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He lets out a long breath before finally shrugging. “I’m not going to pretend. It’s all true—I’m sure she didn’t exaggerate anything. I’m not proud of it, believe me.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Piper turns to me, her eyes going wide. “I don’t get it. Why would you?”
Even if Colt wasn’t here, I wouldn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated. I don’t understand it myself.”
“It is complicated,” Colt adds.
“I don’t even want to look at you.” She throws her backpack on her bed and plops down, arms folded. “Even if your dad made you do it, you could have told Leni why.”
When I turn to Colt, lifting an eyebrow, I find him staring at the floor with his thumbs hooked through the belt loops on his jeans.
“She does have a point,” I tell him. Amazing how her being here makes it easier for me to say all the things that have been on my mind. He has a way of mixing me up, but Piper’s presence gives me back a little bit of myself.
“It’s not that easy, and it wasn’t like I knew everything ahead of time. We knew my dad was obsessed with you and that he wanted us to befriend you. We figured if we did the opposite, you wouldn’t want to be around us… including my dad.”
“Oh…” That does make sense, but it doesn’t explain many other things. “That was before. What about the past few weeks?”
“Again, we didn’t think he would ever take it this far. He did this whole thing in stages, always telling us to do one more thing and then he would be done. Well, that one more thing always turned into more, and by that time, we were already so entangled he would have blamed all of it on us anyway.”
“I know he’s your dad, and I know you feel like you have to be loyal to your father or whatever, but I can’t let him get away with what he did. And if you care about me the way you say you do, you’ll have to prove it by helping me make him pay for what he did.”
He’s slow to sit on my bed, and suddenly, he looks drained. “I can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?” I blurt out. All the pain, frustration, loneliness, and confusion are in that question, ringing out in the room.
“Because I just can’t.” His voice is so small, almost reminding me of a little boy’s. “And I can’t tell you more than that. I wish I could. I wish I could help you. I want him to pay, too. For all of it, for everything. But it’s just not possible. You aren’t the only person involved here.”
I’m not the only person involved.
I don’t know why it took me so long to figure it out.
The way they reacted when I mentioned her. The torn-up picture and the way they stared at it. All the secrecy.
“Is this about your mother?” I whisper, knowing it’s true but also sort of hoping it isn’t. “She’s supposed to be dead, but you told me she’s not. Is he… using her against you somehow?”
He lifts his head slightly, his eyes barely meeting mine before darting away. But he nods, and Piper gasps softly.
“We can’t go into this. I don’t even know… just forget we ever talked about it.” He practically jumps up from the bed and crosses the room in three long strides. “I’m gonna go. Please, whatever you do, don’t tell anybody we had this conversation.”
“Wait a minute.” I’m cut off by my phone buzzing away on my desk. I wish I wouldn’t have turned it back on. I’m tempted to ignore it since it can’t be anybody important, anyway—I almost never get calls.
But I glance over anyway because isn’t that what you do when your phone rings? Even if you have no intention of answering, curiosity makes you look. And that’s what I do.
I only programmed her number into my phone just in case I had an emergency and thought she might give a damn for once. “It’s my mom.” Nobody could be more surprised than I am as I answer the call, holding up a finger in a silent plea for Colt to stick around.
“Mom?” At first, I can’t figure out what I’m hearing. “Mom?” I call out over the sound coming through the phone. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Leni!” It finally hits me that she’s sobbing.
Loud, gusty sobs. “Sweetie. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know! I’m so sorry!” Whatever she says after that is lost to another burst of sobs, louder than before.
By now, Colt is standing beside me, and I can tell from the look on Piper’s face that she can hear everything, too. It would be impossible not to, the way Mom is screaming.
