Baya nods. “She said there wasn’t anything in it but water.” She shakes her head while struggling to sit up. “Obviously I can’t hold my liquor.”
“Why would you take anything from her?” Cole leans in as if he’s about to reprimand her.
“She said I would get in if I drank it. She said all the sisters did it.” Baya pushes out a breath. “I’m so stupid.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid, Baya.” I warm her arm with my hand. “Aubree has a way of making people do things they normally wouldn’t do.”
Baya looks up at me, the expression melting from her face. “So you know?” She nods as if I should acknowledge this. “You know what she did to Stephanie?” Her forehead creases with concern.
“What who did to Stephanie?” My heart thumps in my chest because it knows the hatchet is about to fall.
“Wait.” Baya winces as she sits up. “I’m confused. I don’t want to say anything. I probably imagined the entire conversation.” She drills those emerald eyes into mine. “Bryson, what happened to Stephanie, and who was she?”
I take a breath and dart a quick glance over to Cole. I told him everything during a beer bender one night and have regretted it ever since. Steph was a wound I preferred to keep buried in the past—until now.
“She was a good friend of mine—my best friend. Once our hormones kicked in, we thought we’d give dating a shot, and that didn’t work out so well. We tried to keep it together through our sophomore and junior years of high school.” I swallow hard because I hate the next part of the story. “We were in the process of breaking up when she”—I take a breath and blow it through my cheeks—“she fell from a cliff.” The tears come without warning, and I try to sniff them back. “The note they found said I was to blame.”
Cole steps over and slaps my shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why do I feel like shit?” I wipe my eyes with the back of my arm. “We had already broke it off about six different times. We were just kids. We were always fighting. I honestly thought we were about to get back together when she said she was coming to see me. Only, she never made it.”
“Did Aubree know her?” Baya looks from me to Cole for answers.
“She was her ‘big sister,’ some program they ran through school. Aubree was always getting in our business. Why? What did she say?”
Baya’s eyes widen as she fixes her gaze on some unknown horizon. “She said, I took care of that little bitch just like I’m about to take care of you—then she gave me a push.”
The world freezes. The air in the room stops up, strong as death. Steph and Aubree used to go to the cliff to hang out. Steph said it was peaceful, that it helped center her.
“Shit.” It bellows from my lungs so loud the walls shake with the echo.
It all happens in a blur—the cops coming in—Baya’s mother storming the room once her plane touched down. Baya gives a firm account of what happened to her at the bridge last night, and the cops agree to call Aubree into questioning again.
They’re reopening Stephanie’s case.
Reopening the wound.
Hopefully, this time, we’ll get some real closure out of it.
