Page 93 of Tell Me Why
He stares at me for a second, like he already knows I’m not going to like what he says next. “It was Lucas.”
I don’t even hesitate. I launch myself at Cash so quickly, he doesn’t have time to react. I grab him by the collar and slam him against the conference tablehard. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Cash says with a smile, hands held up in surrender. “Just delivering the facts.”
Jackson’s hand is on my shoulder, trying to pry me off Cash. “Christian, let him fucking explain.”
I stare into Cash’s face, jaw clenched, muscles pulled tight as I shove him and take a step back. “You’re wrong,” I bark. “You’ve gotten your facts twisted.”
Cash straightens and brushes out the wrinkles in his shirt. “For your sake, I wish that were true. I really do, man.”
“Lucas wouldn’t do something like that, not without talking to me first,” I say. My brother is capable of doing some really dark shit—we all are—but there’s no way he’d try to kill Eve. No fucking way.
Cash leans forward and pulls something out of his back pocket, tossing it onto the table. It’s an EpiPen. “I found that in his bedroom, for one. Hidden under some laundry.”
I look down and read the name on the label—Evangeline Savano. I shake my head. “This was obviously planted in my brother’s room.”
“You were snooping around in our fucking bedrooms?” Jackson asks, angry.
“You asked me to do a job, and I did it.” Cash pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket and tosses it next to the EpiPen. “And I foundthatin his trash.”
My heart thuds as I pick up the slip of paper. It’s a receipt for almond milk purchased at the campus store on the morning of the incident. Lucas hasn’t touched almond milk a day in his fucking life, and as far as I know, Wyn doesn’t drink it either. He’d have no reason to buy it.
Still, none of this proves shit.
“Someone could have put these in his room,” I say, crumpling the receipt up and letting it fall to the floor. “Do you have something concrete, or is all of your evidence bullshit?”
Cash glances down at his knuckles, rubbing them. I notice they’re red, busted up. “Some guy named Austin said it was Lucas who took the tray up to Eve that morning.” He shakes his head. “Man, that guy was hard to crack, though. Hereallydidn’t want to tell me. Your members are very loyal. I’m impressed.” Cash drops his hand and laughs. “I always get to the truth, eventually, though.”
My mind is chaos, thoughts twisting like a cyclone in my head. “There’s no fucking way Lucas did this,” I say. “I don’t give a fuck what Austin said.”
That guy is fucking dead for bringing my brother into this.
“I had a feeling you’d be hard to convince, so Ialsogot the name of a witness who saw Lucas in the kitchen that morning,” he says on a sigh.
Pulling his phone out, he unlocks it and turns the screen toward Jackson and me. It’s a blurry photo of a couple of members fucking around in the kitchen, cheesing for the camera. In the background, someone who looks a lot like Lucas is walking up the back staircase, and he has something in his hands that looks suspiciouslylike a tray.
I blink at the image, my mind struggling to believe it. But I can’t deny it now. The EpiPen, the receipt, Austin’s account, the photo...
“Why didn’t you start with the photo, dude?” Jackson yells, pissed. “You could have fucking led with that...”
“I was building afuckingnarrative,” Cash yells back. “Goddamn. There’s an art to this shit. You can’t just spring a photo on someone…”
Their bickering fades into the background as I pace the length of the office, struggling to make sense of what I just saw. Lucas has been against this shit with Eve since the begining, but to go to these lengths to get rid of her…why?
Rage pulses through me. The fact that my own damn brother tried to hurt Eve…I can’t fucking reconcile that.
“Fuck,” I yell, turning to punch the nearest wall. My knuckles throb as I pull back, leaving a dent in the plaster. “Where is he?”
Cash shrugs, and Jackson is just staring at me, face tight, like he knows the answer but is trying to decide if telling me is worth the shitstorm it’s going to cause. “You need to calm the fuck down before we confront him. There could be a reason?—”
I push up on him and get directly in his face, my tone lethal. “Wherethe fuckis my brother, Jackson? Tell me now before I start cracking skulls to find out.”
Silence.
Then, finally, he says, “This morning, we couldn’t find you. And I guess he’d talked to Andre, because he told me about the text you sent, allowing Eve to leave. I said I’d continue looking for you, and Lucas said…” He rubs the back of his neck, avoiding my eyes. When he finally speaks, his voice is rough, quiet, like he’s already regretting what he’s about to say. “He said he’d look for Eve and take her home himself…”
Fuck.I reel back, my world suddenly tilting on its axis. The ground shifts beneath my feet.
