Page 156 of Trapped With You

His face was hidden. Hers was not.

One final thought pounded through my mind with raging intensity.

My ex-bitch of a best friend was going to pay for this.

C H A P T E R3 1

Last Puzzle Piece

Cade

The Present

The best way to describe this meeting was awkward.

I was at a café that doubled up as a romance bookstore with an overwhelming amount of pink, girlish laughter, and flowery décor. I sat in a velvet tufted chair across from Mabel Garcia.

She looked exactly as my hazy memory recalled. Except now she sported black hair instead of the dyed blond from that night.

Josh was responsible for picking this location, saying it would help Mabel feel at ease. Spoiler alert: she didn’t look at ease. In fact, she looked as nervous as me.

I felt seconds away from breaking out into hives. Unable to find the words to commence this overdue conversation.

“Thanks for, uh”—I cleared my throat—“coming. I appreciate it.”

Mabel stared at me with questioning brown eyes and a pinched smile. “Yeah. Uh, thank you for the latte.”

I bought her one when we arrived. It was the right thing to do after she agreed to take an hour out of her busy Sunday afternoon to meet with me.

I took a sip of my own drink, wincing when the scalding black coffee burned my tongue. “I won’t keep you for long. I just wanted to talk to you about what happened over the summer in…my room.”

She tensed, a blush climbing over her face. I almost cursed under my breath. I was unequipped to deal with my own feelings from that night, let alone this poor girl’s, who must have been just as humiliated as me.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she rushed out. “I usually never go to parties, much less get drunk—actually, I’ve sworn off alcohol completely after that night—and nor do I hook up with random strangers. It’s not my vibe. But I was in your room—which, I’m sorry about that as well—because the guy I was flirting with said that he wanted to uh, well, you know, and to meet him upstairs, specificallythere, and I really liked him and thought I’d take a chance on him and—”

“It’s okay,” I assured her as she grew flustered, her words coming out more incoherent after the other. “Don’t worry. I know it was one big misunderstanding and I’m not mad. I simply wanted to talk to you, even though this is months late, to get some proper closure.”

The last part wasn’t a complete lie. She just didn’t need to know that closure for me came in the form of killing the motherfuckers responsible for that night.

I wanted to pick her brain. See what she knew. Try to fill the plot holes in the story.

Mabel nodded, taking a sip of her latte. “I-I understand.”

“The girl who found us in my room was my girlfriend. I thought you were her. With the lights off and having drunk as much as I did—”Having been drugged, was more like it.“It was momentarily hard to tell the difference.”

Mabel winced. “Yeah, I figured she was your girlfriend based on her reaction and what she said to you. I’m truly sorry. I had no idea and like I said, I thought you were someone else and—”

“Stop apologizing.” I gave her a faint smile to ease her anxiousness. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I hope everything with your girlfriend is fine,” Mabel saidgently, seeming so miserable and genuinely hurt on Ella’s behalf. “Will you extend my apology to her, too?”

Fuck, I felt so bad for this girl. She had no reason to feel guilty and it was clear what happened over the summer took a toll on her as well.

“I will,” I replied. “And everything between us is fine.” Or, at least, it would be soon. “Can you walk me through your version of that night?”

Mabel sighed, her gaze bouncing around the café, collecting her thoughts. I drummed my fingers against my thigh, feeling fidgety like a caged animal. The entire mystery of that night—of those four masked men—seemed to depend on her answer.

“I’ve blocked a lot of that night from my mind.” She paused to take another sip of her latte. “But I do remember that I was there with a few girls from my high school, playing beer pong. This guy had been watching me for quite some time before he finally approached me. He seemed sweet enough and we started chatting about all sorts of things. Eventually, he poured us drinks, saying it was a party after all and that I should loosen up. Under his peer pressure, I kept drinking everything he handed me until I was practically shitfaced. One thing led to another and we kissed. I was really…into him. He said to go to the second floor, four doors down the right, and wait for him in the room. Keep the lights shut too. And I naively went ahead with his instructions.”