Page 58 of The Guilty One

I glance out at the empty street skeptically, but he doesn’t bother trying to sell the lie more than that.

“Well, thank you for meeting me,” I say softly. “I really appreciate it.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but before he can say anything, the waitress is back to take his order. Looking over the menu quickly, he orders a Diet Coke and a tuna sandwich with onion rings, and when she disappears, he folds his hands in front of himself on the table. “Truth be told, I almost didn’t come.”

I nod, having assumed as much.

“I don’t like to talk badly about my friends. More than that, I don’t like to talk about what happened between us back then, or to tell my friends’ secrets, but if it will help you find Tate, you have a right to know the truth. Because I do want him to be found. I hope more than anything that he is.”

I don’t know what has suddenly made him decide to help me, and I don’t care. I just need his help. “I want that too, which is why I need you to tell me everything you know. Starting with the text message. It was about me, then? You wanted Tate to tell me something, right?”

He huffs out a breath through his nose. “No. The text message was about…” He pauses when his food arrives, thanking the waitress, then takes a sip of his drink before he begins talking again. “It was about Tate’s mom.”

“Daphne.”

He nods. “She was always Mrs. T to us. I wanted him to tell her that one of our friends, Bradley, was going to tell someone our secret. Something happened years ago, and we all swore we’d never talk about it, but he was going to break our pact. I wanted Tate to tell Mrs. T before that happened.”

“But what happened? What was the secret? Was this in college?”

He nods, taking the bread off of his sandwich to examine the meat and setting it back in place, smashing the bread down. I think he’s avoiding meeting my eyes. “We were kids. It’s no excuse, but we were stupid kids. We grew up together in foster care, the five of us.”

“You, Tate, Bradley Jennings, Dakota Miller, and Matteo Acri.”

He sighs. “We were brothers, but it became different in college. Or maybe we just finally saw the truth of who he was. He’d been mistreated in foster care. Abused. Molested. Treated like garbage all around. All of us had been, but he probably had it the worst. No one could deny that. He’d always had a temper. I mean, who could blame him? He did weird stuff when he got mad—lashed out, said awful things, but…we knew why. We understood him, and we tried to be there for him like other people couldn’t. No one understood what we’d gone through aside from us. Anyway, he started getting worse. Angrier, more cruel. Things started going south throughout most of our senior year of college, and then one night…he just flipped.” His eyes are distant. Haunted. “I’d never seen him like that.”

“Was it the night Aubrey Vance died?”

His eyes go wide as they flick up to meet mine. “You already know about her?”

“Vaguely, yes. I don’t know what happened.”

“No one does. No one but the five of us. Well, I guess the two of us now, if Tate’s still…” He stops talking, looking down. “It was never meant to happen. Never. But we should’ve stopped it. Truth be told, we were scared of him. Not just physically, but…emotionally, socially, he could’ve destroyed us. We never thought he’d take it that far. Never. Please believe me. We had seen him do some messed up things, but we’d never seen him as awful as he was that night.” He drops his face into his hands. “Or maybe we just never let ourselves see it. He was our brother. We wanted to believe he was good, that he’d become good, grow out of it. We wanted to see the best in him. We didn’t think he’d actually…” He looks out the window, pressing his lips together. There’s no denying the horror behind his eyes. Whatever he’s remembering, it was terrible.

“He killed her? The professor?” My coffee roils in my stomach. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

Slowly, Aaron’s dark eyes turn to meet mine. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, he did.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

TATUM

Highland University

Twelve Years Ago

I slam her head into the back of the chair, and searing pain shoots through me. I’m bleeding, but in the shadows, I can’t see enough to tell how bad it is. I’m still hanging on, still attached at least, but it’s bad. I’m dizzy from the pain. The sound around me is fading and fuzzy.

I’m going to pass out. I really think I’m going to pass out. I stumble backward in a vengeful fury. The boys just stand there, half of them with their hands covering their own dicks, like it’s them who has been attacked, not me.

I turn back to her, seeing red. Nothing makes sense except the fact that I’m going to kill her. I can see nothing else. I grab hold of the chair she’s in, using every bit of my strength to swing it around and to the ground. It cracks with the blow, and then light explodes. Bright white light everywhere. No. Fire. Fire is everywhere. Shit. She’s on fire. She landed close to the in-ground firepit, but not in it. Not on it.

What is happening?

She rolls around, half her body still attached to the chair, flames engulfing her hair and skin and clothing.

The vodka. It was on her hair. Her clothes.

It was everywhere.

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