Chapter 7
My heart beats out of my chest, anticipating the fight that’s about to happen between Braden and Jackson. And then Braden and me when he finds out I’ve been seeing Jackson.
“What the hell?” Braden says. “There’s no one here.”
I look past Braden and see that Jackson is gone. Where’d he go? He was there just seconds ago. How did he know to hide?
“Braden, let’s go,” Trystan says. “Dante just texted and said the team’s already there.” He smiles at me. “Dante wants to know if you’re coming.”
I sigh. “Tell him no. And that we’re just friends.”
“You could tell him yourself if you’d go to the party with us,” Braden says, meeting Trystan at the door. “You sure you want to stay here by yourself, knowing someone’s out there?”
“Nobody’s out there.” I yank the drapes closed. “It’s the wind. It makes that noise all the time.”
“Trystan, give us a minute,” Braden says.
“Why?”
“Just do it!” he yells. “Go wait in the car.”
Trystan leaves, and my heart beats faster as I try to imagine why Braden wants to talk to me alone. Did he see Jackson on the patio but pretend he didn’t? Is he going to yell at me now that Trystan’s gone?
“What do you need?” I say, going to sit on my bed.
“I need you to go to this party tonight.”
“Why?”
He comes over to me. “Did you already forget our arrangement?”
I sigh. “The guys aren’t going to tell me anything. And they’re not going to do stuff you don’t approve of in front of me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, because that’s what they told me,” I say, hoping he’ll believe it. I need to end this plan of his for me to spy on his teammates. I only agreed to it so he’d let me sit at his table, but now I’m there, and his teammates love me, so I doubt he’d make me sit somewhere else.
“What’d they tell you?”
“They asked if I’m spying on them for you. I told them I wasn’t, but they didn’t believe me. They were saying they have to watch themselves around me.”
“Who said it?” he asks. “Was it Dante?”
“Dante, Miles, Kade — the whole team thinks I’m spying on them for you.”
“Fuck,” he says, shaking his head.
He believes me. Maybe I’m getting better at lying.
“So having me go to the party won’t do any good,” I say. “I can still try to find out if they’re—”
“Just forget it. I’ll have to find some other way to keep them in line. I’m not letting them do shit that’ll fuck up our season. We’re gonna win every damn game, and if we don’t, they’re gonna pay.”
He finally leaves. I wait until I hear the front door open and close before returning to the sliding glass door. I open it and go outside.
“Jackson?” I whisper.
“Over here.”
He’s standing by the railing that runs along the back patio. I run over there.
“Have you been here the whole time?” I whisper.
He turns to me and smiles. “You don’t have to whisper. They’re gone.” He takes my face in his hands and kisses me. “I had to see you. I couldn’t wait.”
“Braden almost caught us! Do you know how pissed he’d be if he—”
Jackson stops me with another kiss. And then another, as his arms go around me, pulling me close.
I break from his lips and look up at his gorgeous face. He really should model, or go back to acting. A face that good-looking and a body like his need to be shown off.
“Jackson, I’m serious. We almost got caught.”
“I’m sure we will, eventually.”
“You’re not worried about that? About what will happen if—”
“Braden finds out? I don’t give a shit. He doesn’t get to tell me who I can date. He should know that by now.”
I pause, trying to figure out what he means. Is he referring to that girl? The one they both dated? The dead girl?
“You mean because of Andrea?” I cautiously ask.
He backs away. “Who told you that?”
“What?”
“Who told you about Andrea?” he asks, raising his voice.
My hands feel clammy, and my throat goes dry. I think I can trust Jackson, but that story Shayla told me put doubts in my mind. People think Jackson killed that girl. Why would they think that? Why would they think he’s even capable of that?
“Who was it?” he demands, grabbing my arm.
“Nobody.” I shake my head. “It’s just gossip I heard at school.”
“People at Twisted Pine don’t talk about me. Not anymore. They won’t even say my name. They think I’m a traitor.”
“That’s probably why they were saying that stuff about you. To make you look bad.”
“What stuff? What were they saying about me?”
“Nothing. Just forget it.” I try to pull my arm away, but he keeps hold of it.
“What did they say about Andrea?”
“That she got drunk at a party.” I pause. “And fell. Over a railing just like this one.” I look down at it.
“They said it was an accident?”
I nod really fast.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” I insist, but it sounds fake. I really need to practice lying. Apparently, I suck at it.
“Who told you?” he asks.
“Told me what?”
“What happened to Andrea. They didn’t say it was an accident. If they did, you wouldn’t be shaking right now.”
“I’m not shaking.”
He holds up my hand, which is shaking.
“I’m shivering,” I say. “It’s cold out here.”
He drops my hand. “Why do you keep lying? I thought we were friends. More than friends.”
“We are.” I take a breath. “Okay, yeah. I might’ve heard you were involved. But I heard Braden was too.”
Jackson takes a step back, folding his arms over his chest. “Tell me who told you this.”
Not wanting to involve Shayla, I say, “A girl at school. People say she’s crazy. Makes up stories and stuff.”
“Peyton?” he says.
“Yeah. You know her?”
“From when I went to school there. We also had a job together.”
“What job?”
“When we were kids, maybe five or six, we were on a show together. She played my sister.”
“Really? How long did you do the show?”
“Not long. It only ran for a season. Even back then she was crazy. She’d make up stories about the crew, saying they hit her or yelled at her.”
“And it wasn’t true?”
“No. I even saw her bruise herself, then run to the director and blame the camera guy.”
“Why would she do that?”
“For attention. Or to create drama. She gets bored easily so she creates stories in her head that aren’t true but tells them as if they are.
Eventually people in the business caught on and stopped hiring her.
She was actually a good actress. She could’ve gone far if she wasn’t making up stories about people. ”
“I sat with her at the game. It was her idea, not mine. I was sitting with Brock and she wouldn’t leave me alone. She told me about her and the principal.”
“That story is actually true.”
“So she tells the truth sometimes, but not always.”
“What’d she tell you about Andrea?”
“That people think you or Braden did it.”
His eyes lock on mine. “What do you think? You think I did it?”
“No!” I nervously laugh. “Of course not. You’re not a killer.”
“Is Braden?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I could see him doing it more than you.”
He cocks his head. “And why is that?”
“Because you care about people. You wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone.”
“What if it wasn’t intentional?”
I’m sweating, and my throat’s getting drier. I feel like he’s telling me something.
Almost like he’s confessing.
“What are you saying?” I ask, breathing hard as I grip the railing.
He glances at my hand on the railing, then looks back at my face. “I wouldn’t kill someone. Even if she betrayed me.”
“She betrayed you?” I take a breath. “How?”
“She went back to him, after promising me she never would.”
“You mean Braden.”
“I never wanted to get involved with her. She was Braden’s girl and they were always breaking up and getting back together. But one night she showed up at my door, crying and saying he hit her. She said it was over between them. That she’d never go back to him.”
“Braden hit her?”
“She said he did. He denied it.”
“Did she have any marks?”
“Not that I saw, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.”
“And then what? How’d you end up dating her?”
“She started coming over and we’d talk. One night it became more than that. It’s not like we planned it. And we weren’t dating. We never even went out. We just hooked up a few times and then she went back to Braden.”
“When’d you find out she went back to him?”
“The night of the party. She called me, crying and saying she had a fight with Braden. She asked me to pick her up.”
“But you weren’t allowed at the party. You’re from Legion. They would’ve kicked you out.”
“Which is why I waited outside the house. When Andrea didn’t show up, I went looking for her.” He pauses and looks down. “I never found her. A girl told me she left with someone else, so I went home.”
“I don’t understand. You made it sound like you were involved. Like it was an accident but that you . . . did something.” I chew on my lip, afraid to know more, wishing I’d never even heard this horrible story.
“I never should’ve let her go to that party. I kept telling her not to, but I didn’t try hard enough to stop her. I should’ve taken her keys. Locked her in my house. Anything to keep her from going that night.”
“What are you saying? That you think it’s your fault because you didn’t stop her?
” I step closer to him. “Jackson, it’s not your fault.
It was her decision to go there that night, and her decision to get drunk and fight with Braden.
” I take his hand. “You didn’t kill her.
You had nothing to do with what happened to her. ”
His eyes lift to mine. “So you believe me?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“A lot of people don’t. They think I did it. The only reason I’m popular at Legion is because I win them football games. If I didn’t play sports, people would run from me.”
“I’m sure not everyone there thinks you did it.”
“Most of them do. In a way, it’s been good. People leave me alone.”
“But you have friends, right?”
“The guys on my team. They know me well enough to know I didn’t do it. Some of them think Braden did it. The guy’s got a temper like I’ve never seen. He doesn’t just get mad. He fucking loses it.”
“Was he like that when you guys were friends?”