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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CELINE

With the boys at school, once I get ready, I immediately head for the restaurant Aaron suggested we meet at. Reggie’s is a small, run-down diner that somehow manages to look both Western and regal.

From the parking lot, I text my phone from Tate’s and give Aaron’s name and the address of the place we’re meeting. I don’t think I’m in danger, but I have to be careful. If anything happens, I want someone to know where I was and who I was with, but I don’t want to alarm my parents if nothing bad is going to happen.

Inside, there’s a sign that instructs us to seat ourselves, so I find a booth and take a seat. When the waitress comes over, dressed in denim from head to toe, I order a coffee and scan the restaurant for any sign of Aaron.

The place is quiet, but they have Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” crooning through the speakers, which will make it easier to have a private conversation. I watch the door like a hawk, studying the parking lot for any sign of him, but there is none. He’s not here.

When he’s fifteen minutes late, I start to worry I’ve been stood up. But why? Why would he want me to come here? What good would it do? Did he chicken out? Has he decided not to help me after all?

After thirty minutes, I try to call him from Tate’s phone, but he doesn’t pick up, and I have to accept that this was a waste of time. It makes me angrier now, perhaps more than ever before, to have my time wasted. Maybe because I understand how precious time is. Perhaps because I made my parents pick the boys up from school on a day they didn’t have to, perhaps because I’m missing precious time with my boys when I feel like I haven’t seen them much at all lately, when they need me more than ever.

Either way, when the waitress comes back around, I ask her for the check with a bitter resentment burning in my chest. As I’m grabbing my card from my wallet, the restaurant door opens once more, and I look up.

Aaron scans the restaurant, the skin around his eyes wrinkling as he searches for me. A hint of recognition flashes across his expression when his gaze hits my face. It takes him a few seconds to be sure it’s me, and I wave at him before he starts walking my way.

When he reaches the booth, he slips down across from me. “Sorry I’m late. I got held up in traffic.”

I glance out at the empty street skeptically, but he doesn’t bother trying to sell the lie more than that.

“Well, thank you for meeting me,” I say softly. “I really appreciate it.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but before he can say anything, the waitress is back to take his order. Looking over the menu quickly, he orders a Diet Coke and a tuna sandwich with onion rings, and when she disappears, he folds his hands in front of himself on the table. “Truth be told, I almost didn’t come.”

I nod, having assumed as much.

“I don’t like to talk badly about my friends. More than that, I don’t like to talk about what happened between us back then, or to tell my friends’ secrets, but if it will help you find Tate, you have a right to know the truth. Because I do want him to be found. I hope more than anything that he is.”

I don’t know what has suddenly made him decide to help me, and I don’t care. I just need his help. “I want that too, which is why I need you to tell me everything you know. Starting with the text message. It was about me, then? You wanted Tate to tell me something, right?”

He huffs out a breath through his nose. “No. The text message was about…” He pauses when his food arrives, thanking the waitress, then takes a sip of his drink before he begins talking again. “It was about Tate’s mom.”

“Daphne.”

He nods. “She was always Mrs. T to us. I wanted him to tell her that one of our friends, Bradley, was going to tell someone our secret. Something happened years ago, and we all swore we’d never talk about it, but he was going to break our pact. I wanted Tate to tell Mrs. T before that happened.”

“But what happened? What was the secret? Was this in college?”

He nods, taking the bread off of his sandwich to examine the meat and setting it back in place, smashing the bread down. I think he’s avoiding meeting my eyes. “We were kids. It’s no excuse, but we were stupid kids. We grew up together in foster care, the five of us.”

“You, Tate, Bradley Jennings, Dakota Miller, and Matteo Acri.”

He sighs. “We were brothers, but it became different in college. Or maybe we just finally saw the truth of who he was. He’d been mistreated in foster care. Abused. Molested. Treated like garbage all around. All of us had been, but he probably had it the worst. No one could deny that. He’d always had a temper. I mean, who could blame him? He did weird stuff when he got mad—lashed out, said awful things, but…we knew why. We understood him, and we tried to be there for him like other people couldn’t. No one understood what we’d gone through aside from us. Anyway, he started getting worse. Angrier, more cruel. Things started going south throughout most of our senior year of college, and then one night…he just flipped.” His eyes are distant. Haunted. “I’d never seen him like that.”

“Was it the night Aubrey Vance died?”

His eyes go wide as they flick up to meet mine. “You already know about her?”

“Vaguely, yes. I don’t know what happened.”

“No one does. No one but the five of us. Well, I guess the two of us now, if Tate’s still…” He stops talking, looking down. “It was never meant to happen. Never. But we should’ve stopped it. Truth be told, we were scared of him. Not just physically, but…emotionally, socially, he could’ve destroyed us. We never thought he’d take it that far. Never. Please believe me. We had seen him do some messed up things, but we’d never seen him as awful as he was that night.” He drops his face into his hands. “Or maybe we just never let ourselves see it. He was our brother. We wanted to believe he was good, that he’d become good, grow out of it. We wanted to see the best in him. We didn’t think he’d actually…” He looks out the window, pressing his lips together. There’s no denying the horror behind his eyes. Whatever he’s remembering, it was terrible.

“He killed her? The professor?” My coffee roils in my stomach. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

Slowly, Aaron’s dark eyes turn to meet mine. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, he did.”