Chapter 24. Hallway

Tessa’s POV

I don’t go to the bathroom.

I go to the end of the hallway, past the bathroom, past a closed bedroom door with a sock on the handle, to the little window at the very end where the noise gets thin and the glass is cold. I put both palms flat on the windowsill and breathe.

I don’t know why I’m upset.

The window looks out over Chase’s side yard and the neighbor’s fence. Somebody has thrown up in a hydrangea. I count the slats in the fence, because counting is what I do. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. It doesn’t help.

That’s the stupid part. I knew. I was standing in his hallway on September twenty-first while Brooke stormed out of his apartment. I saw the condom wrappers. I know exactly who he was with before me, and when, and I made a joke about it at the time.

He answered honestly. In front of fifteen people and his brother. He could have lied. Cole would have lied. Cole would have looked me in the face and lied, and I’d have smelle