Weight of Silence(23)
His heart nearly burst. He darted past her and shut the door with an accidental slam that startled them both. “Really?” he snapped. “Could you have said that a little louder?”
“Sorry.” She tried to look contrite and failed miserably. “Look, ever since Christmas you disappear all day, every day. Are you with him?”
He stalked over to his desk and leaned against it. “So what if I am? I like him, Rach. That’s not a crime.”
“No, but trying to ditch your family to go see some guy isn’t like you.”
“I’ve never had a guy to—“ he made air quotes, “—go see, so how would you know?”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, point to you. What about dinner?”
“I wasn’t feeling chatty.”
“Or hungry, apparently. You love La Cucina’s, but you barely ate anything. You didn’t even get their spinach ravioli, which you love and is only on special a few days a month. Why do you think Mom picked tonight?”
His stomach tightened with regret. Mom had tried to do something nice for him, and he’d acted like a brat.
She kept going. “Look, I’m not trying to butt into your business—”
“You aren’t?”
“Gavin seems nice enough. I just think you should be careful.”
“We are being careful.” Not that they’d moved on to the more intimate activities that required condom use, but her face when she figured out what he meant…
Rachel’s eyebrows shot into her hair line. “Okay, TMI territory. I don’t want details, and I didn’t mean that.”
“Then what?”
“You know his buddy Casper, right?”
“Sure.”
“So Casper’s cousin is Nathan Blonsky, the guy who went to jail for beating up Jennie Walsh and Rey King.”
Jace resisted rolling his eyes. He knew who Casper was related to, and he knew why Nathan was spending eighteen months in jail. He’d been in the last few weeks of his freshman year when all that was happening in Stratton, dealing with exams and Rachel’s unexpected boyfriend breakup. “Casper’s cousin is an asshole, okay,” Jace said. “And?”
“And when the Laundromat burned down last summer, Casper was one of the initial suspects. Payback for Nathan.”
Jace hesitated. He hadn’t heard that part, and he had a hard time believing the laid-back guy he’d met last month could burn down a building and destroy so many lives. “There was never enough evidence to prove arson.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.”
“No one in that family tree is smart enough to get away with arson.”
“But they have money. I overheard Dad talking to Laura Walsh back at the Fourth of July picnic. Dad said Nathan Blonsky made a big withdrawal from his savings a few weeks before the fire. Told the police he gave the money to Casper, and Casper told the police he used it to cover some gambling debt. No one could prove Casper used it to pay someone to burn down the Laundromat, so the case was closed.”
Irritation prickled the back of Jace’s scalp. She was judging someone she’d never met, like she was judging Gavin—all based on things she’d heard and didn’t know for herself. “Even if Casper had something to do with the fire, which there is no proof he did, what the hell does it have to do with Gavin? Is he guilty by association now? Or is he not good enough because he’s half-Mexican and lives in a trailer?”
Rachel stared at him like he’d just kicked a puppy in the face. “That’s not fair.”
“That’s what I’m hearing, Rach. You’re tearing down him and his friends, so if it’s not what you mean, then please clarify for me.”
“I think you’re acting weird, okay? You’ve been different since Thanksgiving, and that’s when you and Gavin first hooked up, right?”
His irritation swung into full-on anger. “Gavin is the best thing that’s happened to me all year. He’s funny, and he’s fun, and he doesn’t push me, so watch what the fuck you say about him.”
She flinched. “I’m sorry, okay? Maybe Gavin’s awesome, I don’t know. All I do know is that you aren’t yourself, so what is going on?”
The heat of his anger cooled into something sharp and uncomfortable. Sometimes he really hated the so-called “twin bond”. She read him like he had his feelings spray painted across his face.
“Are you worried about coming out to Mom and Dad?” she asked.
He was, sure, but coming out wasn’t weighing him down like a cinder block around his neck. He had a far worse secret than being gay. A secret only one other person in the world knew, and he couldn’t tell Rachel or Gavin about it. He didn’t dare. “I am nervous about that,” he admitted.