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“Good.” Sean coughs. “Stay safe. All that shit, brother. Get it done, and then you can get back to the girl Emmett told me about.”
“Gotta go, man. Shit to do.” I cut him off without waiting for a response and turn my phone off for good measure. No doubt, Emmett spread word of my impending departure through the family grapevine, and I don’t want to hear about it.
My chest throbs, and I rub it while trying to get my shit together. Voices come through the wall, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. And I force myself not to think about Casper. Or what I’ve lost in the blink of an eye.
There is one thing, at the very least, I can give her after inadvertently taking her sister from her.
I’ll never look back.
15
CASPER
I’m still staring at the doorway that Cole vanished through, clutching my damp towel to my chest, while Joel waits for me to pay attention to him.
“We need to call the police,” he says finally. “Have him arrested, or at the very least looked at as a suspect for her murder.”
“Stop.” I hold up a hand, begging him silently to shut up and let me think about what is happening.
“I’m serious, Casper. Do you want to see the file?” He still holds it close to his chest, with a grip so tight that his fingertips are white. “To see what he did?”
My pulse races and my head pounds with a migraine that I won’t be able to stop. But I don’t want to see the contents of that file. Not when Cole didn’t intentionally do anything to me. He didn’t betray me. He didn’t knowingly hurt Cassie and then seduce me. And I refuse to get caught in a circle of thinking that about him.
I step around Joel and clutch the towel tighter around my chest while I figure out what I am going to say. He starts to pace, waiting for an answer that I’m not sure how to word.
“Was it an accident?”
He keeps pacing but shoots me an indecipherable look. “What?”
“I asked if it was an accident. In the file, that you’re holding, does it say whether or not it was an accident that killed Cassie?”
“Well, yeah.” Joel shoots a glance down to the envelope still clutched in his hands. “It was. But he’s responsible for it. He needs?—”
“No,” I cut him off. Joel doesn’t have to say anything else. I know he is upset. Hell, I’m upset. “He doesn’t. If the police ruled it an accident, and the private investigator you hired ruled it an accident, then there is absolutely no reason in the world that we should take this information beyond this room.”
Joel’s expression turns furious toward me, which has never happened before. Instinctively, I hold the towel closer to my chest.
“Are you kidding me right now?” There is a little bit of spit on the edge of his lip. “Your parents wouldn’t feel this way. They’d be on my side of this.”
“Bullshit!” I snap. Right in that moment, I lose all the calm that I’ve managed to regain since Cole walked out the door. In its place is fury and rage that is so volatile it is palpable. “You’re bullshit, Joel. How you’re acting right now. This. All of it. It’s bullshit. Cassie wouldn’t ever want someone to be punished, to have their life ruined, over an accident.” I point at the wall that connects my house to Cole’s, and part of me hopes that he is over there listening to us. I may be angry and never forgive him. But that doesn’t mean he needs to go to prison for something he can’t even remember.
“He needs to suffer.” Joel crosses his arms, bending the folder in a way that makes my anxiety cringe. I don’t say anything. “He needs to feel what he made me feel.”
“It was an accident,” I repeat solemnly. “You said that yourself. The police said that. The investigator said that.” I push a strand of hair out of my face. “If he’d been drinking, that would be different. If there were drugs. If there was a reason. If he’d run from the scene, that would be different. But he didn’t. He got into an accident and doesn’t remember anything about that night. He left when I told him to, Joel. What else do you expect him to do?”
“Suffer.” So much rage and hate in that one word, and I can’t do anything to stop it.
There isn’t going to be a way to get through to him.
Joel is too deep in his grief, completely wrapped up in his emotions to understand the ramifications of what he wants to do.
“The police won’t be able to do anything with that information.” I change tactics. “If it was an accident like you said, the only way those papers would be of any help is if we choose to sue him.”
The fire in his eyes dies a little but is quickly replaced by unshed tears. Ones that he tries to keep hidden from me.
“I want him to pay, Casper. He took what I wanted from me. What I needed for my life.”
“I know.” My heart breaks for him. He loved Cassie so much, and knowing that their life together got cut short hurts me, too. “I know.”
