But I never could. And so, one year later—and far, far too late—I finally took the out.
Chapter 23
Now
The knock on the door sounded like a gavel striking wood: once, twice, three times. It wrenched me awake. I came to in the dark hotel room, lying on my side, breathing hard.
The pounding came faster, and I stumbled across the room, barely conscious but desperate to make it stop. I flung open the door and shrunk against the blaze of light from the hallway.
Caro, dressed in wrinkled pajamas. For a second, she blinked at me with red-rimmed eyes. Then they filled with tears and she pushed past me into the room.
I froze, gripping the doorway. Caro had figured it out: Me and Coop, ten years ago. One year ago. Tonight. And now she was here to tell me I’d stabbed her in the back. To burn me alive. Why else would she burst into my hotel room in the middle of the night?
I shut the door softly, slowly, feeling as though I was locking myself in a prison of my own making.
Behind me, the mattress springs squeaked. When I turned around, Caro looked at me from my bed: a small, sad face and halo of dark hair against a sea of white linen.
“Jess,” she choked.
My heart seized. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. With my back against the wall, I slid to the floor, unable to take my eyes from her, waiting for the strike.
“I have to tell you something.” Her voice was urgent. “I can’t keep it a secret any longer.”
It took me a second. “What?”
She hid her face in her hands and shook her head, as if the action could ward something off. “It’s really bad.”
I could do nothing but watch her, tensed, a lump in my throat.
The room was dark, save for silvery light from the cracks in the blinds that told me we were nearing morning. Coop must have slipped back into his hotel room only hours ago, and now Caro had slipped out of it, like two ships in the night. The sight of her sitting on my unmade bed, the sheets still warm with the heat of my body—her lashes wet, her hair catching silver, her face wide open—was surreal. After everything I’d done to keep her at arm’s length, here she was, so close.
Just the two of us, watching each other.
I spoke carefully. “Caro, I don’t think you’re capable of anything bad.”
It was the wrong thing to say. A tear dropped down her cheek. “I was so tired of being left out. Afraid of losing everyone. Especially you.”
“I don’t understand.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s the real reason I think it’s him.”
I thought about walking across the room and brushing her hair from her forehead, then felt a stabbing guilt.
“Him who?” I asked instead.
Caro opened her eyes, and even in the dark I could see the shame. “Frankie. It’s why I think he killed Heather. She was going to ruin his football career.”
“Caro, we already know about Parents’ Weekend and Heather’s plan.”
“No, not that. Something else. Something I’m not supposed to know about.”
I sat up straighter. “Tell me.”
It was a long moment before she spoke. When she did, she watched me warily, like she was waiting for me to grab her, shake her, push her away in disgust. “Frankie started using steroids in college. He said it was a temporary thing, just to take him over the finish line. Get him into the NFL.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “He’d never.”
“Jack helped him. Whenever Frankie had to take a drug test, Jack would pee in a cup.”
Jack? Rule-abiding, church-boy Jack? He wouldn’t dream of it. Unless…unless he’d really loved Frankie. Enough to risk not just scandal but expulsion.
Caro’s voice turned soft, her gaze drifting to the wall above me, like she was looking through a porthole into the past. “Senior year, Heather found out. You remember what she was like. Everyone always had to do the right thing. Or whatever she thought that was. She told them they had to stop. Frankie begged for a little more time, just one more test. But she told them they had to quit, or she was going to tell Frankie’s coach. She was so mad at Jack. I’ll never forget the look on her face.”
I started to speak, to ask about Heather, but then the strangeness of her words caught me. I’ll never forget the look on her face. A frost spread over my body, my hands turning cold, as if the blood was slowly draining from them. “Wait…Caro. How did you find out?”
She paused, those dark eyes and that silvery hair making her a surreal creature—Caro, but uncanny. Close to the person I remembered, but just a hair off. And I knew in that moment that whatever came next was the real secret, the truth that had launched her across the night, from her hotel room to my doorstep.