“Yeah. We sorted it out.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
He grinned. “That’s awesome!” he said. “You really should’ve told me you were coming over, though. I could’ve been a backup for you in case it didn’t go well.”
“I thought I texted you,” I said lightly. “About an hour ago.”
“That’s weird. I didn’t get anything,” he said with a frown. Then he shrugged, expression turning light again. “I guess my phone is acting up or something.”
“Maybe, yeah.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Do you want to go grab a hot chocolate at Café Seven? I can text Trina to meet us there. Then you can tell us everything Hunter said.”
I smiled. “Sure.”
I couldn’t actually tell them what happened between Hunter and me, for obvious reasons, but I could make up something halfway decent on the drive into town.
As we stepped off the landing and turned down a wood-paneled hallway, the hair on the back of my neck suddenly rose, and a strange prickling sensation crawled over my skin.
I whirled around, struck by the sudden idea that someone was watching me. As soon as I turned my head, a door creaked somewhere down the hall, deepening my suspicion.
I knew it couldn’t be Hunter, because he was passed out upstairs. It couldn’t be Adam, either, because he was right here with me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, stopping next to me.
I turned back around, deciding to ignore the weird sensation. The creaking sound probably came from one of the Sunday staff members cleaning somewhere down the hall, and I was just being paranoid after everything I’d gone through lately.
I didn’t need to worry about any of that anymore.
Adam nudged me. “Laney? Are you okay?” he asked again, brows knitted with concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine.” I smiled and grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”
26
Laney
“So… what happened? What did Hunter say?”
Trina and Adam peered at me expectantly from across the café table. I bit my lip and looked down at my mug of hot chocolate.
“It’s a pretty long story,” I said lightly. “But the short version is—we met at that party I waitressed at a while ago. At your house, Adam.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Apparently he tried to flirt with me, but I didn’t really notice. After I left without him having a chance to ask for my number, he tracked me down. I guess I made quite an impression on him.”
“Right.” Trina’s brows knitted.
“He said he came to the diner I used to work at back in Silvercreek, and he tried to talk to me. Apparently we were pretty slammed that day, and I ended up being really rude to him. I don’t even remember it at all, but he said I called him a pathetic douchebag for trying to hit on a waitress in the middle of the busiest shift she’s ever had.”
“Then what?”
I swallowed hard. “That’s it. He couldn’t stand the rejection. So when I showed up at RFA, he wanted me gone, because seeing me reminded him of that humiliation,” I said. “But we’ve talked about it now, and we’ve sorted everything out, so it’s fine. No more blacklist.”
Adam and Trina exchanged glances. Then they looked back at me, brows raised.
“Can you tell us the truth now?” Trina asked.
I feigned an innocent expression. “What?”
“I don’t think Hunter would blacklist someone for that,” Adam said. “There must be some other reason you’re not telling us.”
“No. That’s it.”
“It’s not. You’re hiding something. I can tell.”
“Me too. Also, no offence, but you’ve been acting really weird lately,” Trina chimed in. “Like the texts you sent me this weekend. None of them sounded like you at all. I could tell something was wrong.”
“You were acting weird at my house earlier, too,” Adam said. “You were being all jumpy and suspicious.”
“So… what aren’t you telling us?” Trina asked.
Shit.
I focused on my mug again, mind spinning. I couldn’t tell my friends about the kidnapping Hunter staged to terrify me into submission, or the murder and cover-up I was involved in years ago, but I couldn’t keep lying to them either. They were too perceptive to let me get away with it.
I decided to settle on a half-truth. I could tell them Hunter’s motive for adding me to the blacklist without revealing the dark truth about everything else. They might even be able to help in the search for Lindsay’s killer.
I looked up at them. “I’m sorry for lying,” I said softly. “It’s just a really delicate situation. I didn’t want to upset anyone.”
“Why would we be upset?” Trina asked.
I focused my gaze on Adam. “Because it’s about Lindsay.”
“Lindsay? What about her?” he asked, brows furrowing.
I rubbed my temples and drew in a long, deep breath. “Hunter doesn’t think she committed suicide,” I said in a low voice. “He thinks someone pushed her off the roof.”
Trina’s eyes practically bulged out of her head. “What? Are you serious?”
“Yes. But please… keep it down. We need to keep this to ourselves for now.”
Her voice dropped a decibel. “Sorry.”
We looked at Adam. His skin had paled, and he was leaning forward with his eyes closed, holding his head in his hands. He was muttering something under his breath. “I’m not crazy. I’m not fucking crazy.”
Trina put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, what are you saying? Are you okay?”
Adam opened his eyes. They were glistening with tears. “I’m not crazy,” he repeated, voice cracking with emotion. “This whole time… I thought I was losing my mind.”
“What do you mean?”
He wiped his face. “I thought I was the only one,” he said in a shaky voice.
“You mean you think Lindsay was pushed too?” Trina asked.
He nodded. “I… I think so, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she wasn’t just my sister,” he said. “She was my twin. I knew her better than anyone. So when I got home that night and they told me she’d fallen off the roof, I just…” He trailed off and wiped his face again. “I knew it wasn’t an accidental fall, and I knew it wasn’t something she’d do on purpose either. I kept waiting for the police to find signs of foul play and open a murder investigation. But they never did. They said it was a suicide. Everyone did, but I… I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” Trina asked, rubbing his back in slow, soothing circles. “I had no idea.”
“I thought I was going insane. Everyone else seemed to accept that she killed herself right away, like it was so obvious.” Adam picked up a napkin and dabbed at his cheeks and under his eyes. “I didn’t know that Hunter felt the same way as me. He never said anything about it.”
“He tried to tell your dad,” I said. “But he told him he was crazy.”
“Well, I guess that explains why he never mentioned it to me,” he said softly. “He probably thought I’d call him crazy too. So he had no way of knowing I actually felt the exact same way as him.”
“I wish you told me,” Trina said, eyes filling with concern. “I could’ve helped you through it.”
He shook his head slowly, staring into space. “I couldn’t tell you or anyone else,” he muttered.
“Why?”
“You know those people who can’t accept that someone they love is dead?” he said. “And they spend the rest of their lives obsessing over it and coming up with all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories about it?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was happening to me. I thought I was just stuck in denial and losing my mind. So after a month or two, I tried to accept that it was really a suicide, and I tried to start moving on like everyone else,” he said. He rubb
ed the side of his head, let out a sigh, and continued. “Even then… I still had a few doubts.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like the note. I assume you know about that.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“When I first heard about it and saw it, I thought it was bullshit. Not because it wasn’t Lindsay’s writing. It was. But the thing is, she had the most basic handwriting on the planet. I used to tease her about it all the time and call it her basic-bitch writing. Just look at this.” He grabbed another napkin and retrieved a pen from his pocket. Then he wrote a few words on the napkin. “This is almost exactly what it looked like. See what I mean?”
I nodded. It was very basic printing. No flourishes or angles.
“Literally anyone who knew Lindsay could’ve emulated her handwriting. Especially in such a short note,” Adam went on. “Even a random person who sat next to her in class one time could probably do it.”
Trina nodded slowly. “That’s true. It would’ve been pretty easy to fake.”
“It’s not just that,” Adam said, shaking his head. He paused and scratched the back of his neck. “This is going to sound ridiculous and morbid as hell. I don’t know if I should even say it.”
“It’s okay,” I said gently. “Take your time.”
He scratched the back of his neck again. “About a month before Lindsay died, we watched a movie together. It was about some aliens who showed up on Earth and started killing or enslaving people. Near the end of it, the main characters were in a totally hopeless situation. They were surrounded, and the aliens were going to capture them. So they decided not to give them the satisfaction of killing them horribly or turning them into slaves. They went out on their own terms by blowing themselves up with a car bomb.”
“Okay. Go on,” Trina said, brows knitting with confusion as Adam paused for a beat.
“We were talking about it afterwards, and Lindsay asked what I’d do if I was in that situation. How I’d kill myself,” he said. “I know it’s a totally weird, morbid conversation to have, but it wasn’t serious. We just had that sort of relationship where we talked about literally everything.”
“I get it,” I said, reaching over to pat his hand.
“I said I’d probably find the nearest cliff and jump off. Lindsay laughed at me. She said that was too long and painful, and if I was smart like her, I’d go into Dad’s safe in his study and get his gun.” He paused and motioned to a spot directly beneath the tip of his nose. “She said if it happened to her, she’d get the gun and shoot herself. Apparently if you aim right here, it goes through to the brain stem and destroys it, killing you instantly. So it’s a quick and painless way to die.”
“Right.”
He let out another deep sigh. “I know it sounds dumb, because it was just a stupid movie discussion. But still… when they told me she committed suicide by letting herself fall backwards off our roof, all I could think was—” He stopped abruptly, jaw trembling as his eyes shimmered with tears.
“Why didn’t she shoot herself?” Trina finished for him in a low voice.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
Trina leaned back, exhaling loudly. “Shit. That’s heavy.”
“Yeah.” Adam twisted his hands on the table, eyes focused on the napkin he wrote on a moment ago. “So that’s it. That’s why I was suspicious when it first happened. But like I said before, I thought I was just going insane, so I stayed quiet and did my best to accept it and move on.”
“I’m so sorry,” Trina said, rubbing his back again. “I really wish I knew so I could’ve done something to help you.”
Adam gave her a faint smile of gratitude. Then he turned his attention to me. “I wish Hunter had talked to me about it,” he said. “I could’ve helped him. He could’ve helped me.”
“Hold on,” Trina cut in, forehead wrinkling. “Sorry to derail the conversation, but what does any of this have to do with you being on the blacklist, Laney?”
I clasped my hands on the table and leaned forward, lowering my voice to a whisper. “He thought I did it.”
“Did what?” Trina asked. Before I could reply, her hand flew to her chest. “Wait… he thought you pushed Lindsay?”
“Yes.”
Adam’s eyes widened. “Why would he think that? You didn’t even know her.”
I quickly explained the part of the story about my online friendship with Lindsay, and how it seemed as if I might’ve been the last person to see her that night.
When I was done, Adam tilted his head to one side. “So you really never knew it was Lindsay you were chatting to?”
“No. Hunter thought we might’ve met through my mom, seeing as she works for your family, but it was just a total coincidence,” I said. “I honestly had no idea it was her. I just knew her as xxLNZxx from the forum we met on. That’s all.”
“Right.”
“There’s more,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I scrolled through my camera reel to find a picture of me wearing the necklace. “Do either of you remember my necklace?”
Adam frowned. “What necklace?”
“The silver chain with the pendant. I used to wear it every day.”
“I’m like, the least observant person ever,” Trina said. “I never noticed a necklace.”
“I think I remember seeing a silver chain around your neck a few times,” Adam said. “But I didn’t see a pendant.”
“It was usually tucked under my uniform so I wouldn’t get in trouble, and it’s been really cold lately, so I’ve been wearing a lot of scarves too. So I guess it makes sense that you didn’t notice it,” I said. “Anyway… here it is.”
I held up my phone, showing them a selfie I took with my mom several months ago. I was wearing a thin white tank top, and the diamond and emerald pendant was fully visible, dangling over my décolletage.
Adam’s eyes widened again. “That’s Lindsay’s necklace!”
“I know.”
“Why the hell did you have it?” he asked, eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“My mom found it in a pawn shop in Silvercreek last year. She bought it for my birthday.”
“Oh. Right,” he said, looking mollified. “Sorry I snapped at you. I just…”
I held up a palm. “It’s okay. I understand.”
Trina leaned back, scratching at her chin. “So according to Hunter’s so-called evidence, you might’ve been the last one to see Lindsay, and you also had her necklace.”
“Yes.”
“Shit, Laney. That doesn’t look good for you.”
“I know.” I let out a sigh and folded my hands in my lap.
“So what actually happened today?” Adam asked. “With Hunter, I mean.”
“He asked me to come over to talk about it, and he told me everything he thought,” I said. “As soon as he did, I realized how suspicious I looked. But I explained what really happened. How I honestly had no idea my online friend was Lindsay, and how I never actually saw her or talked to her on the phone that night. Plus the whole pawn shop thing.”
“So you two are okay now?”
I nodded. “Yeah. We talked it over for ages, and he knows I didn’t do it now. I gave the necklace back, too. It didn’t feel right to keep it.”
“Wait. I don’t get it,” Trina said slowly. “If Hunter was so convinced it was you, why didn’t he just call the police and tell them?”
“I think he wanted a proper confession from me before he told anyone else.” I looked at Adam. “After your dad called him crazy, he seemed pretty certain that no one would believe him. Not unless he had solid evidence.”
Adam scrubbed a hand over his face and let out a short groan. “I wish he just fucking told me what was going on.”
“Me too,” I said softly. “Before now, I mean. But I get why he thought it was me. It really didn’t look good.”
“No shit.” Trina pursed her lips. “At least he actually listened to you when you explained everything, though.”
> “Yeah.”
“So what’s happening now?” Adam asked. “When you say everything is okay between you two, do you mean you’ve forgiven him for being so horrible to you?”
“I didn’t exactly forgive him immediately, but I understood. And…” I hesitated and leaned forward again. “I told him I’d help him find Lindsay’s real killer.”
“So you believe us?” Adam said, brows shooting up. “You don’t think we’re in denial?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t sure at first, but then Hunter showed me and told me a bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense,” I said. “Now I think he’s right. Something else happened to Lindsay that night. But the police won’t listen, and neither will your parents. So we need to try to get to the bottom of it ourselves. Otherwise you’ll never know the truth.”
“Can I help?” Adam asked with wide eyes.
“Of course. I was including you when I said ‘we’,” I replied. My gaze flitted between him and Trina. “I know it sounds impossible, but with all of our heads put together, we might actually be able to figure it out.”
Trina abruptly stood up, knocking the table with her hip and making our mugs and teaspoons rattle violently.
“Are you okay?” I asked, looking up at her.
She nodded. “Yeah. I just… I forgot it’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow. I’m meant to be helping Mom with the cake this afternoon so we can surprise him with it in the morning before he goes to work.”
“Oh. Right.”
She grabbed her purse. “Sorry. I really want to stay, but I can’t. I promised Mom,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll catch up on all of this tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
After Trina was gone, Adam turned his gaze back to me. “So… about this hunt of ours. Where would we even start?”
“I was hoping you could answer that,” I said. “I never knew Lindsay—not in person, anyway—so I can only go off what you and Hunter tell me.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Did you ever have any suspects?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. Like I said before, I tried to accept that it was a suicide in the end. So I had a few suspicions at first, but I didn’t sit around racking my brains for every possible suspect. I just tried my best to stop thinking about it.”
Savage Prince: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 1) Page 32
