19
I wake in a panic, not knowing where I am or what day it is.
It’s pitch dark. I can’t see a thing, but I feel the blanket over me and the cushions and remember that I was with Henry, on his couch.
He invited me over. Apparently, the meeting with Mr. Abbott and the lawyer hadn’t gone well.
Mr. and Mrs. Abbott took off again immediately afterward, checking into separate posh hotels in Stowe to avoid not only the local press but each other.
Bram and Adam were holed up in Bram’s room, coping via a video game marathon, and Henry needed a friend.
We talked for a while, and then he put a movie on. For once, we watched in silence, all of our words spent. I remember resting my head on his shoulder at one point, but I’m alone now. Warmth fills me, knowing he must’ve brought me this blanket before heading to bed.
But the feeling turns to panic when I think of Dad. He must be worried out of his mind, especially considering the recent murder. I have to check the time, but my phone is lost somewhere in the dark.
Standing up, I feel around on the couch, then move to the end table. With no luck, I head toward the wall in search of a light when my right shin crashes straight into something. I cry out as sharp pain radiates up and down my leg.
I fall back onto the couch, still caught in the dark as my shin throbs.
A light clicks on, and my bleary eyes struggle to adjust.
“I came down to get some water and heard a noise,” Bram calls from the doorway. “Are you all right?” I turn and blink a few times to watch him cross the room toward me in a fitted black T-shirt and dark sweatpants.
“Yes,” I say, my voice too high-pitched. “I’m fine. Just couldn’t see.”
But he rounds the couch, advancing on me. I shrink back, Adam’s words blaring in my head. She said she was going to break up with him. An hour later, Mariana was dead.
He stops suddenly, his eyes flooding with hurt before lowering to the rug. “You’re afraid of me,” he says with none of his usual humor.
“No, I’m not,” I lie.
“Then let me help you.” He waits for me to answer, unconvinced. He doesn’t take another step.
Nodding, I start to lift the hem of my jeans. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Bram moves to kneel in front of me, his hand brushing mine as he takes over, rolling up the leg of my jeans past the knee.
Sure enough, there’s a large gash where my shin met the sharp edge of the wrought iron coffee table.
The area is already starting to swell, and blood has seeped into my jeans.
Bram’s fingers graze my ankle as he looks up at me with sleepy eyes. “You’ve made a mess of yourself, Phil.”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
Ignoring me, he gets up and ambles from the room, returning a minute later with a first aid kit.
When I try to take it from him, he slings me an annoyed look. “Why are you acting like I’m going to take the antiseptic and find a way to kill you with it?”
“I’m not. I just don’t need any help.”
“You were there for me Friday night,” he says, already finished cleaning the wound and moving on to the gauze. “Let me be there for you.”
“Friday night was a mistake.”
Bram’s head draws back, his eyes flicking up to mine. “Why is that?”
“Because Adam thinks something happened between us,” I say, pulling the blanket up to neck level, “and I think he might tell Henry.”
“So”—he clears his throat, eyes back on the bandage—“you and Henry. You’re…”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Nothing happened between Henry and me tonight, apart from my falling asleep on his shoulder. There was no more hand-holding, no kiss to solidify whatever inklings I’ve had. We just talked, like old times.
Bram rises, saying only, “Let’s get the place a little warmer,” before moving to the ornate wood-burning fireplace in the corner.
He works on it, leaving me to wonder if he even heard what I said about Henry.
Once a fire is blazing, he takes another match and lights the votive candles on the black console and the coffee table.
Then he dims the main light in the room to near black and kneels again without making eye contact.
“How are you doing,” I ask, “ever since…you know, Sage’s post?”
“I’m not in jail, so I guess I’m doing pretty swell. Sage’s post is down.”
“It is?” Did she take it down because I asked her to?
“Our lawyer got the police involved. They had it removed.” Guess that answers my question. He finishes up the bandage and rolls my pant leg back down. “All done.” Only he stays kneeling there, staring off in the direction of the doorway. “Go ahead. Ask.”
I hate it when he knows what I’m thinking. I nearly deny having questions. But they’re too burning, like the hot coals from the fire sitting in my back pocket, trying to scorch right through the layers of fabric and skin. “Why did you pull the fire alarm?”
Bram rubs the back of his neck. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I promised someone I wouldn’t. And like I said during your last interrogation, I don’t want to lie to you.”
“You put your face on camera,” I say, my tone admonishing.
“That’s not accurate,” he says, trying to lighten the mood. “I didn’t know someone would be hiding out, recording me from behind the drinking fountain nook.”
“You weren’t even disguised, just wearing a stupid T-shirt. Even if a girl hadn’t been murdered, you could’ve gone to jail!”
“These are all extremely good insights, Phil. Do you think I would’ve chanced it if I’d planned on killing a girl afterward?
Also, thank you for noticing my T-shirt.
” He gestures to the one he’s wearing now.
“If you’ll remember, I told you and the cops that I left my sweatshirt in the cafeteria at lunch.
The timestamps prove that I didn’t have it anymore when the second video was taken.
So I couldn’t have been the person caught on it with Kennedy. ”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t kill her,” I say without thinking.
Bram presses his lips flat. “Huh.” He nods and starts to get up. “Okay. Well, I appreciate your trust in me.”
“Just wait,” I say, still letting my mouth work in isolation from my brain.
Because trust is the last thing on earth I have for Bram Abbott right now.
He scowls, considering my request for a moment before moving with resigned sluggishness.
Once he’s seated on the couch beside me, I turn to face him.
“You want to know why I lost trust in you? Because Adam told me about Mariana. That you stole her from him—”
“Stole her?” His head wrenches back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And Adam thinks that you were cheating on her with me. All because of that day when you and I…” I can’t say the words.
“What?” Bram’s face pales. “Oh, no.” He slumps against the backrest, rubbing at his temple. “It was him. It was Adam the whole time.”
“What was Adam?”
“I assumed it was Kennedy.”
“I’m lost,” I say, my frustration growing.
Bram sighs. “Last year, Kennedy tried to come between Mariana and me. She harassed me, threw herself at me—it was like an obsession.”
“What?” Kennedy had feelings for Bram?
He rubs at his face, eyes combing the room as if in search of answers. “Adam must’ve seen us together and misconstrued everything. He must’ve told Mariana there was someone else. That’s why she broke up with me.”
My chest lightens a little. The girl in Adam’s story wasn’t me. It was Kennedy.
Still, I’m not sure I buy Bram’s version of events.
I think back to that day in Bram’s closet two summers ago, when I let my hands slide down to his wrist. When he looked me dead in the eyes, like he was trying to read my thoughts, and all I had in my twisted head was that I wanted him to kiss me.
About how his hands moved to the small of my back, and he read those thoughts with deadly precision.
How his lips met mine, hands pulling me in, crushing me against him.
How, for a second, I lost myself in him, and it was everything I wanted.
How I regretted it immediately, feeling terrible for Mariana. Thinking of Henry.
I pulled away and fled the closet, Bram’s room, the mansion. I ran to the woods on the Abbott property, but Bram caught up with me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, out of breath. He dug the fingers of both hands through his dark hair. “I thought it was what you wanted.”
“Why would I ever want that?” I yelled, knowing with my entire being it was a lie. “You’re with Mariana!”
Bram shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, stunned as much as relieved. And there was another feeling matted up with the others, one I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“We broke up.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I don’t want to get into it. But we’re not together,” he said, nearing me cautiously. “It’s over. So you and I—”
“I can’t,” I cut in. “I shouldn’t.”
“Because of Henry,” Bram said, his gray eyes pained. “You’re in love with him.”
I couldn’t deny it. I’d never said it out loud before, but at the time, I believed it.
I still believe it, I think.
“Look, I had no idea that Adam liked Mariana,” Bram says now.
“She never even talked about him, and he never told me.” His lips twist, gaze drifting away from me, like he’s trying to conjure up some memory.
“I knew they were weird around each other. But Adam has that effect on some people. He’s loud and forceful where Mariana was quiet and gentle—she worked at the library, for God’s sake.
I just assumed they didn’t like each other.
Honestly, it was one of the reasons I was thinking of ending things with her. ”
“Like you did the first time,” I say quietly, remembering that day in the woods, the summer before last. I thought I’d have more time to think about that day, to think over Bram’s words.
So you and I… But then a few days later, he was back with Mariana.
“You never did tell me why you two broke up that first time.”