to do with any of this? Noah is the one who fucked her and then wanted her to get rid of the baby.”
My heart is pounding as my mind processes every little detail of the last few months of her life. Tiny little things begin to fall into place.
It wasn’t ever Noah. It’d been Dillon all along. How could I have been so stupid? My gut’s usually right about people, something that Karly and I both shared, and from the moment I met Noah, I knew it couldn’t have been him who had hurt Karly. I’ve been treating him terribly for no reason. Giving myself excuses to tear him apart, rip down his walls, only so I could get some sort of half-assed revenge on a man who didn’t deserve it. I feel like I’m going to vomit. All this time…I could have been getting to know him and falling in love with him like normal people do, but instead I was fighting every feeling I had, making him out to be some sort of monster in my mind.
The bile in my stomach lurches up my throat and threatens to spill. Swallowing it down, I square my shoulders and raise my eyes to meet Heather’s. “Karly was sleeping with Dillon,” I say, a statement more than a question, still trying to wrap my head around all of this.
“Yes,” she whispers. “They had left a party one night, both pretty lit, and ended up sleeping together. She was a wreck. Karly loved you so much. She talked about you all the time, and the thought of hurting you over one stupid mistake…she couldn’t. I sat up with her that night and came to the conclusion that she would make sure it never happened again.”
“But it did.” I start telling the story. Trying to place Karly’s mood during the months before her death. The way she acted. How she treated me. It makes sense. There’s no way this could be a lie.
“Dillon basically told her that if they didn’t keep their relationship going, he was going to break up with you and out his affair to you, not to clear the air, but to purposefully hurt you. He’s an asshole and she fell into his trap. Only, when she found out she was pregnant, shit really hit the fan.”
How could she have kept this from me? I know it would have been hard for her to flat-out tell me that she was having sex with my boyfriend, but it wasn’t something we couldn’t get over. We were family. Blood.
“He threatened her?” I ask, remembering something she had said in her last note to me.
“He did. I’m not sure if it was if she kept the baby, he was going to ruin her, or if she got an abortion, he’d tell you anyway. I think she was just in a really hard spot and didn’t know what else to do.” I nod, agreeing, but still so angry that she didn’t come to me. I’m the reason she’s dead. She didn’t want to hurt me.
“Now, you mentioned Noah. Are you talking about Professor Bain?” she asks, drawing me out of my pity party.
“Yes. She told me she was having an affair with her lit professor and things went sideways. Thinking back to conversations we had over the year, I put two and two together.” Heather cocks her head, smiling softly.
“Professor Bain’s the nicest teacher on campus. Karly had him first term and they got pretty close. Not like creepy close, but she could confide in him. I think she even told him about what was going on with Dillon. He’d never cross the line with a student like that. Some others might, but never Mr. Bain.” He had crossed the line with me, but only because I’d forced it on him. Excusing myself, I run for the bathroom, as I’m unable to swallow the bile down any longer. After releasing the contents of my stomach, I sit on the cool white tile and try to process what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks.
I’ve taken a man who was dedicated to his career and turned him into a creep. Treated him unfairly because of what I assumed to be true. And to put the icing on the cake, I’ve been sharing an apartment and a bed with the man who’s truly to blame for Karly’s going off the deep end.
My stomach recoils again and I finish purging whatever’s left inside. After cleaning my face, I walk back into the dining room and thank Heather for the talk. She hugs me tightly and lets me leave without any further explanation.
She already knows how terrible I feel and that I need to figure out how to confront Dillon about this. It might be in my best interest to pack my things and move out while he’s away. After I tell Noah what’s been going on, I’m sure he’ll want nothing to do with me, so it’s back home to Ohio I go.
I park my car on the street and walk up the driveway. I’m numb. I have no idea what to think, or how to feel. I can’t handle this. How could they do this to me? Dillon, I understand, but Karly…She was like a sister to me. I would’ve done anything for her. Fuck, I’ve spent the last year meticulously plotting revenge against the man responsible—the man who I thought was responsible for her death. But after everything, how could Dillon let me move here and be with him knowing what he had done to her? None of it makes sense, yet it’s crystal clear.
Noah. God, what have I done?
Shoving my key in the lock, my hand shakes as I fumble to get it open. Once the deadbolt is unlocked I still have to worry about the handle. Finally, after nearly a minute and a half of trying, I force the door open, only to see Dillon sitting at the dining room table. My Mac in prime view, but it’s the USB drive…my USB drive…plugged into the side that has my heart racing.
