Page 72 of Silent Betrayal

She gingerly takes it and opens it like she expects a bomb inside. When she sees the gold bracelet, her eyes widen. “Oh, wow, guys, it’s beautiful.”

“It’s a charm bracelet, you can collect charms that have special meaning to you, and add them to it.”

“Wow, this is so cool. What’s this charm here?” she asks, pulling it out of the box. “A horse?”

“Yeah, that’s from Tucker, actually. When he heard what we were getting you, he wanted to give you a charm to represent your first date together.”

“That’s so sweet. There’s a second one here, is this popcorn?” she asks with a tilt of her head.

“Yep, that will make sense after our date tonight,” he tells her.

“Thank you both,” she says, clutching it to her chest. “This is so thoughtful.” She hugs us both, then Jasper helps her put it on.

We help her pick out a jacket, then all pile into our truck and head out.

“So, where are we going? The movies?” she asks, sitting between us as she plays with her new bracelet.

“We’re going to go see a movie later, but first, we’re going to have a little fun,” I say as I wrap my arm around her shoulder and start to pull her to my side. “Is it okay if I touch you like this?” I ask her, suddenly nervous I was pushing her boundaries.

“Well, you are my boyfriend, aren’t you?”

My wide eyes meet Jasper’s before I turn to look at her, grabbing her hands with mine. “Wait—I am? You’ve forgiven me?”

“Uhh… I don’t know, it’s just—Wait, does that mean we’ve been broken up over the past few days? Oh my god, I feel so stupid for not realizing that. I thought maybe we were just fighting or something!” She tries to pull her hands from mine but I just bring her whole body against me and hug her.

“No, don’t feel stupid.Ifeel stupid. I didn’t know if you still wanted us like that. I was afraid we’d wrecked everything.”

“Well, you kind of did,” she replies. “But I guess I’m hoping that it’s fixable.”

“It is, Angel. We’re going to fix it. The bracelet and cookies weren’t bribes to make you forgive us. They were just gifts we wanted you to have. We know we have a lot to make up for, maybe more than the others.”

“You do?” I can’t tell if that’s a question or a statement.

“We were the closest to you, especially at the beginning. We were with you pretty much every moment during school hours. And we were told to get close to you to see what your involvement in the case was.” I cringe just hearing those words again. What we did sounds even worse coming from Jasper.

“Yeah, that kinda sucked to find out you only befriended me because of the case.”

“That’s not entirely the truth,” I add, making her look back at me with a frown. “The day I met you, I was watching from one of the upstairs windows at the school. I saw you, this little beauty, walking quietly to the school, like you hoped no one would notice you. Then I saw Brad barrel into you and knock you down. I ran down to you as fast as I could. I had no idea who you were until a little later that day.”

“Is that true?” she asks, turning her head to Jasper. He nods sadly at her before turning his eyes back to the road.

“Yes. And when I saw you pass out, I didn’t know who you were. But I was terrified for you. It wasn’t until I carried you into the empty classroom that Gideon told me.”

Jasper pulls into the parking lot and finds an empty spot to park.

She stares at her bracelet deep in thought, and we stay silent, waiting for her to sift through her emotions.

“So the way you met me had nothing to do with the case. But you still lied to get closer to me.”

“We didn’t lie about anything, well, other than being high school kids,” I say with a shrug.

“What do you think we lied about?” Jasper asks gently.

“Wanting to be my friend. You only wanted to get close to me to see what I knew,” she says, refusing to look at us as she frowns down at her scarred ring finger. Just the sight of that reminds me how much we failed her.

“Not true,” I say, shaking my head.

“But you admitted it, you said it was your job to get close to me.”

---