23. Confessions
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CONFESSIONS
TARYN
“Why do you say that?” Nash asks. “Someone has been stalking you and you were attacked. The police will find that fucker, lock him up and throw away the key.”
This is the moment I’ve been fearing the most; probably even more than coming face to face with my stalker.
I knew that I would have to tell the guys everything, eventually.
But with every passing day, as our relationship grew and became more important than anything else, I’ve been burying my head in the sand.
It was easier and easier to find one excuse after another to postpone this moment, but I can see the questions in their eyes.
They have the right to know. Even if that might change their minds about being with me and about protecting me.
I shake my head. “That’s if they don’t do that to me first.”
“Baby, I don’t understand. You’re the victim in this situation. Why would the police want to blame it on you?”
My fingers close around the warm mug of tea, as if the warmth could give me the courage I need. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t. But it helps to hide the trembling of my hands, at least partially.
“Nash, do you remember when we saw each other, and you said you saw me at the Gamma house party on the last night of finals?”
Nash nods. “Yeah. But you said it was impossible, and you got pretty upset about it.”
“I got upset because you were right. I was there that night, and I went up to Tim’s room. I was going to hook up with him.”
He blinks a couple of times, trying to make sense of my words. “You did? Then why—”
“Because I was the last person who saw Tim alive. Or maybe I was. I’m not sure. I know we hooked up even though I can’t remember anything about it. I woke up the morning after in his bed, and he was…”
I’m shaking so much that I spill the tea in the mug I’m holding. Thank God it isn’t that hot anymore.
“Baby, give me that.” Tucker takes the mug from me. “You’re gonna burn yourself.”
Nash is looking at me as if he had seen a ghost. I cover my mouth with my hands. I don’t know if I can take this. But now it’s too late to turn around.
“I’m sorry,” Colsen intervenes. “I don’t understand. You hooked up with someone Nash knew?”
I nod.
“Why are you so upset, pretty girl?” His hazel eyes darken with fury when he begins putting at least some of the pieces together. “Did your hookup force you to do anything? Wait, you just said you can’t remember anything. Did that motherfucker drug you? If he did, he’s fucking dead.”
If I weren’t afraid of the heartbreak that is about to come and for my own freedom, I would laugh at the irony.
“Tim is dead.” I explain.
Tucker frowns, clearly confused. “What?”
I tell them everything. I start with mine and Jodie’s plan to get me laid before graduation. My voice breaks several times when I remember the bloodbath in Tim’s bed.
Remembering that night hurts more than I thought it would, but I don’t leave out any details.
“Jodie helped me slip out of the Gamma house. We packed everything we had left in our apartment and we headed west. We stopped along the way and got rid of the knife that was next to me when I woke up. We did the same thing with our bloody clothes. I ran out of gas right in front of the gates out front on the day they opened sign ups for training camp tryouts. And, like they say, the rest is history.”
Colsen runs a hand through his blond hair. “Holy shit. I think I saw some stuff about that murder in the news. But then training camp started, and I haven’t followed the developments of the story.”
Nash’s green eyes are full of questions, but when he asks the first one, it isn’t what I was expecting. “So who the fuck is stalking you?”
“I have no idea. As far as Jo-Jo and I know, no one saw us leave the Gamma house in the morning, or the cops would have been looking for us. But someone must have seen us because the messages said I know what you did this summer. There is only one thing they could have been talking about.”
I explain about the blackmail and about the person in the dark hoodie. I don’t leave anything out. From the terrifying night in the basement to the doll’s head in my locker, ending with the message I got tonight when my car broke down.
“Whoever is stalking me seems to know and see everything. Now I know that’s because they had that spy app and the air tag in my car.”
“Fuck,” Nash bites out. “And do you have any idea who could be doing this to you?”
My breath hitches in my throat, and I can’t look Nash in the eye when I admit one of my early theories. “For a hot minute, I thought you were my stalker.”
His eyes widen. “What?”
“It was just at first.” I rush to explain. “My stalker knows why I left Hemlock Beach. And you were the only person who knew me from college. And you kept asking me if I was at that party.”
“Because you were!” Nash sounds wounded.
I hang my head. “I’m sorry, Nash. But I was confused.
I didn’t want to believe you could be the person sending me those texts, but you were so mad at me for seeing Tucker and Colsen.
You kept saying you couldn’t be with me with them in the picture.
And my stalker wants me to break up with them.
And you kept appearing shortly before or after I got one of those texts, and that night in the basement, you were there. I thought…”
“If you thought I was sending you threatening messages and leaving doll’s heads in your locker, how could you be with me?
We had sex, Taryn. More than once. Even the night I found you in the basement.
And I was in a hoodie like the person who’s been trying to scare you.
If you suspected I was your stalker, how could you let me touch you?
Do you have some kind of serial killer fetish we should know about? ”
His reaction is understandable, and I try my best to explain. “Because deep down, I knew it couldn’t be you. I felt safe with you.”
“But when you ran into me earlier, you were screaming. Like you were terrified of me.”
“Nash, I was freaking out. I had just gotten away literally from under my stalker. I didn’t even see you.”
He looks truly hurt. “Well, fuck. If you needed any proof that I have nothing to do with this, I couldn’t have attacked you today. I was with Colsen the entire time. We had gone out for a run and got caught in the storm. And you saw your stalker getting away on a bike. And I was there with you.”
When I try to take his hand in mine, he lets me. “I know it wasn’t you. I never really believed it. Or I would have never been with you. You have to believe me, Nash.”
“I do. I believe you.”
“It’s just that you were the only person from my past. And you had seen me at that party.”
Nash nods. “I get it. It would make the most sense, even to me. But since we know I’m not your stalker, who else could it be?”
I tell him about my suspicions that it could be Genevieve.
“She’s definitely enough of a psycho bitch that I could see her doing that.” Tucker decides. “She’s been jealous of you from the second you got here. And I’m willing to bet my left nut that she sent that photo of us for my birthday to Carole.
Colsen chimes in. “She’s also over six feet tall. If you put her in a dark hoodie, you’d have to look at her from close range to notice that she’s much more slender than me or Nash, for example.”
“The clothes on my stalker were always a little baggy, and I’ve never seen them when it wasn’t dark.
So it could be Gen.” I agree. “And she was there in the basement the night Nash and I bumped into each other. She could have been the one who was chasing me, and maybe Nash’s presence scared her off. ”
Tucker’s jaw ticks when he adds one more argument in favor of Gen being my stalker. “She isn’t just jealous of you because you’re a better dancer. She’s convinced that Mack has a thing for you and that you’re the reason why he won’t get back together with her.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “All of that would make me believe that Gen could be my stalker. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is how would she know enough about what happened in Hemlock Beach to accuse me? That was why I suspected Nash. He’s the only person who could have put me at that party.”
“Fuck,” Nash intervenes, but this time he doesn’t look offended. “She might not know, but she definitely thought about you in connection with Tim’s murder.”
We all look at Nash as if he had sprouted a second head. “Come again?” I ask. “Why would she connect me to the murder, and how do you know?”
Nash rubs the back of his neck. “It’s kinda my fault. Right before Tucker’s birthday, Gen asked me to go to the party at Starstruck as her date. When I said no, she got really pissed.”
Jealousy makes me dig my nails into my palms. “That bitch. But what does that have to do with the murder?”
“After I said no, my phone rang, and it was the police from South Carolina who wanted to ask more questions. They were interviewing everyone who they could place at that party again. I thought that Gen had fucked off, but she hadn’t.
She waited for me to be done with the conversation, and she eavesdropped.
When I was done talking to the deputy sheriff, she started asking questions about the murder.
She even said that killers are hot. Some nonsense about reading dark romance. ” Nash says with a shudder.
“I still don’t understand what made you think she connected me to the murder.”
He explains. “She didn’t connect you as such, but she said that you probably knew something about it too, since you went to school in Hemlock Beach. She said she wanted to know if you had a theory about the murder.”
In my mind, that’s the confirmation I needed. “So maybe she doesn’t really know anything, but since Jo-Jo and I came from Hemlock Beach, she might have decided to taunt me about it.”