“I never said you slept with Kyle Loftman!” she interrupts, her fist heavy as it pounds on the table so hard it vibrates the water from our glasses. “I didn’t even know about him until mom told me!” This, of course, makes my mom squirm in her seat. My dad, though—he’s still cutting his meat, watching us talk—oblivious to the part he played in any of this. “What do you think, that I’m really out to ruin my sister? That…that I have some secret agenda to spread rumors about you? Seriously?”
“Girls, that’s enough,” my mom tries to stop our flow, but we barely even acknowledge her. This has been building in me, and it needs to come out.
“I don’t know, Paige! Somehow, when the rumors find their way to me, I always trace them back to you!” I practically shout.
“That’s because I’m the one trying to tell the real story! God, Cass…I’ve been trying to fix this since I embarrassed you by yelling at those assholes who treated you like shit in high school. I never meant for it to start anything, I only wanted them to apologize—to not get away with using you,” she says.
“Yeah, well, it started something anyway. You ruined my senior year, Paige. And now you’re trying to ruin college for me, too,” I seethe.
There’s a long break in our words, and Paige keeps her eyes on me, her hands flat on the table between us. My mom is looking from her to me, then to my dad, begging him to step in. But there’s nothing anyone can say. My last year has been a series of unfortunate incidents, miscommunications, poor judgments by my sister—and I’m just done having others speak on my behalf.
“I never meant to ruin anything for you,” Paige says finally, her eyes bloated with water. I hate crying. And I hate that I’m making my sister cry. But I’m still angry. And none of this is okay.
“Why did you tell Chandra about Cotterman?” This is the wound that hurts the most.
“Paige! We can’t talk about Cotterman,” my dad says quickly, and I hold a hand up to stop him. This isn’t a legal issue for me. This is a trust issue—a sister-bond, broken.
“Paige, why?” I ask, and she collapses into her chair, her fight completely gone.
“I thought Chandra was your friend,” she says, her shoulders lifting faintly, a small signal to let me know she’s being honest. “I thought…I don’t know, that somehow...maybe she could help?”
“Paige,” I sigh, sitting back in my seat, “Chandra hates me. I’m her biggest threat on the team. Why would she help me?”
“Because…” she says, her eyes slowly moving from the tabletop directly in front of her, along the distance between us, until her gaze meets mine. “—because she dated him last year.”
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
My dad is already starting in with questioning. I know how his brain works. He wants to talk to Chandra, question her, see if she had a similar situation. Paige answers his barrage of questions with short one-word answers. They dated. He didn’t assault her. It’s different, though yes, inappropriate. But my dad wants to talk to her anyway…see if there’s a pattern of abuse, of anger, anything he can have in his hip pocket. It’s like I’m sitting in the middle of a pot of boiling water, bubbles bursting all around me, my skin on fire, everything poking and prodding to try to make me explode.
“I didn’t do anything to deserve this,” I say, standing up again and looking my dad in the eyes. I walk over to him and put my hand on his chest. “I love you, Daddy. I know you’re just trying to fix this. But I’m tired. I didn’t do anything wrong. Not once. And I’m just…I’m just done.”
Nobody stops me from leaving the table. Nobody follows me into my room. And nobody checks on me for the next hour. The space beyond my door is quiet, which means dinner is over and everyone either retreated to their spaces or went outside to talk about me more. I don’t care where they went or what they do, as long as I don’t have to be a part of it.
When my phone rings, my heart dances. Knowing it’s Ty makes my lips stretch into a smile for the first time in hours.
“Hey,” I answer, doing my best to sound less like a girl who just had her hope stolen from her chest and wrung out in front of her.
“Guess who got his Cookie back?” he asks, the giddiness in his voice making my smile stretch even larger.
“Thank the lord. Seriously, I don’t think I could endure another round of ransom embarrassment,” I say. “How’d you get him?”
“Rowe caved,” he says.