The Last House Guest(54)

He shifted to face me, one leg tucked up on the bench seat. “You know, just because you don’t talk to us anymore doesn’t mean people don’t talk about you.”

“I know. I’ve heard it all.”

He tilted his head back and forth, as if even that was up for debate. “Most people seemed to think you’re fucking the brother. Or the father.” He said it sharp and cruel, like he intended to hurt me with it. “I say you’re smarter than that, but what do I know.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not.”

He raised his hands. “Faith always thought it was the sister,” he continued. “But I told her you only wanted her life. Not her.” He dropped his hands abruptly. “Anyway, mostly she was just pissed at you, so no one really listened.”

My stomach squeezed, hearing his words. Even though I’d imagined them, heard the whispers, gotten the implication from the snide comments—like Greg Randolph’s. It was different hearing them from someone who knew me, from the people who once were my closest friends. “It’s not true. Any of it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I covered for you once before, you know. Told the police it was an accident when you pushed Faith.”

I flinched, though he hadn’t moved. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“I was there, Avery. I saw.” In the dusk, I couldn’t read his expression. Everything was falling deeper into shadows.

I closed my eyes, seeing her fall in my memory. Feeling the surge in my bones, as I had back then. The rage fighting its way to the surface. “It was just . . . I didn’t know she would trip.”

His eyes grew larger. “Jesus Christ. She needed surgery. Two pins in her elbow, and God, I covered for you, even after everything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my throat catching on the word. It needed to be said, now and then. “Back then, you should know, I used to think about dying. All the time.” I thought of the journal, the things I had written; the nightmare of my life. “I dreamed about it. Imagined it. There was no room for anything else.”

“You wanted to die?” he said, like it had never occurred to him.

“No. I don’t know.” But, the blade. The list of things I had done—leaning forward from the lighthouse, falling asleep at the edge of the water—the time he had found me on Breaker Beach, drinking so I wouldn’t have to make a decision either way.

Salt water in my lungs, in my blood. A beautiful death, I had believed.

But it had been Sadie’s death instead, and the reality of it was horrible. All I could give him was the truth. “It was a bad time.”

He sighed, ran his hand through his hair. “I know. I knew it was bad timing.” He saw it the other way—that it was his fault. Timing, not time. “You weren’t yourself.” Except I was. In one way or another, I was never more myself than right then. Desperately, terrifyingly, unapologetically myself. And I’d just discovered the power of it, how it wreaked destruction, not only on myself but on others.

“When I saw you on the beach,” he continued, “I wanted to die, too.” A smirk to soften the truth.

“I didn’t go there to hurt you. Some nights I’d sleep out there.”

“I know. That’s why I went there. You weren’t home, and I was worried.”

They had just shown up. Two guys, a bonfire. I knew them, a year older, but I knew them through Connor. “Everything just went to hell.”

I thought of that journal, how fast I was sinking, at the whim of some current I couldn’t see.

He sighed, then spoke quietly, as if someone else might be listening in. That detective, somewhere on the dark beach in the distance, watching us. “I need to know, Avery. What role you’re playing here. It’s not just your life, you get that? It’s mine, too.”

I didn’t understand what he was implying. “I’m not—”

“Stop.” His entire body changed, no longer feigning nonchalance. Everything on high alert. “The police kept asking why I was there that night, at the party. And I didn’t know what to say.”

“Why were you there?”

“Are you kidding me?” His eyes went wide. “You sent me the address. Why did you want me there?”

“I didn’t.” I pulled out my phone, confused, even though this was a year ago.

“You did. You sent me the address. Listen,” he said. He leaned forward, close enough to touch. “It’s just me and you here. No one can prove what you say to me right now. But I have to know.”

I shook my head, trying to understand. “It must’ve been Sadie,” I said.

The same way I’d just accessed her phone. I checked the password settings on my own phone now. She’d programmed her thumbprint, just as I’d done on hers—we’d done it together, years earlier. Because we shared everything, for years. And when that changed, we’d forgotten to redefine the boundaries.

Now I was picturing Sadie getting Connor’s number from my phone. And then sending him a text about the Plus-One from me. She wanted him at the party that night. Which meant she was planning to be there, too.

“It was from your number,” he said, his hand braced on the bench between us.

“I didn’t send you that text, Connor. I swear it.” And yet he had shown up, thinking it was me. It was a startling confession. But Connor always saw the best possibilities in people.