Page 55 of Last Breath

‘I was ... What?’

‘You picked me up,’ she amended.

‘I only picked you up once from your apartment in your second year. You told me you didn’t want people thinking you were above them because you had a personal chauffeur. You always made me meet you at the train station.’ Even after she’d almost been locked in a stalker’s basement. Thinking about Sally Sue dislodged another memory of Nella in the back of his car. Was that the time she was talking about? But she hadn’t been hurt then, had she? He only remembered that night because of what they’d talked about. ‘Except one time.’

‘Except one time.’ She found his eyes. Hers were black.

‘Do you think it’s possible for guys and girls to be friends?’ she’d asked as he’d U-turned around the cul-de-sac her share house bordered. He could have sworn the curtains moved from behind the window as he pulled away.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If one of them is gay.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I have plenty of guy friends who I’ve never felt any sort of physical attraction to.’

He pretended there was cement locking his jaw together. Not his place to point out the obvious. He just had to drive.

‘What if they’re married?’ she prompted. ‘Or in committed relationships, completely in love with other people? Can they be friends then?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but I doubt it’s a real friendship like what you have with Eliza. Vows and promises don’t override human instinct. You can control your actions, and some people obviously hold more value in the relationships they’ve cultivated with their spouses than others. But no one can completely control desire.’

She chewed her lip, something shifting in her expression. ‘I think I’ve ruined a friendship tonight.’ She stared out the window.

‘It would be pretty difficult to be your friend, Nella,’ he said without thinking.

An excruciating silence fogged the windows. ‘Are you my friend?’ she whispered eventually.

‘I work for your dad.’ His hands tightened around the wheel.

‘That’s not what I asked.’

He knew what she was asking. And it had nothing to do with friendship.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We’re friends.’

He hadn’t dared to take that memory down from its dusty shelf in the attic until now. It made sense now – her weird questions, her worry she’d ruined a friendship. She’d been talking about her friendship with Clarkson after whatever the hell had happened with Oliver. Jett’s stomach turned to quicksand, he was falling, falling.

‘What the fuck did Lockridge do to you?’

‘Stand down, alpha-bot.Must – resist – primal – wiring.’

‘Nella, you hadcoffeewith him last Sunday ...’

‘Why do you think I made you come with me?’

Shit. It was making sense now, glass shards of a mosaic of moments glinting into an ugly, hideous shape of the truth. The way she turned away from Oliver when he went to embrace her. The cold, unfeeling way she dispatched her recollection of Clarkson and their uni days. The desperation in her eyes when she’d asked Jett to stay with her.

If he’d known, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to walk into the ocean with Oliver without holding him under until his $80 reusable coffee cup bobbed, untethered, back up to the surface.

‘It wasn’t rape,’ she said, head back on the pillow. She’d turned away from him. ‘I didn’t say no.’

‘You know that means shit all.’

‘Not in a court of law.’

‘We’re not in a court of law.’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t push him away. I think I kissed him back at one point.’

The image of her soft lips on that slimy, blond prick bubbled acidly through his mind, dripping singed brain matter through his ears. ‘But you didn’t want it.’