Chapter 23

Rhett rakes his fingers through his hair, messing it up. “What’s to say it’s not Ruthie who snuck in and stole that badge? I knew there was something going on with her. She’s been more obsessed with you than usual, muttering cryptic messages about canceling you or some shit.”

“I want to believe it’s Ruthie so bad, but it doesn’t make sense for her to take it or to know that Luce’s is missing.”

He nods. “We need to find out what’s going on.”

I wipe my eyes. “You shouldn’t get involved. This isn’t your problem. In fact, you should stay as far away from me as you can. If or when this gets out, being near me could ruin things for you too.”

He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I’m in, Marley.”

“You’re insane.”

“Probably.”

“Why?” I whisper.

“You know why.”

I shake my head. “Rhett…” Before I can argue my point and get him the hell away, he takes a final step toward me, and his lips meet mine.

I should push him away. This is Rhett after all, but instead I pull him closer.

What the hell are you doing?

His hand tangles in my hair, and it’s enough to wake me up from my nightmare.

“Bad idea,” I say, ending the kiss far later than I should.

He drops his hands to his sides. “Not from where I’m standing.”

“You just found out that I covered up a murder, Rhett!”

“I like you. A lot. Never said it was rational.”

I so can’t deal with this right now. “What am I going to do?”

“I’m assuming you mean about your friends and the douche. First, we need to figure out what they’re doing…and steal that badge back from whichever one of them has it.”

“My guess would be Atlas.”

He smiles. “I’m really going to enjoy rooting through his room.”

“You’re not going to do anything. He’s half ghosting me, but we’re technically still together, so I can show up at his place.”

Rhett’s eyes don’t leave mine. I can tell what he’s thinking. I just let him kiss me when Atlas and I haven’t broken up. “Wow.”

“Okay, there’s no time for any love-triangle, teen-drama bullshit. This isn’t Riverdale.”

“Moving on,” he says, smirking. “All right, you snoop in his room. Wouldn’t he give the pin to Luce, though? They’re planning on pretending that it’s hers, right?”

“I’ll be looking there too, but you’re probably right. He’d want to get it to her as soon as he could. If that’s what they’re doing. Still could be Ruthie.”

Please be Ruthie.

He groans. “Fine, I’ll search her room, look for a little book badge or a phone.”

How the hell did I get here? Where the only person I trust is Rhett Wilder.

“If you’d have told me two weeks ago that I’d be relying on you, I would’ve laughed in your face.”

“You’re welcome,” he says dryly.

“Sorry, that was bitchy.”

“Are you good now?”

“Not even a little bit. I still want to confess, Rhett, but I don’t want them to get away without taking responsibly too. I’m doing this so they won’t have any incriminating evidence solely against me. Don’t even try to talk me out of it. Okay?”

He salutes. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Promise me.”

“I’ve got your back, Marley, okay? Let’s go, because I want to get out of Ruthie’s before her mom comes home.”

“All right.”

We walk back to the parking lot at school, almost tripping a few times because it rained last night and turned the mossy ground into a Slip ’N Slide.

“Call me when you leave Atlas’s,” he says, opening my door for me. “And, Marley?”

“Yeah?”

“Ask him about college.”

“What?”

“Just do it, yeah? Speak soon.”

“Wait, no!” I grab his wrist and yank him back. “You can’t say that and walk away. Rhett, at the moment, you’re the only one being honest with me. I want to hear it from you before he lies. Please.”

“All right,” he says. “I saw a list of colleges seniors are attending in the fall. Atlas is going to be in Ohio, not California.”

“What?” I breathe.

“I’m sorry he’s a coward.”

“Oh my god. When was he going to tell me? I’m such an idiot.”

He’s spent the last six months planning our future, one he knew he wasn’t going to be a part of. This is why we’ve been drifting. He’s been letting us.

“You okay?”

My heart hurts, but beyond that I’m furious and petrified.

“I will be,” I say, looking at Rhett like a whole different person is standing in front of me. “Hey, thank you, Rhett.”

“Can I have that in writing?”

“Why ruin this moment?”

He laughs and raises his hand. “Sorry. Hurry up and be careful.”

“Same.”

I get in my car, and before I can reach for the handle, he closes the door. Anger simmers in my stomach at being such a fool. Why couldn’t Atlas just tell me that he wanted to study somewhere else?

How far would he have let this go?

I start the engine but wait a second, watching Rhett get into his car. He leaves first, heading in the direction of Ruthie’s house. As I drive to Atlas’s, I replay the conversation I’ve just had with Rhett over in my head.

His reaction to my friends’ behavior has only strengthened my concerns that I’m being set up. There is no other reason for my badge to be taken. Why would Ruthie bother with that? She knows what happened, so it only makes sense for her to turn us all in or blackmail us. She might hate me the most, but I can’t see her caring if my friends go down too.

I really don’t want it to be my friends, but I think at this point I have to accept that they don’t care about me. We’re not as close as I thought. Did they even have a second thought about dropping me? The way Rhett did.

It burns to have it happen again, and it’s so much worse this time.

I’m not sure how I’m going to handle Atlas yet, but I’ll figure that out once I’m there. I want him to grow up and tell me the truth.

I just hope Rhett finds evidence that Ruthie is the one messaging me.

I park in Atlas’s driveway and head to the front door. His parents probably aren’t home yet, but they park in the garage, so I can’t tell.

Atlas opens up as I’m approaching the door.

“Marley.” He looks over my shoulder down the street. What’s he looking for? Is he expecting someone, or does he just not want to be seen with me? “What’re you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” I lift a brow, my stomach tightening. “Can I come in so we can talk?”

“Yeah, in my room, my dad’s home,” he says, leading the way upstairs. He closes the door behind us and turns to me.

“Care to tell me why you’re ignoring me?” I ask, cutting to the chase because I cannot stand all the mind games. I want to open with the college thing, but that feels very final. I’m holding on to him by a thread. One I know I should cut myself.

He folds his arms and then releases them. “I’m not. Things are…difficult. I just need some space to deal with everything. You’ve needed that too.”

“You don’t seem to need space from Jesse or Luce.”

“They’re not my girlfriend. There’s no pressure there.”

What a load of crap. “Why do you feel pressure with me? Pressure to do what?”

Sighing, he sits down on his bed. “I don’t mean to be distant. I’m struggling to take care of you as well as me.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me—I’m not three. We can be there for each other. I just need you to be honest.”

He lifts his eyes to meet mine. “You’ve been falling apart, and I’ve been trying to hold you together. It got to be too much.”

Atlas has never been deceptive, or at least, I didn’t think of him that way before Arthur and the college bombshell, so I don’t know if he’s telling the truth. I don’t know if he’s involved in setting me up, or whatever they’re doing, but he was the last one in my room before I noticed the badge gone.

“Pushing me away is your way of taking care of yourself?”

“Just for a minute. I can’t help you if I’m this broken.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I ask, sitting next to him on thebed.

He smiles sadly and takes my hand in his. “Because I wasn’t ready to see the disappointment in your eyes. I didn’t want you to feel like I don’t care, and believe me, I understand that stepping back and not talking to you has done that.”

I search his face for any chink in the armor and don’t find one. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s the situation. I don’t know how to move past this.”

This sounds like a breakup speech. At least he’s finally owning his feelings. At this point I just want him to do it. I want a clean break from all of them.

“Do you want to call it quits?” I ask, hoping he’ll tell me about college. He was the one to suggest we go to colleges in the same state because he didn’t think long-distance would work.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. No. Maybe. I still love you, but this will always be between us. No matter what happens from now on. I don’t want to hurt you.”

I’m so confused. He looks and sounds like the Atlas I know, but there’s a tightening in my heart that’s stopping me from believing him. I can’t tell if it’s intuition or paranoia. Doesn’t matter, I guess. He’s leaving.

I wring my hands. “Why would staying together hurt me?”

He glances at me sideways and pops his lips. “School’s almost over. Things are going to change. Maybe, after what happened here, we both need a fresh start.”

“This is rather sudden considering you were the one who planned our semi-long-distance relationship. You worked out schedules until Christmas so we could still regularly see each other. You talked me down when I got worked up about us growing apart. ‘A six-hour drive isn’t that bad.’?”

“It’s not that I don’t want it to work. But how can we keep coming back to each other and not bring any of this with us?”

I narrow my eyes. “You’re using this as an excuse. God, Atlas, just tell me the truth. Don’t I at least deserve that much?”

He scrubs his hand over his face. “Okay…. Okay. Marley, I’m not going to California.”

There it is. The first truthful thing he’s said to me in a while.

“I’m going to Ohio State.”

I nod as pain rips through my chest. It’s so much worse hearing it from him. “Since when?”

“Since March. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“I feel like you’re using Arthur as an excuse.”

“I’m not.”

“But you’ve known for months! Why not tell me earlier? I’d understand if Ohio is where you’d rather be, but you’ve spent all this time lying to me. What was the point of all your planning if you never intended to follow through?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you. We’ve been together for years.”

“When were you going to tell me? The day I drove to your college and was told you’d never gone there?”

“No,” he sighs, running his hand over his jaw. “I’m not sure. I was trying to find the right time.”

“When you accepted your offer to Ohio, that was the right time.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Where do we go from here? Things are weird with everyone.”

I don’t want to tell him about the badge because I don’t trust him.

“They’re worried about you.”

“Jesse’s being horrible.”

“He’s scared.”

“I’m scared too.”

“You’re making things worse.”

I grit my teeth, the heartache lessening. “You don’t even want to see if we can put this behind us and move forward?” I ask, moving toward his desk. It’s littered with candy wrappers and half-empty water bottles. A photo of us in a frame sits beside his laptop. We have our arms around each other, smiling at the camera. It was only taken a few months ago, but it feels like years have passed since we looked happy like that.

In a little over a week, our relationship has fallen apart.

We deserve it, to be fair.

I run my hand over the photo and turn around, leaning on the desk.

“I can’t stop thinking about him, Marley. It’s there all the time. I thought it’d get better, that I’d figure out how to live with it, but I can’t. I’m going to leave sooner. Spend the summer near campus, get ready for college.”

“You’re leaving now,” I whisper.

“I’m so sorry,” he says for the third time.

“I guess we found that thing we couldn’t get through together,huh.”

He dips his chin, and I wonder if he’s thinking about how much he’s changed too. We were supposed to grow together. Gone is the guy who used to tell me it was us against the world.

Now it’s him against me.

“Don’t make this any harder, please.”

I ball my hands and scowl. “Are you for real? I’m not the one doing anything.”

“It’s all you talk about. I can’t keep going back and forth about the Arthur thing. I just want to forget it, and if I have any chance at doing that, I need to never talk about it again.”

The Arthur thing.

That’s what our part in ending his life has been reduced to.

“You’re blaming the Arthur thing on me, and that’s not fair. I’m so done, Atlas. I’m getting my hoodie. If you find anything else of mine, just drop it off. I’ll box your stuff up,” I tell him, opening the door behind me.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what? You’ve just told me we’re over and you’re leaving soon. How am I supposed to be?” I yank my hoodie off a hanger and spin around.

“Were you even going to tell me or just send me a text from Ohio?”

“Don’t.” He stands and makes his way toward me, stopping a few feet away. “I’m sorry. I hate this. I never wanted it to end like this…or at all. You must see that it’ll be easier this way, though, right?”

Actually, yeah. This past week hasn’t only changed him. I’ve seen Jesse’s and Luce’s true colors too. And my own.

We’ll forever be the people we’ve morphed into.

There’s no going back.

“You still could’ve done this properly. You’re making me hateyou.”

He steps back, taking a sharp breath. “Marley…”

“Let’s leave it there, Atlas, okay? No need to keep talking. We’re done and you’re going. Have a nice life.”

I storm past him and run down the stairs.

He doesn’t try to follow.