to just hang out and have me pretend I’m not dying to know what’s going on between you and Arrow?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mia, Mason told me about last night. About finding you in the graveyard and you asking them to take you to Arrow. Which is some really sad-ass shit, by the way, and if Mase hadn’t all but stolen my keys, I would have come over to be with you.” She sighs. “And even if he hadn’t told me, it’s all over your face every time you look at Arrow. He came home, and you started to . . . I don’t know, care again. Before, you’d been looking at the world through glazed eyes, and Arrow snapped you out of it.”
“I’m in love with him.”
She wraps her arms around me and nods into my shoulder. “I know that, sweetie.”
“I thought I might be able to move on if I knew who was responsible for the accident. I thought that would help me get there.”
She nods again. “I know that, too.”
I open my mouth then close it again. If I’m scared to tell my best friend—a girl I trust more than anyone—the truth about what happened that night, how did I think I could go to the police? “The truth is supposed to set us free, and in my mind that meant maybe Arrow and I would have a chance. I was wrong.”
She pulls back and nudges my glass toward me. “Drink.”
With my eyes on her, I obey. It’s wine the way Bailey likes it best: sweet and cheap.
“Tell me what’s up with Arrow. Is he screwing around with Trish? Mason told me she’d been over there a lot. She’s a hot mess. I think she might be a cutter. Did you see those marks on her arms when she was at the pool?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about Trish. “Remember when I told you I thought there was a chance Coach was the one driving the car, but Sebastian proved he wasn’t?”
“Yeah?”
“The police report for the accident said the deer was shot, and I thought it might have been a cover-up. So I decided someone needed to check under the car.”
“Oh, no,” she says.
“Yeah. There was blood under the car. Real blood.”
“Coach,” she says, as if she’s trying to wrap her mind around it.
“Not Coach,” I answer. “Coach’s Cherokee.”
She wraps her arms around herself and backs away, as if she’s not sure she wants to hear anymore.
“I told Arrow I thought it was Coach, and he told me . . . the night of the accident . . .”
She tenses her shoulders, shielding herself from the blow. “He’d borrowed Coach’s SUV. I never thought about it before, but I remember seeing him. He was helping to set up for the high school lock-in.” She meets my eyes and shakes her head.
All I can do is nod.
The color drains from her face all at once, and she spins around to the sink and throws up.
I’ve been so selfish—so caught up in my own grief that I never stopped to think about how hard the last few months have been on Bailey. I wasn’t the only one who lost someone I loved that night. Bailey lost Nic. I may not have approved of the way she loved him or the fact that she wanted to be with him, but she did. She’s been so quiet about her grief, so selfless in supporting me through mine because she knew I was dealing with losing my brother and Brogan all at once.
She turns on the tap and scoops handfuls of water into her mouth, then she just hangs her head over the sink. I wrap her in my arms from behind and rest my forehead on her back, letting her sobs move through me, and when she calms, I give the rest.
“He said he wanted to turn himself in but couldn’t because Coach covered it up, and he didn’t want him getting in trouble, too.”
Bailey sinks into the stool beside me and studies her wine. “God, it’s so obvious now, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “The drugs. The fights. He wasn’t himself after the accident, and we all thought it was grief, but he was ruining his life on purpose.”
“I told him I was going to the police. I told him I was turning him and Coach in. That’s where I thought I was going when I got in the car.”
“You can’t turn him in,