The small device falls from my hands, and I don’t know if it hits the ground. I don’t know if it cracks, don’t know if it breaks. And I don’t care.
My gaze tracks slowly up to meet Lincoln’s. His face is impassive, his eyes carefully blank.
“You…” I choke out. My lips feel numb, my throat tight. “You… How—could you?”
He doesn’t respond, and movement behind me pulls my attention away. The officers have opened the back door of one of the police cars and are putting my mom inside, one of them placing a hand on her head to make her duck.
My heart cracks; the blood it was pumping turns to poison.
I didn’t even get to hug her. Didn’t get to say anything to her before they took her.
The door closes with a dull thunk, and I see her pale, wan face staring back at me through the window. Tears cascade down my cheeks, blurring my vision as Detective Dunagan joins the other officer in the second car. Their lights flash, but no sirens wail as they pull around the circle drive and head back toward the main entrance.
They took her.
They just fucking took her.
They think she murdered Iris.
And the one piece of evidence I might’ve used to convince them otherwise is gone.
I stare at the place where the tail lights of the cop cars disappeared from view for what feels like hours. Then, slowly, I turn around.
My gaze catches on Mr. Black first. He looks shocked and angry, but pity rises in his face when he looks at me. He probably thinks I’m crazy—emotionally unbalanced. That I made all this stuff up just to try to save my mom. That I’d say anything, spout any lies I could think of, to stop them from arresting her.
Audrey is nowhere to be found. She must still be inside entertaining the guests, trying to downplay what happened. For the people inside the house, the party is still going on.
How is that possible when the whole world just came crashing down?
Reluctantly, almost against my will, I find the four boys standing in a group near the base of the stairs. They all wear slightly different expressions, but there’s one thing I see on each and every one of their faces.
Resolve.
What they just did wasn’t an accident. They knew what refusing to back me up and deleting those photos would mean. They didn’t even try to help.
For weeks, I went along with their secrets and their plans. I listened to them and trusted them when they said it was the only way. I honestly believed they had good intentions, that they were trying to handle a horrible, fucked up situation the best way they could.
I believed they cared about me.
But they don’t. They can’t, or they wouldn’t have abandoned me like this, let me dive off this cliff by myself. They wouldn’t have let me lose my mom, the person who sacrificed everything so I could live. The person who’s been my rock, my best friend, my everything.
The world is quiet. Or maybe it’s horribly loud and I just can’t hear any of it. Everything seems muffled as I stand across from the kings of Linwood, me on one side of an invisible line and them on the other.
They stare right back at me, their beautiful faces unreadable.
My tormentors.
My protectors.
My betrayers.
The Lie
1
My favorite color has always been blue.
I never had a least favorite before.
But I do now.
Orange.
I fucking hate it.
My mom smiles at me from behind the glass partition that separates us, and the sight of it twists my stomach into knots. She’s only been in here for four days, but when your mom’s been arrested for a murder she didn’t commit, four days feels like a goddamn lifetime.
“Harlow, sweetheart, it’s going to be all right,” she promises for the millionth time, and I do my best to smile back at her, even though it hurts my face.
I don’t see how that’s true, but I can’t stand that my mom, the one locked behind bars, is the one trying to comfort me. I should be protecting her, comforting her—hell, I shouldn’t have let Detective Dunagan and those other cops haul her away in the first place.
That thought makes my stomach clench so hard I think I might throw up, so I push it away, attempting to slow my heart rate by sheer force of will.
“Are you okay? Are you sure you’re doing all right?” I scoot to the edge of my chair, getting as close to the glass divider as possible. “I can’t believe they won’t even let you out on bail. This is fucking bullshit. You didn’t do anything.”
“Low.”
Mom shoots me a disapproving look, shaking her head slightly. Normally, she doesn’t really care about my tendency to curse like a sailor. She had me when she was nineteen and raised me on her own, so we’ve always been as much like sisters as mother and daughter. I heard those words from her lips plenty of times growing up.
But when her gaze leaves me, it darts to the guard standing near the door, looking bored out of his mind—and I know it’s not the swearing she minds so much as where I’m doing it. She doesn’t want me to say something to rile up the guard or get myself in trouble.
And that’s what tells me, more than anything else, that she’s scared.
She may be trying to put on a brave face for me, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s caught in a system now that won’t let her go until she proves her innocence.
And whoever put her here, whoever called in the anonymous tip to Detective Dunagan and his buddies, did everything they could to make sure that never happens.
I’m losing my battle to keep my emotions under control—again.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth hurt, and I blink back the tears that make my eyes
