Chapter 9

“You two were pressing each other against the wall,” Cassandra had said, her voice low and measured in the car’s dim glow. “The first time Riley pinned you, it looked like he was kissing you on the neck. You shoved him off, but he didn’t budge—so you turned it around and pinned him too. Then he flipped you onto your back, pressing you against the wall again, your faces nearly touching as if you were both tasting each other’s necks. It was too intense, too intimate, so I looked away. But before I did, I saw your face clearly. That moment has clung to my mind, and when my mother handed me your picture later, I recognized you at once.”

That confession echoed in Thomas’s mind as he lay rigid in the darkness, staring blankly at the ceiling. Her words spun around him like fragments of a shattered plate, each shard sharper than the last. He couldn’t shake the image—and he couldn’t forgive her for describing it so plainly. He’d burned dinner earlier, the entire meal charred beyond rec