Page 76 of Dead Girls Can't Tell Secrets

It all makes sense. And it all makes the sickness rise in my throat again.

“Someone else who’s my best friend.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. But the words are empty and meaningless. It’s all so meaningless right now. He’s in love with Jacey. She might’ve been trying to bring me here to tell me the same thing, but right now I don’t care.

I just want to stop his empty words. I just want him to hurt the way I hurt.

“You’re sorry.” I laugh softly, bitterly, and blink away the darkness. “Well, you know what? I’m sorry too,” I say, nodding maniacally. “Sorry to be the one to break it to you that no one cares, Noah.” I let the words crawl out, punctuating each one with a generous helping of scorn. “When are you going to wake up and realize that Jacey only cares about herself? She just kissed you to punish me. I doubt she spared you another thought after she succeeded.”

The gum in my mouth is stale and hard, so I spit it out, watching it disappear into the foliage below. I swing my other leg over the bar, my back to the cliff now. “She used you. Now you’re about as useful to her as chewed gum. As far as I’m concerned—and as far as Jacey is concerned—you don’t exist.”

Yeah, I used Savannah’s words. I used them against one of my closest friends. They’d been hanging there at the forefront of my mind ever since I stormed out of Savannah’s bedroom.

I want to take them back, to apologize, but then Noah’s face contorts, and he grabs my wrist. His fingers clamp down tighter as his eyes narrow. A vein on his forehead bulges, and his hand squeezes harder. I gasp in shock and pain, but he doesn’t let go.

Finally, I yank my wrist away, and he releases me. But my momentum takes me back.

Too far.

I topple backward, and Noah scrambles to grab me. But his hand closes around the jacket, which slips free of my body. The orange jacket flaps before me in the late-afternoon air. Like a fiery ball, it flickers, extinguishes, and blazes brighter again.

Then it recedes as my legs fly skyward.

Chapter 31

“You knew it was him,” I say to Jacey, staggering until my hand finds the armrest of the chair in the corner. I sink onto the cushion, my tunneling vision taking a slow-motion, jagged course around the room, finding the machine that blinks and beeps beside the bed. On the opposite side, white curtains hang immobile, no breeze to breathe life into them, only sifted sunlight trickling through.

Noah’s back is still to us, shoulders sagging.

“No,” Jacey says, crying now. “I mean, not until we saw the truck in the school parking lot. Then I remembered Noah sometimes borrows Nate’s truck when his is in the shop. But even then, I hoped I was wrong.”

Noah said the last time he spoke to Piper the day she fell was during sixth period. He said he sat around at home after school.

But he lied. He was parked at the school even after Piper’s car was gone.

“I don’t understand.” I clutch my head in both hands, wincing as my fingertips brush the crust on my scalp where blood has started to dry.

“It was an accident,” Noah says, his voice breaking. He turns around, bloodshot eyes rimmed dark blue with exhaustion. “You two played me. You lied to draw me here.” He tugs on the neck of his shirt. “She was never awake, was she?”

Jacey only sobs harder. Frankly, I’m surprised she didn’t crack earlier. After I was hit and it was clear that someone was onto us, we needed to act fast. We thought we could draw Sam or Abby out by pretending Piper had woken up. Jacey played her part up on the mountain, saying my sister was awake loud enough for all to hear. Loud enough to lure the guilty party to the hospital so they could tie up their last loose string.

“And if she had been awake?” I ask. “What would you have done then?”

“I would’ve tried to talk to her.” He rips at his collar until the fabric frays and lies misshapen. “To apologize.”

“Get out of here, Noah,” I say, using the armrests to push myself up.

“Just listen.”

I shake my head. My eyes flood, and I feel just how drained I am—from the hike, from learning that the boy who was once like my brother may have taken my sister away from me forever.

Beside me, Jacey’s crying so uncontrollably that my head feels like it’s going to split in half. “Go outside and call Grant,” I say, nudging her arm. “Tell him we made a mistake.”

She nods, glancing at Noah, her face streaked with tears. Who knows if she’ll actually tell the truth about him, but at least she’ll keep Sam and Abby from getting dragged into the police station.

Once she’s out the door, I turn on Noah. “You left her there.” My voice is calm, like a windless sea. But a tremor racks my body, and it takes every ounce of strength to stay on my feet. “She could’ve died.” An even darker truth hangs between us like a barrier as I struggle for air.The doctors have given up on her. She’s already gone.

Noah is slouching so much that his head is at my level, but his gaze doesn’t meet mine. “It’s the worst mistake I’ve ever made, Savannah.”

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