White Rabbit(27)

I don’t answer right away; I can’t. I’m too busy counting my breaths and fighting back the throbbing red mist that is stealing its way across my brain. It’s Sebastian who informs her, “Actually, it was they. Peyton was with him.”

“Well, what did they say?” April rephrases, annoyed by the correction. “Did one of them do it?”

“I don’t know,” I finally manage, speaking through my teeth. “They basically gave us the same story Lia did—Race left first, then Peyton, then Lia and Arlo together.”

“But obviously one of them is lying,” she insists, and that’s when I finally lose it.

“They’re all lying!” I explode, twisting around in my seat so I can murder her with my eyes. Rage sputters in my heart like hot grease in a pan. “You’re lying, April! Not a single person has told me the whole truth all night long. I almost got fucking shot for you, and it turns out you’ve been lying to me!”

“I-I didn’t lie—”

“Did you just forget to mention that Fox and Peyton hooked up tonight? That you went berserk on them? That you have a pretty damn obvious motive for wanting your boyfriend’s head on a fucking stick?”

It was a guess—an educated one, but a guess all the same—and I receive my confirmation in the way April’s face goes first white and then crimson. Her mouth flaps open and shut a couple of times, and then she asks, with difficulty, “They told you about it?”

“They didn’t have to. You left a bruise the size of Connecticut on Peyton’s jaw, Race will barely look at her, and Lia already said you and Fox were fighting about something,” I enumerate the evidence. “You should have told me, April. You should have fucking told me!”

“If I had, you’d’ve just thought I was guilty!” She shouts back thickly. “Crazy, out-of-control April does it again, right? Fox cheats on me, so I stab him a hundred times? You’d’ve had no trouble believing that, because you hate my whole family—you always want to believe that we won’t do anything unless we know it’ll hurt somebody else! Admit it: If I’d told you about all this stuff back at the cottage, you wouldn’t have agreed to help me at all, because you’d’ve just figured I killed him.” Her blue eyes are wet and stormy. “I know how it looks. I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t do it.”

“Well, let me just take your word for it, now that I know you’ve been hiding stuff from me all night long,” I retort weakly, the wind somewhat taken out of my sails by the fact that she actually has a point. If she’d admitted to me up front that she had such a compelling reason to be furious with Fox, I might easily have just dismissed her tearful claims of innocence as nothing but theater.

Then again, maybe that’s all they are. Maybe accusing me of being eager to believe the worst in her is just the latest weapon in April’s ever-evolving arsenal of manipulations—preying on my guilt so I’ll second-guess my instincts and ignore my growing doubts. Is she that clever? Am I that gullible? Or am I so caught in my own mental cogwheels that I can no longer see what’s right in front of my face?

Neither of us says anything more as Sebastian starts up the Jeep, pulls out of the Atwoods’ driveway, and heads along the curving street. Finally, April speaks again, her voice resentful and halting. “It didn’t happen tonight. I mean, them hooking up. It happened a few weeks ago. I guess.” She has her chin tucked down, so I can’t see her expression. “I only found out about it at the party, and, yeah, I went a little nuts. Fox can be a dick—could be a dick—” Her voice hitches and she stops, caught horribly on her mistaken use of the present tense, and when she looks up for a moment her eyes swim. Blinking, though, she forces herself to continue, “But Peyton’s supposed to be my best friend. I was furious. So I kind of … hit her in the face. With a bottle.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. The gene carrying Peter Covington’s notoriously short fuse must be a particularly dominant one. “What about Fox?”

“I would’ve gone after him, too, but Lia stopped me. And then he and Race were getting into it, and then … I don’t know.” She looks up again, and her expression is utterly guileless. “Honestly, Rufus, I don’t know what happened after that. That’s where it all just goes blank. Until I woke up and called you, I mean.”

“How did you find out about Fox and Peyton?” I ask. “Did he tell you?”

“No, Lia did. She … well, she found out about it from Arlo.”

This raises questions I know April won’t be able to answer, so I move on to one she can. “Why didn’t you tell me that Hayden was also at the party tonight?”

“Because he wasn’t.” She looks at me like I’m nuts.

“Race said he came by, and that Fox was kissing his ass.”

“Oh, that. He was just buying some pills. He had his own party, as usual.”

“White rabbits?”

“I guess.” She shifts uneasily, just like Race did, and I know the reason. Hayden doesn’t tolerate people talking about him, and if he finds out we’ve been discussing his fondness for controlled substances, he’ll put all of us in intensive care. “I stayed out of Fox’s business, and I stay way out of Hayden’s business. You know what he’s like. Anyway, he was only there for a few minutes, and then he took off. He didn’t even say hi.”