His bloodshot eyes find Tori, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I’m so sorry I failed you. If I had known…”
“That’s just it. I didn’t want you to find out, I was scared of what you’d do,” Tori cries softly.
“You should have trusted me, I’d have helped you.”
“I’m sorry,” she sobs, and he pulls her into his arms. They hold each other for a few moments before she pulls back, wiping her eyes. “I’m gonna call the police, get them down here to take out the trash.” She glances briefly to where Martin lies unconscious before rising to her feet and leaving the room.
Dwight turns to me, stroking the hair that’s matted and tangled away from my face, looking me over. “Are you alright?”
“I am now. How did you find me?”
“I put a tracking app on your phone when I first saw Rogers before Christmas. I was worried something would happen.”
“I’m not sure whether I should be relieved or creeped out,” I joke, and he smiles, then leans in and presses a kiss to my lips, cradling my face in his hands.
I wrap my arms around his neck, and he pulls off his jacket and drapes it around me, reaching for my jeans that lie discarded just to the side of me and helps me put them back on.
Tori returns to the room, pocketing her phone. “Cops are on their way.”
Something clicks in my brain and I remember my phone in my pocket. I pull it out to see it still recording. “I recorded the whole thing.”
“You did?” Dwight asks.
“Every word.”
He pulls me in, kissing me again, long and deep.
Right here, I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
Chapter 52
Dwight
The three of us spend the next couple of hours at the police station being questioned after they came to arrest Rogers. They take our statements and hold Quinn’s phone as evidence since she recorded her whole interaction with him.
I didn’t think I could ever hate Rogers more until I found out what he did to my sister, and that crack about Grace… he was a dead man walking.
Tori and I sit in the waiting area while Quinn is still being interviewed. The tension between us is thick and suffocating. Since finding out about what Rogers did to her, she’s done her best to avoid me like the plague. I get why she didn’t tell me, I just wished she’d have trusted me enough to confide in me. Tori always told me that she got pregnant one drunken night with one of the boys she happened to be dating that particular week, and who was I to question that?
“You should have told me the truth, Tori,” I say, breaking the silence that has fallen over us.
“I didn’t know how to. I was scared. I just wanted to block it all out and move on.”
“Did you know who he was? When I told you his name did you know it was him who had Quinn?”
She shakes her head. “No. When I met him, I didn’t know his name, all I knew was that he was part of the University, I never thought for a second that it’d be the same guy. I never saw him again after… you know… today was the first time since it happened.”
I reach over and drape an arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry you had to go through it all alone, but just know that you can talk to me about anything.”
She turns her head and smiles, teary-eyed.
Just then, a door opens, and Quinn is led through by one of the officers into the waiting area.
“… we’ll keep in touch. Take care of yourself Miss Taylor,” the officer tells her.
“Thank you,” she replies as the officer gives her a polite nod and heads to the front desk. Quinn comes to a stop in front of us and the three of us leave.
It’s almost eight, by the time we get out of the station, and I drive Tori to pick up her car where she left it in the campus parking lot before driving Quinn home. This is the first time I’ve properly seen her since we left the apartment after the arrest. She doesn’t say much on the drive home, just stares quietly out of the passenger window with her forehead pressed against the glass. I still have no real idea of what went down between her and Rogers, and the uncertainty has my stomach knotted with worry.
