Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(103)

I’m a prosecutor. I won’t allow her to hide behind words.

“Did you see the pictures?”

She can’t look at me. “Caroline, I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Did you see them or not?”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize Nate’s comforter in the background?”

She crosses her arms. Stares at a spot on the ground by her foot.

“It’s me in those pictures,” I say. “But it’s your son, too, whether he likes it or not, whether he wants to admit that he’s the one in them with me. And I didn’t tell a single person they existed, so the fact that the whole world knows now? That’s on him. Nate has things to answer for. I’d like you to wake him up.”

For half a minute we stand there. I think she must hope that I’ll go, change my mind, but that’s not happening.

Eventually she turns and ascends the carpeted staircase. She leaves the door open. I stand on the threshold in the gray light of morning. An unwanted gift on the doorstep.

I can hear the radio on in the kitchen. From upstairs, a murmur of voices, a verbal dance between Nate and his mother too muffled to make out the specifics of.

A complaint. A sharp reply. Then the conversation gets louder—a door has opened.

“Why are you taking her side?”

“I’m not. But if I find out you did this, don’t expect me to support you just because you’re my son. It’s despicable, what happened to her.”

“What she did is despicable.”

“What she did, she did with you. Now, get dressed and get down there.”

Footfalls. Water running in the upstairs bathroom.

Nate comes down barefoot in a red T-shirt and jeans, smelling like toothpaste.

He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“Who says, the dean of students? Please.”

“I could get expelled.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to ruin my life.”

His eyes narrow. “Melodramatic much?”

“You think I’m exaggerating?”

“Nobody tried to ruin your life, Caroline. Your life is fine. It’ll always be fine.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?”

His lips tighten. He doesn’t answer.

“You have no idea.”

It’s just dawned on me that he doesn’t. I mean, he really doesn’t.

When he said we’d always be friends, in some twisted way, he meant it.

“You think it’s … like a prank. Like the time you and the guys soaped all the windows at the high school or rolled the football coach’s car to the park and left it on top of the teeter-totter. What did you do, stay up late with a six-pack of beer, jerking off to porn, and then think, I should put Caroline up here?”

“Someone stole my phone,” he mumbles.

“Oh, bullshit. That is such a giant, steaming pile of shit, I’m not even going to—God. You did, didn’t you? You thought you could do this and it would just be funny or awesome or what I deserved. You didn’t think it was going to mess up my chance of getting into law school. Ruin my relationship with my only living parent. You didn’t know it would make it so I couldn’t sleep for months, couldn’t look at a guy without flinching, couldn’t pull on a shirt in the morning without thinking, Does this make me look like a slut? I thought about changing my name, Nate. I get phone calls from strangers telling me they want to stick a razor blade in my cunt. That’s what you unleashed. That, and a million other awful things. I want to know why.”

“I didn’t do it.”

His voice is small, compressed. This is a lie, a bald and ridiculous lie that he’s abandoned here in the space between us. Too pathetic even to back up with volume, body language, anything.

“You did it.”

He shrugs.

“You’re pathetic,” I say. Because he is. He’s so pathetic. Hiding behind his hate, looking down on me, looking down on West. “I feel sorry for you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a bitch.”

“Why? Why am I a bitch? Is it because I broke up with you? Because I’m standing here? Because I wouldn’t let you put your penis in my butthole? I was good to you, Nate! I loved you! For three f*cking years, I did every nice thing I could think of for you, and then you paid me back with this. I want to hear, from you, what you think I did to deserve it.”

“I’m not telling you shit.”

His expression is so mulish—I wish his mom could see him right now. I honestly do. He looks like a four-year-old.

He’s a boy, too stubborn to tell me the truth, too childish to comprehend the consequences of his actions.

He hates me because he can.

Because he’s been allowed to.

Because he’s male, he’s well off, he’s privileged, and the world lets him get away with it.

Not anymore. The life those pictures ruin? It’s not going to be mine.

“Enjoy your break,” I tell him. “Enjoy the rest of your semester. It’ll be your last one.”

And I can see it in his eyes—the fear.

For the first time. Nate is afraid of me.

I like it.