turn left instead of right and pull onto the highway.
One stop for gas, a coffee run, and an hour and thirteen minutes later, I made it to Grey’s campus. I’ve only been here once with my mom to help Grey move in, so I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to find his dorm, but low and behold, I found it.
I stand in front of his door, suddenly nervous. I shake my head, internally chastising myself. This is your brother, idiot. The one who learned to braid my hair for volleyball when my mom was out of town for work. The one who always gave me an extra scoop of brown sugar in my oatmeal because he knew I loved it. The one who always stuck up for me, no matter the circumstances.
Taking a deep breath, I bring my fist up to knock on the door. I don’t hear anything, so I knock again, louder this time, leaning in to listen.
“Coming, fuck,” my brother’s voice calls out, sounding less than pleased. I hear him shuffling around, and then the knob is turning. “I told you to stop leaving your key here—oh.” He stops short when he realizes it’s me and not his roommate.
He looks like he just crawled out of bed. His hair is messy, the stubble on his jaw longer than I’ve ever seen it before.
“Surprise,” I say weakly, ducking under his arm that holds the door open.
He follows me into his dorm, kicking the door shut behind him. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
“Aren’t you?” I toss back.
“Touché.” He scratches his jaw, uncomfortable. “What are you doing here, Shayne?” He ambles back over to his bed and plops down onto the edge of it. Beer bottles and food containers litter the floor and every surface on his side of the room. On the other side of the room is a matching bed and some storage containers with wheels underneath, a desk that must be for both of them, and not much else.
I walk over, standing in front of him, arms folded over my chest. “I’ve been calling you. A lot.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, so you’ve mentioned. What’s going on with you?”
“There’s nothing—”
“I swear to God, Grey, if you lie to me one more time. You don’t take my calls, you barely respond to texts, and you haven’t set foot in Sawyer Point in almost a year.” Even before we moved back to Sawyer Point, he rarely visited us.
“Why would I? There’s nothing left in that town for me.”
Ouch. “Thanks.”
“Dammit, Shayne, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? Because you bailed on me when I needed you the most.”
Grey’s eyes are full of concern when he looks up at me. “What do you mean?” He stands. “What’s wrong?”
In the weeks that followed Danny’s death, Grey had already checked out, both physically and mentally before we even moved out of Whittemore. He went back to school, so he has no idea what happened during that time.
“Danny died, Mom and August split, and then you left. And now…”
“Now, what?”
“Now I’m just…alone.” It sounds pathetic even to my own ears, but I keep going. “Mom is hiding something. You never talk to me anymore. Everyone’s keeping secrets. I had to move back to the town where all my old friends hate me.”
“Back up. What’s up with Mom?”
I roll my eyes. Of course that’s the part of the story he’d focus on. “I don’t know. You know that weird sniff thing she does when she’s lying?”
He nods.
“She does it a lot. And I saw her with some random guy a few weeks back, looking pretty cozy. Just this morning, she was whispering on the phone with August.”
His brows furrow together in thought as he swipes a discarded t-shirt from the floor and pulls it on over his head. “I don’t see how that’s exactly a case for the FBI, Shayne.”
“It’s not only that,” I say, feeling frustrated. Grey moves around the room, swiping some deodorant under his arms, then grabs his hat from the small table next to his bed. “I can’t explain it. I just get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about.”
Grey keeps moving around the room, looking anywhere but my direction as he collects his keys and wallet. His cagey behavior is starting to make me feel on edge.
“Did you have a fight with Danny?” I ask point-blank. Grey tenses, and an uneasy feeling creeps up my spine. “The night he died,” I clarify.