Page 86

We end up drinking enough liquor to have us both so drunk we can barely walk. The bartender calls us a cab and helps us to it.

While the ground is spinning around me, I notice that Alice looks like she’s about to pass out. I’m reminded of how things were before she slept with Brandon and we were friends.

Back then, I remember that she could never hold her alcohol, so she would have one, and that was it. Always holding down the fort for the others.

That was what I remember from when I still had friends.

Now I have nothing—no friends, no attorney, and soon, I’ll have no freedom.

I rattle my address to the cab driver, although I don’t realize it until he stops in front of my house. Sighing, I help Alice out, fishing my key out of my purse and opening the door.

The familiarity of a place I called home for so long hits me, and tears pour down my cheeks. I manage to get Alice to my room while throwing our bags down in the living room.

Then the nausea hits, and I run to the bathroom, kneeling on the floor, I vomit everything in my stomach until there is nothing left, and then I lay down on the bathroom floor to rest.

“I’m a mess,” I whisper. “Why wouldn’t Michael leave? He must have seen that I had feelings for him.”

I sit with my knees hugged into my chest for a while before finding the strength to get up.

I wash my face in the bathroom sink before heading to the bedroom, intending to get some sleep. Sleep doesn’t come when I hear Alice’s phone ringing.

It’s not my phone, so I let it ring. It ends, and then a message beep.

I see a preview on her home screen as I am walking past the counter and glance away. But the words flash in my mind and I look back, but her phone has gone dark. Opening it with Alice’s Face ID is easy, but what isn’t is seeing the message on her phone.

It leads me down a rabbit hole.

What I see is that Alice has been messaging someone, asking them if they’ve gotten the money. She talks about a boy in the message and then my name is mentioned.

What is this?

Why would Alice pay someone to tell a boy to deliver a letter and then say that the letter is about me, and it must get to the other person?

The entire thing is so confusing that I put her phone down and head to the bedroom.

I sit on the other side of the bed and look at her, splayed out asleep.

“What are you hiding from me?” I mutter.

It hits me, as I sit there, that I trusted Alice too much too soon. I should have known that someone who would sleep with my fiancé while laughing with me is not to be trusted. Ever.

I needed a friend, and she was there, so I fell with my eyes closed.

I did it again.

I’m so gullible.

At least, I was.

Now I know not to trust her. I’m not sure what she’s up to, but I know that I’m going to find out.

I just need to close my eyes for a bit.

Chapter 26

Michael

“So, we finally meet,” I say when the person behind the flash drive, the messenger boy, and the letters walks up to my table and pulls out a chair.