I threw open the doors to my heart. The pain flooded in. I’d wanted so many things and lost them all. This was the cost.
I lay on the grass and sobbed. The stars looked on, cold and unblinking.
Chapter 37
Now
I let myself remember. Let my shadow self flood me, the subterranean Jessica Miller who wanted so much, and especially the wrong things. It had been her in my dorm room, ten years ago, cutting up the pictures, swallowing the pills. Her breaking into the Student Affairs office, determined to steal back the fellowship. It had been her running to Coop, bloody and desperate, only to push him away the next day. It had been her, and so it had been me.
“What?” Coop studied my face. “You don’t remember?”
“Actually…” I shook my head, catching a glimpse of the floats out the window, the crowd growing close now. “I do. The first crime… It was me.”
Coop nodded. “You and me against the world that night.”
I had hated Heather. I’d hated her so much I’d tried to take away her fellowship, her future, the opportunity she’d carefully plotted and earned. That must be the wicked, unforgivable thing I’d done that had haunted me for a decade. That was how I’d gotten bloody, covered in cuts—escaping through the office window. Not stabbing Heather seventeen times.
I didn’t kill her. The sheer relief of it hollowed me until I felt as light as air. I almost couldn’t process the thought. I’d believed so deeply, and now it didn’t feel right to redeem myself.
I looked at Coop, and everything I felt must have been written on my face, because his eyes softened. “You didn’t hurt her, Jess. I know you. You’re not a murderer.”
He was standing so close, his lips, his eyes, the dark shock of hair, all within reach. There was suddenly only one thing I wanted, and it was the same thing I’d wanted for ten years, fourteen probably, ever since Caro pointed to him across the quad that first day and he lifted his head and looked at me.
But he loved Caro now. I’d lost my chance.
Coop brushed his hand down my arm, his fingers warm against the chill air from outside the window. His eyes were flecked with color, the patterns like twin constellations. Years ago, Coop had been a boy who’d loved me, who’d always been honest, who’d never wanted anyone else. Now he was a man who kept showing up.
A recklessness seized me. What if I was honest, this time without the alcohol? What if I betrayed Caro, became a different kind of villain… Could I have him? Was there a sliver of a chance?
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with crisp fall air. “I have to tell you something.”
The floor trembled. The sound of approaching footsteps, pounding up the stairs like thunder. Coop pulled away quickly, putting distance between us. I had only a moment to blink at the empty air before Courtney staggered into the room, her eyes lit with victory.
“Murderer!” she shrieked, pointing at me.
Oh god.
The rest of my friends streamed in behind Courtney, sweaty and winded from the spiral staircase, their faces tight with apprehension. All of them were here—Mint, Caro, Eric, even Frankie, still in his grand marshal cape. I took an involuntary step back. It was a tribunal.
“It’s not true,” Coop insisted. “She didn’t do it.”
Caro stalked forward, kicking over a stack of old newspapers, as angry as I’d ever seen her. “Coop, what are you doing here?”
“How’d you even know where to find me?” he asked.
This time, Caro didn’t look ashamed. “I used to follow you here sometimes. I knew this was your place.”
Mint stepped up behind Caro, brushing his hair, dark with sweat, off his forehead. His eyes were the exact shade of the sky outside—except hard and cold as flint. “You both owe us answers.”
Mint’s eyes—they were his tell. He was measured on the outside, but inside, I knew he was simmering with anger.
Eric wound around Frankie and Mint, stopping next to Caro. He said nothing, but he looked hungry.
I glanced helplessly at Coop, who turned to the shattered remains of the diploma frame laying on the floor. I knew instantly what he was after. Evidence. But I’d cast it out the window.
Coop squared his shoulders anyway. “I was the one who broke into the professor’s house ten years ago and trashed it.”
“What?” Caro gasped. “Why?”
Coop glanced at me. He wouldn’t say a word without my permission. He’d stay forever in this purgatory if I asked him.