In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(82)

“Don’t call her a whore,” Caro said, her best friend auto-programming kicking in despite herself.

Mint was standing close. The short distance between us wasn’t inert but alive, threatening, a warning. A warning, a warning. A clue.

“How did you know I went to dinner with Garvey?” My voice was taut with dread. “Are you saying you knew about him in college?”

Mint took another step toward me, shoving a couch aside, his blue eyes no longer cold but blazing with anger. My pounding heart screamed, Move, get away from him. But it was Mint.

“Of course I knew. That’s how it works when your fucking wife cheats on you—everyone finds out.”

“Wife? You mean your girlfriend, Mint,” Frankie said. “And calm down.”

“Yeah, Mint, take a step back,” Coop said. “You have the right to be mad at us, but you’re pushing it.”

“No.” Mint only had eyes for me, and I couldn’t look away, trapped between the cold, open sky at my back and the man who wanted to burn me, the man who was inching closer. “You were going to ruin my life, and you didn’t care. You want to know what happened? Garvey’s TA told me you fucked him, but he didn’t just tell me—he spread it to everyone. All the brothers were laughing at me. Just like people did to my father. You made me weak.”

“Mint,” Courtney said, horror dawning on her face, “I don’t get what you’re talking about. You’re not making any sense.”

His father. Mint’s confession from freshman year came back to me, the first time he’d ever opened up: Tell me something shameful.

He was so weak. He didn’t even fight it. He let her walk all over him.

I hate him. Everyone at home talked behind my back… It’s all his fault…

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like your father,” I said, taking another step back, feeling glass crunch under my feet.

“Mint, back down,” Coop said, trying to step between us.

Mint made a choking sound and lunged, not at me but at Coop, shoving him hard. Coop tripped over a chair leg and struck the wall headfirst. Caro screamed.

Frankie darted forward to tackle Mint, but Mint thrust out his hand in warning. “Don’t you dare touch me, Frankie.”

Frankie—every towering inch of him—went rigid as a board, years of following Mint’s lead instinctively taking over.

“Mint,” I said, trying to stay calm, “I’m sorry for betraying you, and everything that happened to your dad. But I don’t think—”

He spun to me. “My father didn’t fight back. He was a coward. But not me.”

“You’re right.” I watched over Mint’s shoulder as Caro struggled to pull Coop to his feet. “You’re not him.”

“You’re doing it again,” Mint spat out, seething. “Emasculating me. Just like senior year. You know I shattered Trevor’s face in front of everyone because he disrespected me? Garvey’s fucking TA. He couldn’t talk for months.”

Trevor Daly had worked for Dr. Garvey? And Mint hurt him? I’d never heard a whisper of it. It must have been hushed up, muted in the aftermath of Heather’s death.

“But you were so much worse than him,” Mint said. “I wanted to break your fucking neck.”

“But you didn’t, did you?” Eric stepped from the back of the room, where he’d been silent and unmoving, watching everything unfold with glittering eyes. He strode to Mint and shoved him by the shoulders, causing Mint to stagger back. “You did it to Heather instead, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

Mint glared at Eric, his face flaming as he struggled to hold something back. He looked at Coop, then at me, and suddenly the dam broke—the last thing keeping him tethered. As I watched him unravel into another person—a creature of rage, of fire—the surprise I’d felt earlier transformed into something wholly different.

My body knew it first—my limbs went rigid, heart freezing in my chest. Inch by inch, the knowing filtered into my brain.

You recognize this person, a voice whispered.

Danger, it hissed. Wake up.

“I thought she was you!” Mint screamed, pointing at me, eyes blazing. “I thought I was hurting you!”





Chapter 40


February, senior year

Mint

It was better now, with his split knuckles sending a constant thrum of pain through his right hand. With none of the brothers who’d been in the foyer able to look at him, all of them cowering in fear, taking the long route to the keg, sticking to the corners of the Phi Delt basement as everyone pregamed for Sweetheart. Much better with the way Courtney Kennedy was eyeing him, as if she’d like nothing better than to depose Jessica, take her place by his side.

What he’d done to Trevor proved Mint wasn’t a coward, wasn’t his father, as much as it choked him to even think of his father—his stupid childhood hero, now a broken shell in a hospital bed, too weak for the world. But Mint wasn’t weak. Mint was back on top, he was king, he was alpha.

No one had mentioned anything about his father or his family’s company all day, so either the Phi Delts didn’t read the news or his mother’s PR team was doing a good job of keeping the disaster out of the press. Of course, it was in everyone’s best interest that what his father had done—his mother’s voice drifted back, hard and cold, the coward’s way out—should never see the light of day. Mint himself vowed to never breathe a word of it.