Tosh drank.
Candy drank.
Torie didn’t. Her jaw tightened dangerously.
Zach’s turn. “Never have I ever followed someone home when I knew it was a bad idea.”
Torie’s head snapped toward him. “Who?”
“It’s a game,” Lorenzo said lightly. “Not an affidavit.”
Torie’s hands shook. “Never have I ever pretended I was doing the right thing while breaking someone on purpose.”
“Specific,” Janie noted.
“True,” Harmony said.
Lorenzo topped Torie’s glass. She ignored it.
Janie traced a finger along Zach’s shoulder. “I was bored, and he was convenient.”
“Never have I ever,” Mary cut in, voice a clean slice, “let a girl drown and called it fate.”
“Mary,” Lorenzo warned, velvet over steel.
She smiled—all teeth. “We’re confessing. Why stop when the truth gets sticky?”
“Because knives cut,” Zach said.
“They’re meant to,” Mary replied, but she took the water Lorenzo pressed into her hand and drank it like obedience cost her nothing.
Something moved in Mary then, a small shift, like a blade sliding free.
Janie kissed Zach’s cheek, leaving a lipstick stain, then brushed her hand over Tosh’s shoulder as if she owned that too. She pivoted with a dancer’s ease and sauntered to the door.
“Same time tomorrow,” she called.
No one replied.
Silence settled for a moment, thick and waiting.
“Never have I ever,” Harmony said, “imagined killing someone.”
No one spoke. Even the waves outside seemed to hold their breath.
Torie recoiled. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s hypothetical,” Harmony said. “Like most stories.”
Zach broke the moment with a chuckle. “Writers. They live in their own world.”
“We listen too well,” Harmony said. “And we remember what everyone else forgets.”
Torie’s gaze sharpened. Fear? Accusation?
Harmony wasn’t sure.
She wasn’t certain she wanted to be.
