I looked up at Coop in wordless wonder.
His gaze was steady. “I’ve been keeping this for you.”
“How?” I could barely bring my voice above a whisper.
“Jess, you told me what Garvey did to you, and I wanted to kill him. Burn his house down. But you said no, said it didn’t matter anymore. I lost it. I wasn’t in a good place either, with everything going on with the dealers and the tweak. I think I scared you, ’cause you bolted. I always thought that’s why you stopped talking to me after that night.”
I’d told Coop about Dr. Garvey. This new information was dizzying. I resisted the urge to grip his arm to stay upright.
Coop’s eyes darkened, his lashes dipping as he looked at the diploma. “I had all this rage that had been building for days. When you left my apartment, I went to Garvey’s house and smashed everything with a baseball bat. I’m the criminal, Jess. I’m the one who wrote on his walls, caused all the damage.”
The enormity of what Coop had done started to sink in. “You could have been kicked out of school and thrown in jail for that. Law school, your mom—everything ruined.”
He gave me a fierce look. “Yeah, well, I don’t regret it. I wish I’d done more. At least what I did scared Garvey enough to leave Duquette. Good fucking riddance.”
I pointed to the diploma. “And you stole that. Why?”
“You told me about Harvard. How your dad went and you felt you could never live up. That he died at Christmas. I wish you’d told me when it happened. I would’ve come to Virginia to be with you at the funeral. I would have done anything.”
I’d told him about my father. The surprise nearly swept me off my feet.
Coop twisted the diploma. “I was in the middle of destroying Garvey’s house, and I saw this. I figured you should have it—to burn it, maybe. But after that night, you wouldn’t talk to me. So I buried it in the quad outside East House. Under our picnic table. It’s been here ever since.”
Magic in the soil, I thought dazedly.
Coop stood between me and the window, hair wild, eyes still blazing with hate for Dr. Garvey, like some dark, fucked-up version of a hero.
“So you knew—” I swallowed hard. “About Dr. Garvey, and the fellowship, and my dad—”
“Of course—”
“When you came to me on graduation day and asked me to marry you.”
Now it was Coop’s turn to look at his feet. Asked me to marry you. The words were so weighty, so forbidden, that I couldn’t believe I’d had the nerve to say them out loud. But I had to know.
Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“You would’ve married me, knowing all that.”
“I told you. Good or bad, it didn’t matter.”
We stood for a long moment, looking at each other. Then I reached out, took the diploma, and threw it, as hard as I could, against the wall. It shattered into splintered pieces of wood and glass, raining across the floor. In the end, such a fragile thing.
Coop stepped through the mess, picked up the paper, and held it out to me. I ran my fingers over the beautiful, embossed Harvard sigil, and for a second, the old dream resurfaced, my father’s and my own, solid and silky under my fingertips.
But I shook my head. That was dead now.
I tore the diploma into pieces.
Then I stepped to the window, the autumn breeze lifting my hair. I opened my hands, and the pieces fluttered away like butterflies. Something in the wind whispered: You’re gone now, and your story’s closed. You are who you are.
I felt a door inside me shut.
Coop tugged me from the window and turned me so I faced him. He wore his private look, the one I’d discovered, too late, meant something long and deep, not short and secret.
“Thank you,” I said, my throat thick, “for what you did.”
“Two break-ins, one night,” he said softly, tracing my jaw.
“Two?” I pulled back.
Coop looked at me like I’d hit my head. “Of course. I broke into Garvey’s. After you broke into the Student Affairs office.”
I gripped his arms so I didn’t fall backwards. “I did what?”
And suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, like a slap to the face, I remembered.
Chapter 36
February, senior year
The edges were fuzzy, but here’s what I knew: I was a dark goddess, a rageful, vengeful force, slicing through the night. Crossing the streets, away from the Greek houses and toward the administrative offices at the heart of campus. As I strode, I gained a second wind, my steps strong and swift. I passed a group of Chi Os decked out in pink and red, surely on their way to Sweetheart. They laughed and wobbled on slender heels, stopping to take pictures of themselves every ten feet.