upset as the rest of us about the end of Brogan’s life.
“I’m not.” With a glance to the crowd out back, she grabs my wrist and drags me down the hall and away from the kitchen.
“Trish,” I say, the warning in my voice. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea, but I’m seriously—”
“Shut up!” She pushes me into the study and pulls the door closed behind her. “We need to talk, and I’m sick of trying to get you alone.”
“I’m sorry about New Year’s Eve.” It’s an apology I should have given her a long time ago. “I didn’t mean to lead you on. I didn’t—”
“Fuck that, Arrow. I’m in love with Brogan, not you. That night wasn’t about you. It was about him.”
“Okay,” I say cautiously.
She paces the length of the room behind the dark leather couch. “Do you remember?”
My stomach sinks. I really don’t want to do this. “Do I remember New Year’s Eve?”
She stops and lifts her eyes to mine. “Yeah.”
I swallow hard. “Not a lot, Trish. I mean, I remember us . . . you know.”
She stares at me hard, and I don’t know what else to say. How much does she know? Has her dad told her something? Jesus, I don’t want to talk about this. “Arrow,” she says, holding my gaze. “I remember it.”
“I’m sorry. I think we were both screwed up that night.”
She shakes her head. “No. Not the party. After the party.”
“After your dad picked you up?” I ask. Because as fragmented as my memory is, that piece is there—Coach showing up at the party to pick up Trish, because her punishment for her latest screw-up was having to ring in the New Year at home.
“I convinced him to let me stay with you, to let you drive me home. He didn’t know you’d been drinking, but I thought it’d be okay. You’d stopped drinking and were trying to sober up.”
My stomach turns sour. “What are you saying?”
“I was in the car.” She folds her arms and squeezes her eyes shut. “I remember it all. The sick thunking sound. The screeching tires. The silence in those seconds after and before we . . . I know my dad covered it up. I wanted you to know that I know.”
I just stare at her. I can’t speak. There’s nothing to be said. She knows about this prison I’m trapped in. And she’s been trapped here, too. All this time. “How could you keep this secret? Why didn’t you stop me, Trish?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember anything after leaving the party.” I don’t even remember leaving the party.
“I know you don’t. Consider yourself lucky.”
I shake my head. “I hit them and I just . . . drove away? I can’t fucking remember.”
“Stopping wouldn’t have changed anything,” she whispers.
I squeeze my eyes shut, as if this new piece of information might make the memory appear in my brain, but nothing’s there.
“I’m an idiot,” she whispers. “I thought the best way I could get Brogan’s attention was to hurt him. I thought the worst I could do to him was to be with you. I thought he’d see pictures of us together and hear people talking about how we were all over each other. I wanted to hurt him so he’d wake up and realize he wanted me more than he wanted her.”
“This is more than some stupid jealousy!” My voice booms, echoing off the walls of my study, and I have to take a breath. There are people out there who’d be destroyed by this conversation if they heard it. Mia is out there.
“That’s my point,” Trish says. “I thought hurting him like he’d hurt me was so important, and then suddenly none of that mattered. It didn’t matter how many pictures there were of you and me on Facebook. Brogan couldn’t look at pictures. He couldn’t get jealous.”
“You were in the car?” I can’t wrap my mind around it, and my brain keeps going back to the morning after the accident. I got a ride from the hospital to Coach’s house, and that damn deer was hanging in the garage, bleeding all over the place. I grabbed a bucket and some bleach water and scrubbed at the garage floor until my hands were raw, as if I could clean it up, wipe it away, change the thing I couldn’t even remember.
“It was a terrible night for everyone,” Trish says.
“If you’d just made me stop and call the cops, your dad wouldn’t have had