“He broke the rules.”
“Why?” is all I can say.
Theo adds quietly, “He made her fall in love with him.”
“I wanted out,” Cody says. “They… it doesn’t matter. I took it too far.”
“So, what did you do?” I ask Theo, worried about what he’s going to admit.
“I took care of it,” Theo says, leaving it at that.
“So…” I say. “Why am I here?”
Cody exhales. "Nessa Rhodes.”
I look at the ceiling.
I look at the water stain.
I think about the car on a dark road. The waving hands in the passenger seat. The moment of impact that hurt so fucking bad, I will never forget that pain.
"Was she driving?" I ask.
Nobody answers.
Which is its own answer.
"Theo's sister was driving the car that hit me," I say it out loud, not because I need confirmation, but because I need to hear the shape of it. "She was driving, and you were in the car." I look at Beckett. At Theo. "Both of you."
"We were trying to stop her," Beckett says. His voice different from usual — stripped of the steadiness, something raw underneath. "She got a call from Cody that night. He said something to her and she—" He stops.
I look at Cody.
Cody closes his eyes.
"What did you say to her?" I say.
He doesn't answer.
"Cody." My voice breaks on his name for the first time. Just slightly. He’s the one I love the most in this room. I trusted him for years. And I find all of this out while I’m in a hospital room on what feels like my deathbed. "What did you say to Nessa?"
He opens his eyes and looks at me.
And he tells me.
Every word. What he said to her on the phone in a car outside a lake house where he'd taken me. How he told her she was nobody. How he told her she was leverage. How he said the words that sent her into a car in the dark, going too fast on a road I happened to be walking on. How he knew that I fucked Beckett in my dorm because he saw him leaving, and he sent a photo of me tied up to lure him out.
“It was never meant to hurt you. I wanted to kill them for messing with you.”
I scoff, trying to process everything being said.
Cody used Theo's sister.
Theo put Cody in a coma.
Beckett knew what he let into my dorm that night.
The library was never accidental.
