24. In Which Aiden Tells the Truth
IN WHICH AIDEN TELLS THE TRUTH
“ T ell me.”
It’s the first thing I say when Juniper slides into the driver’s seat of her car, closing the door quietly.
She’s jumpy, looking around with a tight, nervous expression, and that’s part of why I chose to get in her car instead of going to my own.
We can come back and get mine later sometime.
Right now I just want to stay close to her.
She’s silent for a moment as she buckles, the belt snapping into place with a click that somehow seems too loud.
“Juniper,” I say when the silence stretches on. “Just tell me.” I’m well aware that the next words out of her mouth will be shocking, but that just makes the anticipation worse.
It’s a relief when she finally turns to me. “How well do you know Rocco?” she says.
In my head, my brain produces the same sound you see in cheesy comedies—that sound like a record scratching that happens when a character is taken aback or when something unexpected turns up.
How well do I know Rocco ?
How well do I—how well—Rocco— what?
She must be able to tell that this one question has reduced my intelligence to a pile of scrambled eggs, because she sighs, and the look she gives me is almost pitying.
“Rocco Astor,” she says, her voice betraying a slight tremor. “I think it’s possible he’s the man Sandra was seeing.”
I blink once. Twice. “Explain,” I finally say.
She sighs again, starting the car. “I’m not sure I can,” she admits. “Not properly, anyway.” She looks over her shoulder as she backs out of her parking spot. “It seems sort of…I don’t know. Sort of nebulous, I guess, in my mind.”
“Try,” I say. It comes out as more of a croak.
She shrugs, but the movement is tight. “When I first came to town, I went to Grind and Brew. I was waiting for you, right? But someone followed me there. I didn’t think anything of it; I just figured we were going the same place and they were riding my tail.
It was a couple sitting in that car, or at least two people.
They were looking at me sort of surprised, and I thought it was because of my bad parking job. ”
My first idiotic thought is that I remember that parking job, and it was bad. But the thoughts keep flowing, and her words register. “You actually saw them together?” I say, my eyes widening. “It was Sandy and Rocco?”
“The thing is,” she says, “I’m really not sure it was them.
I didn’t know Rocco yet, and I hadn’t seen or heard of Sandy.
I did think Rocco looked familiar when I first met him at the dance, but then you told me he was Lionel’s brother, and I figured that was why—because there’s a resemblance between them.
All I remember about the people in the car is that they were wearing matching tops, some sort of bright pink color.
It was hard to tell exactly what shade through the window, and I only saw them briefly. ”
“Okay,” I say slowly, my brow wrinkling as I try to figure out what I’m missing. “But why would they have been following you? No one knew you were in town.”
“That’s not true,” she says as she shakes her head.
“I posted on the town forum about a place to live. I set up the meeting with you through your sister in the comments on my original post. It’s a bit of a stretch, maybe, but we definitely talked about the move-in date and the color of my car and the place and time of our meeting at Grind and Brew. ”
“Okay…” I say, trying to put everything together.
“But when I spoke to Gus,” she goes on, “he told me about the man he saw on Sandy’s phone.
The contact picture of the guy was him and Sandy together, wearing matching pink hoodies.
He didn’t describe exactly what color pink.
But it reminded me of the photo Sandy’s mom showed us, of her in that fuchsia hoodie with the hood pulled up, the drawstrings tied so it scrunched around her face. You remember?”
“I remember,” I say after a second. “So…your reason for suspecting Rocco…is a pink sweatshirt?”
“I told you I can’t explain it,” she says, sounding frustrated. “Not fully. It’s just—I guess it’s intuition. Have you ever heard the theory that gut feelings are really just your subconscious brain noticing obscure details and making connections?”
“I have,” I admit.
“All I can—” But she breaks off, her eyes widening, her mouth forming a little circle. “Oh,” she breathes. “That’s it. That’s what I’ve been missing.”
I blink. “Sorry?”
“In my book,” she says, turning to me excitedly. “It’s all been feeling very mechanical and neat and just too—too— something . But it’s the human element! That’s what I’ve been missing. The humanity.”
“I…don’t follow,” I say.
She sighs. “I need more right brain in a book that so far has been very left brain,” she says. “I need intuition and instinct and feelings. Not just facts and observations and proof. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” I say. “When you explain it like that, it does. But what does this have to do with Rocco and Sandra?”
“Oh,” she says, looking startled. “Sorry. I got distracted. But it goes back to the instinct thing.” She sighs again.
“All I can really boil it down to is that Sandy did cross country, and Rocco is the coach. The whole cross country team wears shirts in that same fuchsia color. I saw that couple in that car the day I arrived in town, and barely any time later Sandy got in touch with me. A lot of the people in Autumn Grove didn’t know who I was or that I had moved here by the time Sandy was asking to meet with me.
Plus…” She trails off, glancing over at me before looking back to the road.
“Rocco knew my mom. He looks like his brother, and his brother as a child looked too much like me for there not to be some relation. We all have the same eyes.”
I swallow as something sick and nauseating slithers into my gut. “Rocco keeps chickens,” I say, staring blankly out the window as my mind works furiously.
“He does,” Juniper says, in a way that tells me she’s already thought about that too. “And he wanted us to stay away from all of this. He was very insistent.”
I shake my head, pushing one hand through my hair. “But that doesn’t make sense. Rocco never hung around with them—your mom and her friends.”
“Aiden,” she says, her voice patient. “Who told us that? Who gave us that history?”
Crap. I’m an idiot. “Rocco,” I breathe as my stomach churns more violently still.
“Yes.”
All right. I understand what she means. There are no huge clues, no neon signs pointing to Rocco proclaiming him as the killer, but there are lots of little things—too many to be coincidence. He fits in a way no one else has so far.
“So how well do you know him?” she asks again.
“I mean,” I say, running my hand through my hair once more, “obviously not well enough to guarantee he’s not secretly a psychopath. I don’t know much about his past, and I’m not sure I could trust the things he has told me.”
We fall into silence, and I’m sure her mind is spinning the same way mine is.
I jump when her phone begins to ring, vibrating and blaring loudly from the cupholder in the center console.
I pick it up and press it wordlessly into her outstretched hand.
After she looks at it, though, she puts it back in the cupholder.
“It’s Matilda,” she says. “I’ll call her back later.”
We’re quiet for the rest of the drive, and I’m so lost in my thoughts that when the car comes to a stop, it takes a full thirty seconds for me to realize we aren’t at home.
“What are we doing here?” I say, blinking up at the entrance to Forester’s.
“Getting groceries,” she says.
I blink again. “Right—right now?”
She shrugs. “Dish soap doesn’t magically appear just because you think you’ve figured out who the bad guy is. Plus,” she adds lightly, “I need chips and guac.” As nonchalant as her voice is, though, her face is paler than normal, and that’s the detail that convinces me to play along.
“This is true. All right.” I hesitate before saying, “But you should know, Gale Forester and I don’t get along.”
“I know,” she says with a little smirk. “He’s mentioned it to me before. He always grumbles about you when he sees me, ever since he found out we were roommates. He loves me, though. ”
I sigh, unbuckling. “Of course he does.” Then I get out of the car, closing the door gently behind me so that it doesn’t fall off or something. That always feels like a possibility with Juniper’s car. She does the same on her side, and then we head toward the entrance.
“It’s because I’m delightful,” she says, walking backward toward Forester’s and grinning at me.
“Of course you are.”
“Just wait until he hears we’re dating.”
“We aren’t dating.” The words pop out of my mouth before I think them through, before I can decide whether they’re a good idea.
Spoiler alert: they’re not.
“Ah,” she says, her face falling as her steps slow.
“I see.” She hesitates while I mentally drop-kick myself in the face.
“Is it going to be one of those ‘for your own good’ situations? I’ve written one of those.
I liked it in my book, but…” She breaks off, frowning as her gaze drops to the ground. “I don’t like it so much in real life.”
“It’s not that,” I say, sighing and running my hand through my hair. “I just—there are some things we need to talk about first. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, and her eyes narrow.
Then she moves back toward me, slowly, and I swear she’s swinging her hips like that on purpose—or maybe it’s just because her yoga tank and leggings don’t hide as much of her figure.
Either way, my mouth has gone completely dry by the time she’s planted herself right in front of me.
And then that same rush of emotions comes flooding back, the same internal battle, the emotional version of fight or flight—pull her close or push her away? Kiss her or run?