“It never got back to Dad?”
“I was careful only to fuck guys who also had something to lose,” JJ said. “Or guys who weren’t from town.”
“But you’re gay,” Emma said, and JJ gave a bray of laughter.
“Yeah, but I also wasn’t that self-aware,” JJ said. “It was never about the guys anyway. It was about doing something for myself—something forbidden. Less fucking, more a ‘fuck you.’ Did you…？”
“No. I was actually—I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was twenty-two. He was the first,” Emma said, cheeks coloring. “Took six months to work up to it. It’s not like I’m a prude, it’s just—it always felt dangerous, to be that vulnerable.”
Sex had never made JJ feel vulnerable. Not even when it was stupid and risky. It had made her feel invincible.
“I slept with Nathan on the first date,” Emma went on. “I knew that I would mess things up. Run away. Find a reason not to trust him, not to stay, not to care about him. So I decided that I would never be the one to leave. That I would choose him, starting then, and never waver.”
“Even when he cheated on you.”
“That was his choice. I made mine,” Emma said, defiant.
“You don’t think you deserved better than that?” JJ asked.
“No one has ever loved me more than Nathan did,” Emma replied, and JJ couldn’t say anything to that. Emma stood up. She walked around the coffee table and then perched on its edge, only a couple of feet separating her and JJ. She reached out and took the tumbler out of JJ’s hands, and JJ offered no resistance. Emma swirled the whiskey in the bottom of the glass, inhaled.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” JJ said fiercely. “I won’t let you go through that again.”
“We’ll get through it,” Emma said. “It’s not going to be okay. It’s already not okay. But we’re going to survive it.”
“That’s not good enough,” JJ said. She looked away, blinking back tears. “You’ve got a baby coming. You’ve suffered enough for what I did already. If it helps you at all, we have to tell the truth.” She’d been given fourteen years; she couldn’t ask for more, not at this cost.
“They’re not after me for our parents. They think I killed Nathan, and you didn’t do that.”
“You have to—”
Emma stood, cutting her off. She gave the glass back to JJ and sighed. “Juliette—confess, or don’t. But don’t tell yourself you’re doing it for me.”
With that, she walked away.
JJ had thought that confession would bring—what? Peace? Some kind of release, at least. But it hadn’t changed anything. She’d waited too long, and now her truth alone couldn’t save Emma.
Maybe nothing could.
46
EMMA
Now
The dusty silence of the tree house wrapped around Emma like a blanket. She couldn’t decide if it was comforting or smothering.
She had expected the space to seem smaller than it had felt back then, but it was almost more disorienting that it didn’t. The planks were leached of color, and moss grew in the cracks, but it was the same room, the same scent, the same sensation of isolation. You couldn’t see the house from up here. The window faced east and the door west, the house hidden behind a solid wall.
The sound of someone clambering up the ladder made Emma stiffen. Daphne appeared, levering herself carefully up over the lip of the platform. She looked around the small room with an expression of fondness.
“I’m surprised this thing is still standing,” she said, scooting inward. The floor creaked but held.
“Careful. It might not last,” Emma said.
“It would be kind of funny if we plummeted to our deaths at this particular moment,” Daphne said, and Emma’s lip twitched in what was very nearly a smile. “Are you okay?”
That was an impossible question to answer. “You knew the whole time. About Juliette.”
Daphne bit her lip. “I saw her with the gun, but I didn’t know exactly what had happened.”
“You never asked.”
“Neither did you.”
Emma dug her fingernail against the soft wood of the wall, inhaling the half-rotten scent of it. “I missed you. So much.”
“I missed you, too,” Daphne said quietly. “I wondered all the time if it was a mistake, staying away.”
“What do you think now?” Emma asked.