Chapter 25 #2
I want you to be happy, is what I want to say.
“It worked,” I say in a hushed tone, on the off chance anyone could be listening at the bottom of the stairs.
“Wes has this whole plan drawn out for the beach house, and he’s so excited about it.
He’s going to bring the plans to his dad and I think this really might work.
I think you’re going to get the resort.” I wait for the smirk, or for some type of positive emotion, but Asher doesn’t say anything, just continues to put laundry away.
“And he broke up with Marissa . . . and . . . then he kissed me.”
He looks up then and raises a brow. “Then why are you up here with me and not down there with him? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Yeah, I just . . .” I take a step or two closer, closing the space between us. “What you said the other night about this.” I motion between the two of us. “I guess I just need to know if—”
He cuts me off. “There is nothing between us, there never was.”
I huff a laugh. “Well, we both know that’s not true.”
“How is it not? I feel like I’ve been clear about my intentions.”
I shake my head. He has been nothing short of confusing for months. “At the hotel, you said—”
“Guys will say anything for sex, Sawyer—you of all people should know that by now.”
The insult feels like a slap in the face and my cheeks heat with embarrassment. “You’re such an ass.” My voice betrays me
when it cracks and tears well up in my eyes.
“And I always have been. It’s not my fault if you’ve forgotten that along the way.” He looks up at me again. “What, are you
really going to cry?”
I stare up at the ceiling trying to hold back the tears.
Asher rolls his eyes. “Go cry to Wes. I’m sure he’d love to hold your hand while you cry over me again.”
I can’t stop the words that come out next. The overwhelming urge to cut him back, cut him deeper. “Maybe he was right, maybe
you will turn out just like your dad. Bitter, mean, and alone.”
“Get. Out.”
He doesn’t need to tell me twice—I’m already going. I stomp down his stairs and slam the door behind me.
Wes comes out of his room at the commotion. “What’s wrong, what happened?”
“Nothing, I just forgot who I was talking to, that’s all.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me these characters are who I think they are,” Annica says after reading through my story.
“You wanted to read it,” I remind her as we sit in Renner’s Tuesday-afternoon senior seminar. The first of the semester.
“I mean, it’s an okay story, I guess,” she says. “I just think the end is really obvious.”
“How so?”
“She chooses the soldier, like you knew from the beginning that she would. There’s no twist and there’s just something about
it that doesn’t feel genuine. It feels like a lie.” She looks up at me when she says the last part. “I have an idea for it,
though. What if the letters that she’s been getting, the ones that help her and the medic find the missing soldier, you find
out that the medic had been writing them all along as some pathetic ploy to be with the main character longer. That’s a twist.”
Huh, it is a twist. A good one, I think to myself, making a note.
“I think I’ll use that actually . . . thanks.” I almost want to ask her what the catch is. Because I know I’m not forgiven
yet, so giving me plot advice for nothing in return feels out of the norm for Annica Labrant. I take the papers from her and
start to put them back in my bag. We stand and pack up before heading toward our next class, publishing.
“So have you heard anything from the detective? Did they catch Holland?” Annica asks as we make our way to the other end of the English building.
“Grange says he can’t give me details on a case when I’m still technically a suspect. That or he just won’t answer me at all.
I’m starting to think I need to take matters into my own hands again.”
“Because that worked out so well for you before,” Annica mutters.
We pass a group of girls, and they move out of the way, whispering. That’s what most people have done so far now that school
has started back up.
“Tristan doesn’t come back from Europe until the end of February, so I have a month before I really have to worry again,”
I say. But then mentally chastise myself because that’s the kind of thinking I had about Graham, and look how that ended.
Graham.
His raspy breath and blood-soaked mouth pop into my head and I flinch.
“And what about Wes? Does he even know he’s on some crazy broken-heart hit list?” she asks.
“No, and I’d like to keep it that way. There’s no need to stress him out; he’s got enough going on as it is.”
“So more lies?”
“Are we all going out tonight for Ladies Night? Last first one of the semester,” I say, trying to change the subject as we
file into the row for our next class.
I have only six credits to complete before graduation, which means only three classes this semester: the other half of senior seminar, publishing, and sociolinguistics.
I spend the rest of my free time at the gym, working on my short story, looking up jobs and internships for the summer, and going back through the murders.
I bought a bigger corkboard than the one Asher stuck on my wall, because I ran out of room.
I printed more names and photos, the cities where each murder happened, and the news articles from the web.
I got more red yarn and put it all together, staring at it most nights waiting to find a connection.
One that doesn’t point to Miles Holland but rather to Kate Holland. I just can’t find one that makes sense.
“Sloane?” Adrienne says in my doorway.
It makes me jump. I toss a blanket over the board as I stand up to face her. “Adrienne.” I cross my arms. She’s been MIA since
the gallery.
“We should talk,” she says.
“We should.”
She stands in the doorway waiting for me to invite her into my room. But I don’t.
“I didn’t know who he was at first,” she explains. “I never saw a picture of the professor you told me about last year. I
met him at a bar in Ivy Gate and we hit it off. When I realized he was the same guy, I was too scared to tell you.” I don’t
say anything; I just stare at her, jaw clenched. “I’m not seeing him anymore. And I’m sorry I ever did it in the first place.”
“Why aren’t you seeing him anymore?”
“I think he was only seeing me to get information about you, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late.” I just nod, not
sure if I fully believe her story. “Do you think you can forgive me?”
I don’t want to, but who am I to withhold forgiveness? “I’ll consider it,” I say, before shutting my bedroom door in her face. I look back at my suspect board for a while, before taking Adrienne’s photo and name from the board.
I meet everyone at Water Street Tavern, and to my surprise, Asher is here. The bruises on his face have almost healed. I resist
the urge to touch them when we’re standing at the bar together.
“What?” he says, catching me looking at him from the corner of my eye.
“Nothing,” I whisper, as the bartender hands him a beer and he walks away. Wes comes up beside me then.
“Still taking things slow, right?”
“Yes,” I say, looking back at the group. “Definitely.”
“So, I can’t do this?” Wes inches closer to me so our shoulders are touching, and I have a flashback of last semester when
Asher and I stood here like this watching Wes and Marissa from across the bar.
I give a nervous laugh. “Um, maybe just that, for now.”
I feel like a virgin again with a boyfriend pressuring me for sex. Not that Wes is pressuring me, but I’m sure he found it
off-putting the last two times he’s tried, and I told him I was on my period, or I wasn’t feeling good.
We aren’t in a relationship; we’re just . . . I don’t even know what we are. Hanging out, I guess. I had to make it very clear
that it can’t look like we’re rushing into anything, especially not in front of Annica. But what I really meant was not in
front of Asher.
I get my drink and go back to the group, leaving Wes by the bar.
“I can’t believe we’re friends with the actual Pembroke Psycho,” Jake says. Marissa’s TikToks and the PC gossip page have finally made their way to the rest of my friend group. Wes still hasn’t brought it up to me, though.
“None of what’s on the gossip page is true,” I say.
“Well, that’s good,” Charlie says. “Would really suck if you were murdering your exes. Asher would be a goner.”
“Looks like she already tried to get to him,” Jake teases about the bruises on Asher’s face.
Asher doesn’t say anything.
“Well, don’t you guys know? Asher and Sloane were never really together. It was one big charade. Just a show for his family
to win him some brownie points.”
I stare daggers at Annica, though I never explicitly told her to keep that to herself. I just haven’t had the chance to tell
Wes that. I watch his face fall when he comes back to the table and hears it.
“Looks like it didn’t work though,” she says before taking a sip of her drink.
My mouth falls open. I don’t ask how she knows about Ben. I assume Wes told her.
“You are such a cunt,” Asher says to her.
“Takes one to know one,” Annica says back.
“Okay, okay,” I interrupt. “Let’s not do this here.”
“This is what happens when the balance of the group is ruined,” she says to me. And I want to say that everything was fine
before she opened her mouth and if anything is upsetting a balance right now it’s her, but I’m on thin ice with everyone,
so I stay quiet.
“I’m going to grab us all some shots,” Jake says.
“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” Sam says, and follows.
“Oh, I love this song.” Charlie looks at Dani. “Let’s go dance.”
Asher gets up and leaves the bar. Wes, Annica, and I are all that’s left at the table.
“Happy?” Annica says to me.
Far from it.
An hour later I’m lying in bed with Wes as he plants drunk kisses on my lips and neck, but I can’t stop thinking about Asher.
I pause the kissing, pulling away to look at Wes. “Did you tell Annica that Asher’s dad hits him?” I say.
“Hm? Oh, uh, like one time in high school I think I did. I’m surprised she even remembered.”
I sit up. “High school? You’ve known about that since high school?”
Wes sighs, turning on his side and propping up his head on a hand. “Um, no, it’s been going on for much longer than that.”
My mouth hangs open, and Wes leans in to kiss it but I pull away. “Wes,” I say. “How could you not tell anyone?”
He sighs again. “Sloane, you don’t understand.”
“I do understand, I saw it happen.”
“No, I mean everyone knows. My dad says it’s not our business.”
“How could he say that? That’s his nephew.”
“It’s complicated. My dad tried to offer to take in Asher and Kara when their mom passed but it started a huge fight so my
dad told us to just stay out of it. He didn’t tell you about that during your fake relationship?”
I was starting to think he wasn’t going to bring it up. Like maybe it would just get swept under the rug. “I was going to
tell you about that,” I say.
“Well, if we’re telling the truth, is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Your name is in that journal. Your name is in the journal and it’ll be you that dies last if we can’t catch who’s behind this.
“No.”
When Wes falls asleep I text Asher.
I’m sorry.
He doesn’t reply.
It’s mid-February when Grange comes back to Pembroke’s campus to speak with me again.
“I told you everything I know, I gave you DNA samples, I don’t know what else I can even say,” I tell him when we sit down
at the Bean.
“I just have a few more questions,” he says, and I can tell he’s tired.
“Well, I have questions for you too. Did you arrest Miles after he forced himself on me? Did you look into Kate?”
“You know I can’t share that information, as I’ve told you almost every week now.”
“Well, you must not have if you’re still looking. Tristan comes back from Europe in two weeks—you have to make this go quicker.”
“It’s going as quick as it can. We’ve had to work with the departments in North Winwick and Pembroke to reopen these other
cases, comb through security tapes, interview witnesses. This is not a speedy process.”
“And you’ve talked to the Hollands?”
He sighs. “They’re both clean.”
“Did you search their homes?”
“Sloane.” He doesn’t have to say anything else: The tone in his voice is the one my mom uses when the conversation is over.
I go on anyway. “What about Marissa Wilder? Anything on her?”
“We have this covered. Now, the questions I have for you . . .”
I walk him back through everything that I can remember, which isn’t much since I was blacked out almost every time someone
died. The lack of progress makes me worry for Tristan and Wes. They aren’t safe. Not yet.