The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(78)

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I say, but when I grab up her tiny body, it’s like her clothes are filled mostly with air.

I am still holding Cassie when I hear the door close and the bolt thud shut.

“I’m so sorry, Wylie,” she whispers, her voice trembling.

“None of this is your fault,” I say. It’s Quentin’s, or my dad’s, or maybe even mine. But not hers.

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Another voice. This one behind me. We are not alone. When I turn, Jasper is sitting in the shadows along the far wall.

“Jasper!” I feel such a surge of relief. Like we’re as good as saved. But then I see his face in the half-light—bruised and swollen, a cut over his eye. “What happened to you?”

“Doug,” he says. He motions to his face. “He was more about the fists this time.”

“Why didn’t they just let you leave?” It’s a terrible sign, I know. For all of us. “You didn’t even know anything yet.”

“Because I wasn’t leaving,” he says. “After Cassie told me—” His voice cuts off like he can’t even bring himself to finish the sentence. “I was pissed and I needed some air, but I wasn’t going to leave. In the middle of all this? Anyway, Doug just came out of nowhere. Made up for what he didn’t finish outside that bathroom.”

“Those *s,” I whisper. He winces and pulls away when I reach out toward his face.

“It looks worse than it is,” Jasper says, and totally unconvincingly. “Did you seriously think I would just leave without even saying good-bye?”

I look over at Cassie. I don’t want to sell her out, but she was the person who told me that. Repeatedly. Maybe she was hoping that Jasper did leave. “I must have—I guess I misunderstood.”

“Seems like there’s a lot of that going around.” Jasper shoots a vicious look in Cassie’s direction. “Why don’t you tell her, Cassie? Tell Wylie about all the misunderstandings.”

That does not sound good. It sounds like more than I want to know.

Cassie closes her eyes and rests her head against the wall, then shakes it back and forth. “If I had known—” Her voice cracks.

“There was another guy. I was right about that,” Jasper says when Cassie stays silent. “And boy, did she pick a winner.”

Okay. I do know about the other guy. Maybe none of this will be news to me. But my stomach is already a fist. And that is not because I am some Outlier. It is because I know Cassie. And with Cassie, there is always something worse.

“What is Jasper talking about?” I ask.

“I met him the way I said,” she begins. And her voice is so small. “All of that was true. He came into Holy Cow when I was working, and he ordered a chocolate milk shake and sat at the bar and we talked for a while.”

“This was while she and I were dating, by the way,” Jasper interjects as he pushes himself to his feet and goes to stare out the window. Lit up in the pale-gray light, his face looks even worse. Cassie closes her eyes and hangs her head, but doesn’t argue. “Sorry, continue.” He motions to her, then turns and looks at me. “Wait, it gets so much better.”

“It wasn’t until he—”

“Wait, he who?”

Because it’s obvious that this is the essential fact.

Cassie opens her eyes and looks up at me. “Quentin,” she whispers, the tears finally sliding down her face. “I met Quentin.”

No, I think. But I can’t manage to make a sound. No.

I want to cover my ears. I want to run.

“Awesome, right?” Jasper says, eyes still on the window. But this time it’s his voice, not Cassie’s, that catches.

“First, he pretended that it was all a coincidence that we met. And then later he admitted that he came to find me. Quentin said your dad fired him because they disagreed about keeping my test results from me. Quentin said he wanted your dad to tell me,” she says, and she sounds so broken. “I guess—I don’t know why I believed him. But it did seem like he knew your dad really well. And he said all these things that I wanted to hear, that I was being underestimated and everything. That I had this gift.”

“A gift,” Jasper huffs in disgust, his eyes still on the window.

“You can be mad,” Cassie says. “You both can hate me. You should hate me. Because I am selfish and stupid and I made a terrible mistake. But I swear the whole time he had me texting you—”

“Wait, what?” I ask, my heart picking up speed. No, Cassie. No. “You were helping him? He told you to text us?”

She nods.

How could she? Risk that—risk us, for some guy she didn’t even know?

“Wait, even the ‘these people will kill me’?”

Cassie nods some more.

“My God, Cassie,” I go on, and I am so angry my throat burns. And maybe she’s right, maybe I do even hate her a little bit. “How could you? Some random guy tells you all this insane stuff and you just believe him?”

“Didn’t you?” She stares at me hard for a second. She takes a breath and lowers her head again. “I mean, Quentin is convincing, isn’t he? And he didn’t even start talking about needing your dad until we got here. And he didn’t mention you as a way to get your dad until way after that—and Quentin made it sound the whole time like he was trying to protect your dad.” She’s quiet for a second, like she’s replaying it all in her own head. “He did some little test on me in the car. That’s probably when he figured out that your dad had switched our results. He tried to hide it, but the way he was looking at me after that … Like I disgusted him a little bit.”