God, I couldn’t believe I was still listening to this. She was confessing, but it wasn’t to make things right. It was to make herself feel better. A mangled sounding laugh ripped from me. “You have no idea what you did. Tate might’ve said the words, but you let her. You didn’t say anything to stop this. You’re just as guilty as she is.”
The tears started. They began falling down her face and as I kept talking, they became a steady stream. I shook my head. Everything about her screamed victim. And she’d been hit by a truck. She was a victim, but what she did wasn’t okay.
I couldn’t stay there. I needed to leave, but there was one other thing. “That night, were you going to sneak into his bed?”
Her shoulders were shaking from sobbing. At my question, she stiffened and paused; a small whimper left her mouth as she nodded. She couldn’t talk.
I heard all I needed to hear. Heading to the door, I thought of another question. Pausing, my hand on the handle, I asked, “Did you manipulate that whole night?”
A second slow nod, like she still didn’t want to confess to that part.
“You pretended to be drunk?”
A third nod, even slower and just the bare minimum of motion.
I gripped the handle so tight. I knew my knuckles were probably white. “Were you there with friends? If Mason had found who you were with, what then? The whole lie would’ve been pointless.”
She looked back down, but I heard her say, “I told them not to answer their phones. They knew. My phone was stuffed in my bra.”
She set the whole thing up. She was going to try and seduce him. I felt sick, my stomach protested, and I realized I really was going to be sick. I hurried out of there and sprinted to a bathroom in the hallway.
CHAPTER TWENTYNINE
MASON
Sam and Logan. Sam and Logan.
I couldn’t get the images out of my mind: them standing so close together; her reaching up, tucking some of his hair back. I saw them through the lobby windows, even though Nate tried to block me from seeing them. Fuck that. He didn’t try to block me. He tried to stall me. The two of them looked so intimate out there. They had looked like a couple, and it stuck a dagger in me.
My brother and a girl. This was Tate all over again, but worse. Even though Marissa told me the truth, all about the lie Tate had said to Sam, I was furious when she touched him. But this was Sam. A part of me wanted to grab her, take her somewhere, and remind her that she was mine. It was the animalistic side of me, but I couldn’t do that. The other side, the one always in control, kept me from doing that. It told me to remain calm, think about it from her perspective.
She was scared. She had lost her family. She didn’t want to lose me or Logan. I got that. It was pretty easy to figure out, but it wasn’t helping my anger. Sam was mine. Not Logan’s. But fuck, if he made her happy—no. Marissa said it was a lie.
“You okay?” Nate asked.
I glanced to him, and I knew he was my best friend again. He was there, he was waiting for what I was going to do, and he would have my back. It was the old Nate looking back at me, the same one that let me tear shit up at his own parents’ party years ago.
Think, Mason. Stop. Fucking think about this. I forced myself to calm down and looked at everything that had happened. Marissa was hit. Park had done that. And Nate, he was back. No, I needed to make sure.
“I’m going after them.” I waited, studying his reaction.
He didn’t even blink. “I’m going with you.”
“Good.” I still wasn’t sure, but my gut was telling me he was speaking the truth. He really was back, but hell, the image of Logan and Sam so close together had thrown me off balance. I needed to regroup and center. I nodded. “Go to the house. Pack your stuff and get out of there. Call me afterwards.”
“Okay.” He started to leave, but remembered who was out there and turned back. “You want me to go out there? Or…” He gestured out the door.
I knew what he was asking, and I moved ahead. “Let me go first. I’m going to have Logan go and get a hotel room, and I’ll bring Sam later, after she’s done talking to Marissa.”
“Okay.” He stepped back. “Wait. Marissa?”