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“How do you—”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” he said. “You’re obviously uncomfortable here. You didn’t want your own room. You were going to deny their help.”
“No,” I said, meeting his hazel eyes. Such a handsome, pretty stare, but now was not the time to get lost in them. “I mean how do you know I didn’t fall?” The doctor and nurses had accepted the story, so why didn’t he? My delivery of it had gotten better after repeating it so much.
“Your whole hand is scraped, not just the front or the side.” He ran a hand through his brown hair, sticking its short lengths up. “Either way, don’t worry about it. I’m not going to tell them your hand was someplace it shouldn’t be, and I’m taking care of the bill. It’s the least I can do, considering you saved my brother’s life.”
I was almost too lost in my own mind—because how could I have saved his life when this was all my fault to begin with—but I heard it. I heard the fact that he was paying for this, and I instantly grew annoyed. “I didn’t ask you to pay for any of this,” I told him, frowning.
“I know.”
“So don’t do it.”
“There’s no taking it back.”
“I don’t want you to pay for me,” I said. I would’ve crossed my arms, but I wasn’t sure how that would work with the splint. Plus, I still had my IV in.
He looked at me then, a small smile forming on his face. The two dimples in his stubbly cheeks made my stomach do a little flip. “I can tell,” he said. “And I don’t blame you. I hate using my family’s money, too. I’m William, by the way. William Briggs, but you can just call me Will.”
William Briggs. Sounded like a rich guy’s name.
“Ash,” I said, offering no last name and no full name. Ash was enough. “How’s Declan doing?”
“He’s a little better. They stitched him up and are giving him a blood transfusion since he lost so much.” Will’s gaze fell to the tiled floor. “They said if you hadn’t found him when you did, he would’ve died. They’ve also put him on a suicide watch. He’s going to be in the hospital for a while, at least until I can grease some wheels. I’m just hoping I can do it before our dad learns of this.”
Hiding something like this from Dean Briggs didn’t seem like a good idea. “Why don’t you want him to know?”
“Because he’ll believe the same thing the nurses and doctors do,” Will spoke, glancing at me. Behind those hazel eyes, I detected something sinewy, something new, something I knew deep down, too. “Declan didn’t try to kill himself.”
I thought about asking him why he thought that, but I knew better. If I readily agreed with him, he’d ask me why I suspected differently. After all, I was only his roommate for the last month and a half. What did I know about him? Will was his brother, someone who’d grown up with him. Will knew Declan inside and out, probably.
Instead I asked, “Why do you think that?”
“Declan called me, said he wasn’t feeling right. He said he couldn’t get ahold of his roommate all day and he was worried about you.” Will studied me in a new light. “I had no idea his roommate was a girl until you told the emergency responders you were his roommate.”
I didn’t know why me being a girl meant anything. “Did he mean he was feeling sick, or sad, or…” There were a lot of things Declan could’ve meant by not feeling right.
“I don’t know,” Will said. “I didn’t get a chance to ask him. The next thing I know, it sounded like he passed out or the phone dropped. I lost the call, and every time I called back, he wouldn’t pick up. So I dropped everything and drove to Hillcrest, even though I swore to my dad I’d never step foot on the campus.”
“You go to college somewhere else?” I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t care, but I found myself curious about this older Declan. He was more serious, and yet he seemed just as lovable as Declan was. And from what it sounded like, he didn’t like to lean on his family’s money, which was appealing. Rich boys just didn’t do it for me…although, based on recent behavior of mine, you’d never know it.
Will let out a chuckle. It was not one merriment; it was one of resigned sadness, a deeply held regret. “Yes, but I knew I should’ve transferred this year. To keep watch over him. I know everyone else treats him like a pariah, but I never imagined this would happen.”
A pit settled in my gut. Was he saying he believed someone else hurt Declan? It took every ounce of self-restraint in me not to leap onto his bandwagon, even though I believed it, too. Then he’d ask who I thought could do it, who would do it, and I’d have to lie.
Despite how I’d been acting and what I’d been doing, I really wanted to stop lying.
“You think someone else hurt him?” I asked slowly, careful to sound suspicious and not like I believed him. “Who could do that?” My voice shook a little, and I sounded exactly how a girl caught up in a situation like this should sound: in over my head, anxious, nervous to the extreme. I sounded normal and not at all how I’d sounded when Travis had chained me up in his room.
“People with money are the worst of the worst. The freaks of the freaks. Their money only helps hide it. It’s why I refused to go to Hillcrest.” Will’s shoulders—which I noticed were wider than Declan’s, more filled-out and muscular—rose and fell once. “You’d be surprised at what people are capable of. The rich like to think they’re different, but they’re not.”
He spoke the truth, remarkably blunt for one of said rich people. Even if he didn’t like to use his family’s money, he still came from it. He was still born to it.
“Everyone thinks Declan had something to do with Sabrina’s suicide,” Will spoke, shaking his head. “What better way to get back at him than make it look like he tried to commit suicide, too?”
I nodded, my hair falling in my face. The pink lengths were looking a bit pale. It was almost time for a touch-up. A stupid thing to think about while in the hospital with a splinted thumb.
“I’m surprised my dad let you room with Declan,” Will spoke, his hazel stare studying me in a more intense way than it was before. Almost like he was seeing me for the first time—I was a girl, and not just that, but a pretty girl, too. “You look like her, kind of. I’m assuming by now you know all about what happened with Sabrina?”
