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She looks at my dark apartment. “No. Ever since you kidnapped her …” She winks.
It’s true, Stassi gradually moved all of her stuff over to my place, and now, her old apartment isn’t even hers. Madison’s boyfriend moved in a few weeks ago and assumed Stassi’s share of the rent. It was a perfect arrangement, especially since their wild, wall-shaking sex doesn’t seem to happen nearly as much anymore.
“See you,” I say, wondering if Stassi went out somewhere with her family. Did she say she had plans? I can’t remember her saying anything about that.
But when I turn the key in the lock, I immediately focus on Stassi, sitting on the couch in the dark. The television is on, tuned to a random news show, its blue glow illuminating the tracks of tears on her face. She’s clutching a pillow against her chest.
I freeze as her eyes wander to meet mine, the pain in them heartbreaking. “What’s going on?”
Her voice is distant. “When were you going to tell me the truth about the night Jonathan died?”
36
Stassi
I look up at Alec through tears. He looks like he wants to bolt, just like my brothers were afraid of. And one thing becomes crystal clear in my mind:
If I hadn’t asked him, he never would have told me.
I’d gone into that lunch with my brothers, full of spit and vinegar. Yes, they were just trying to protect me, blah blah blah, I’d heard it all before. I would explain I was thankful for them, but I needed to make my own mistakes, and politely ask them to butt the hell out.
But then they proceeded to tell me something so much worse than I imagined. By the time they’d finished, I wanted to throw up. I left the restaurant in a hurry and spent most of the day walking the path overlooking the ocean, trying to make sense of it.
Even now, I can’t make sense of it.
My voice is hollow. “I see. You weren’t planning on telling me, ever.”
After what they told me, I expect him to bolt. That’s what he did, after graduation. After Jonathan. That was why we never saw him again. He didn’t even stay for the funeral. He was too much of a coward to face what he’d done.
But instead, he comes around to the couch and sits beside me. I move away and glare at him.
“What did they tell you?” he says quietly.
“The truth about that night.”
I remember very little about it, though I hadn’t had all that much to drink. I remember that glare of hatred Alec had given me and Jonathan when we were together. I remember seeing them having hateful words, out on the deck. But after that, I went home … and I knew nothing but that after drinking too much, Jonathan had strayed from the path around Moss Pond, tripped, hit his head on the stone wall, and drowned.
I hadn’t known that someone had killed him.
Alec. No, he hadn’t pushed him. But from everything Cooper and Aidan said, he might as well have.
And all this time, he stayed away. He didn’t offer me condolences. He didn’t go to the funeral. He just left. He skulked away, rather than face the hard truth, rather than accept the consequences, like he always did.
He’s not speaking. He’s not defending himself. Because he knows he has no defense. And I want him, I desperately want him to defend himself.
“Is it true you played that game with him? You got him drunk?”
Again, he doesn’t speak. He’s staring at me, as if he wants to hear me say everything he did.
“You were egging him on, calling him a pussy when he didn’t drink. They said it was like you wanted him to pass out.”
He nods. “I did.”
“Why?”
He sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly. “It’s complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it for me.” I wait a beat, two, but it’s like pulling teeth. “You never liked him, right?”
He nods. “I never liked the way he treated you.”
I snort. “Really? You didn’t like him treating me like a princess? Which is what he did. And all the while, you were the one sending me those nasty messages.”
“Yes, that’s right. You knew not to trust me. But what’s worse?” he asks, his eyes meeting mine. “Someone who’s an asshole, or someone who pretends to be a stand-up guy and fools everyone into not seeing what an asshole he is?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he was cheating on you every chance he got,” he says flatly.
I nearly laugh. Jonathan was a goofball. No one ever took him seriously. He didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body. “How can you say that?”
“Because I saw it. He was good at hiding it from you, from your brothers. He worked at it. But Carlina … she knew. He was always trying to get with her, with any other piece of ass he could nail, when you and your brothers had your backs turned.”
