Chapter 18
Andy
November
“Sloane, huh?”
I shoot my attention back over my shoulder and find Ian leaning against a mostly bare maple tree, its red and golden leaves littering the ground.
The smirk permanently etched on his face is a distraction, so similar to the one our father wears, and I wonder if he knows he does it.
Kind of wonder if I do it, too, when I’m not paying attention to whatever I’ve schooled my expression into.
I turn back around to the coffee counter, nodding a quick thanks to the underclassman manning the chilly campus beverage cart.
“What about her?” I ask, walking away, knowing he’ll follow if his curious gaze is any indication.
“What, no funny dumbed down joke? You’re off your game, Spellman.”
I roll my neck, really not in the mood for whatever he’s trying to get at. He has to know I’d never let him quote me for his idiotic paper. When I don’t say anything, he clears his throat, increasing his speed so that we’re in lock step, crunching the fall foliage at the same time.
“That’s four times now you’ve been seen with her. Five times, if you count Pub 24.” I cut him a glare, clenching my jaw. “I have eyes everywhere, Andy.”
He’s just like him.
I inhale icy November air, forcing myself to calm down. “And why,” I begin to ask, shakily exhaling, “are you watching me to begin with?”
Something in his carefully crafted facade shudders, his gladiator shield falling as he glances around, tugging me by the arm until we’re in a gazebo.
Nervous energy slithers out of him, so at odds with his usual confidence, and I can’t help but remember we’re technically brothers.
That maybe he’s coming to me because he’s in trouble and has no one else to turn to.
Knocking my head back, I let the possibility wash over me and decide to be a decent human, whatever comes next, even if he doesn’t deserve it.
“Listen—”
“I know he’s watching Sloane,” he says in one barely coherent ramble, and I freeze. “I know he told you to watch her.”
I contemplate lying to him, feigning ignorance, but he’d see through it. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter and he learned from the best.
Wind rattles the shutters of the gazebo as I sit on the bench—the white paint peeling, the wood ice cold—and draw my letterman tighter.
Ian follows suit, eyeing me carefully as he takes the spot opposite me.
He’s waiting to see if I’ll lie. He’s estimating something, in real time, by the way I react.
I’m fucking freezing, though, the hot coffee clasped between my hands barely enough to warm me as stick season threatens to wipe out any semblance of cheer.
And I’m tired—of lying, of pretending. Ironically enough, this secret brother of mine is the only person who knows most of my truth.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Yeah, he did.”
Ian’s eyes narrow, understanding somehow softening the usually predatory gleam they hold. “And you don’t want to?”
“Of course not.” It’s harsher than I mean it to be, the implication more grating than it should be. I’ve been informing on my friends for years.
“Sorry, it’s just…shocking.” A slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Shocking? You don’t know me.” I let out a bitter laugh.
“Spying on people isn’t the same as knowing them, Ian.
” His scoff sears against my pride, its target glaringly obvious, and it spurs me further.
“I don’t have a choice, asshole. You choose to spend your time writing hit pieces on kids you’re what—jealous of?
” His eyes flare, and I know I’ve hit something. “It’s actually fucking pathetic.”
He rises, eerily calm as he squares his shoulder, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Not as pathetic as selling your friends out for connections. What would they say if they knew?”
I swallow hard, heart racing. “They’d understand.”
“Would they? You think they care about you that much?” He shakes his head, his jaw grinding. “Olivia all but stomped on me when I tried to tell her the truth, despite years of friendship. They seem to have a lot of trouble with nuance. With notions of morality or suffering.”
“And you do?” I laugh, watching my breath puff out before me.
“You’re just like them. We’re all screwing each other over, but at least some of us have a reason.
” I step forward, anger roiling in my bones.
“You think I want connections? I want my mom to have food on her fucking table. I want my sister to have hot water. I want them to live a normal fucking life. What could you possibly want?”
He balks, looks like he’s on the verge of saying something, before his face pulls tight.
“Forget it,” he says, storming out of the gazebo as I sit there, wondering what the hell just happened.
Will’s building glows with lit windows, students beginning to pack bags for the impending fall break.
I stopped in with a container of food Mom made him, the closest I could get to offering him care.
He promised me he wouldn’t do anything stupid, but I’ve been checking on him everyday regardless, pulling his curtains back, throwing away the liquor bottles he’s managing to keep full stock of.
I told Coach and I told Ben. They said they were handling it, but the details of that handling feel hollow and dangerous because they include his parents and—maybe I’m cynical, but Will didn’t become a shell of himself in a loving, balanced home.
I shrug it off, sending him an aspirational quote about climbing mountains as I brace the cold, and head home.
The long walk to frat housing, with the wind rasping against my cheeks and nose, leads me right by the row of new builds that try their best to mimic the historic homes that’ve rested here for over a century—the ones where Ian lives.
The bricks are too red, the grout too stark in contrast, especially when you consider the way the stones on the old buildings have been weathered by sun and rain.
The lamp lights on this part of campus are crisp and dark, the black paint not having had enough time to chip.
Even my frat house, built sometime between the beginning and now, has this inherent charm that seems to be missing from the row of buildings here.
They feel overeager, like they desperately want to prove they’re just like the rest despite all the evidence.
Guilt trickles down my awareness when I think about what I said to Ian.
I told him that he’s just like them, but I know he’s not. He’s an outsider with money. I’m an outsider without. I should’ve listened, instead of acting on impulse. More importantly, I should’ve wondered why he was coming to me about Sloane to begin with.
He answers the knocking sequence almost immediately. Ian doesn’t seem surprised to be seeing me; he just ushers me in, popping his head out the door like he’s checking for someone.
His laptop sits on a stack of books in his living room, the glow of the screen illuminating the wall to wall bookcase behind it. Papers are strewn across the coffee table, and a fresh cup of black brew rests there, the family crest on the side of it sending a jolt of resentment down my chest.
“Want it?” Ian says flatly, and I glance away, ignoring him.
“I wanted to apologize for being shitty earlier.”
One of his brows arches, his eyes lazily assessing me. “So do it?”
Thank god I wasn’t actually raised with him. “Sorry,” I tell him, almost swallowing the word. “I’ve had a lot on my mind but I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.
He adjusts the collar on his maroon cable knit sweater, clearing his throat. “I could’ve approached things differently.” His version of an apology, I guess. “But you’re here because, unlike what you’d like the masses to believe, you’re not an idiot.”
Teeth grating against each other, I try to control the slight twitch happening in my jaw. “It was pretty fucking dumb to take his deal.”
Ian nods to the couch he’s refused to claim, opting for the floor where he can access his laptop, and I sink into the expensive cushions and wait.
His attention cuts, and I realize it’s this attention that’s made him the nationally recognized student journalist he is today.
Without his relentless observation, the gossip column, the sports column, the politics column, would be carbon copies of what every other collegiate press is doing.
“What if I told you,” he suddenly says, my gaze snapping to his, “I could help you get out.”
“Why would you do that?” Hope takes root, and I willfully keep it in the shadows where it can’t bloom.
“Because our father is a piece of shit dirtbag who helps other pieces of shit dirtbags hide from the consequences of their actions.” The air in the room shifts and my heart beats loudly in my ears as a light automatically warms from a harsh white to a warm yellow.
“I agree. This isn’t news to me,” I scoff, shaking my head as I release a heavy breath.
“No. But what if I told you that he’s hiding something.
That he did something big. That he’s desperate because things are falling apart.
” He eyes me, like I’m supposed to be reading something into the vague shit he just told me.
He tilts his head, exasperated. “Are things not falling apart right now?”
“Yeah, no thanks to you.” I shrug, then pause, understanding dawning on me. “Because of you. It’s for a reason,” I say, more of a question than anything.
“Of course I have a reason,” he spits, and I recall our conversation in the gazebo. “He’s only as safe as the number of secrets we keep. It’s his entire business model: secrets.”
I glance down at my shoes, trying to unravel the threads wound tightly around all of us, unable to neatly follow it to Will even though I know he’s at the center of it.
“Andy, think.”
“Shit. Lily?” I suddenly realize, the enormity of that secret—that Will dated her, Olivia’s best friend, before her death—slams into me.
Ian just stares at me, his gaze begging me to go on, like I’m missing something.
“Okay, so…Will dated Lily. Olivia and Lily were best friends. She…died,” I say, my voice dipping. “Clearly, Liv didn’t know, but that’s just a moral failing on Will’s part. What else is there?”
“I need to know if you want to be involved. I’m not telling you anything until I know you’re in.”
“How does this solve my problem, though? I mean, I’m…I’m all for taking him down. But I have bills to pay, Ian. People who depend on me. He owns me.” The words are lead—are poison in my mouth.
“I know,” he says, his voice soft as his gaze dips to the ground. “My trust is substantial. I’ll cover whatever he was covering.”
My hand rakes through my hair all on its own, and I realize I’m standing.
“No way,” I tell him, my brows drawing tight as I try to understand this man who’s usually so cold.
So calculated. “Just so you can own me instead? No thanks.” I head toward the door, sadness skating between the vertebrae in my spine—in and out, like it knows it has no right to be here.
I never assumed I would get out of this early. This shouldn’t feel so gutting.
“Tell me, Andrew,” he says, voice raised as he follows me. “What would it be like to stop lying? Do you even remember the truth anymore?”
“Do you?” It comes out more desperate than I thought possible, and I feel over exposed.
“I wish I didn’t remember the truth. But once you do, turning away from it will eat at you.
Necrotize everything you touch. Everything you think about touching.
” He pauses; I think about Sloane, the way I’ve wanted her and the way I shouldn’t.
“I said I had a way out. Yes, it involves helping me. But once he’s been exposed, we’re both free. We are all free.”
The thudding is so loud, in my ears, in my chest, in my throat. Breathing is hard, like I’m on the peak looking down, hard for oxygen and terrified to fall.
“I need to think about it.”
“Of course. You know where to find me.