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Two words. Two words were all it took from Travis to make me want to strangle him. He always had a knack for it, saying exactly what would rile me up. He could read people well, even though he wore a bored expression most of the time. In reality, you never knew what was going on inside Travis’s head. Too bad I’d learned that lesson too late.
I knew without asking whose diary he meant, but what I really wanted to know, what I was dying to know, was how the hell he knew about it. “How did you know?” My hands clenched to fists at my sides, and my arms trembled. I wasn’t one to get into fights, but right here and now? I really, really wanted to.
“Ash has been unpredictable in every way,” Travis said, sighing. The way he spoke of her…it sounded like he cared for her as much as I did, which was ridiculous. Travis, in the end, cared for no one but himself. “Where most people would hide the journal, fearing the repercussions of having it, I figured she’d show you eventually. She found the diary in my room.” As if that proclamation wasn’t enough, he added, “I had it.”
“You had it?” I echoed. At the rate this day was going, I was lucky I still stood on my feet, the way it kept trying to knock me down. “How?” Or maybe I should’ve asked why. Why did you have it, Travis? Were you keeping it as a trophy, to remind you of your kill? Standing there, glaring at him, I couldn’t help but rehash all of my old feelings for him.
We were friends, so very long ago, and now we were strangers, united by one thing: our yearning, our craving of Ash.
“Unlike you, I wasn’t forbidden from stepping foot in the Salvatore’s house. After it happened, I found it in her room.” Travis shrugged, as if the explanation was so simple, so easy. Like he didn’t just paint red on his hands. “I missed her, Declan, just like you did.”
“Seems a little fishy to me,” I said, refusing to back down. I might’ve been a pushover before, but no more. “You having Sabrina’s journal, the same one where she wrote that she was afraid of you. Why did you keep it after all this time? You have to know how guilty it makes you look.” He had to; Travis was smarter than that.
Travis posed a question I wished he wouldn’t: “If you had something of hers, could you get rid of it?”
I stood there, mouth open, ready to retort, but nothing came out. He was right. The bastard was right. If I was fortunate enough to have anything of Sabrina’s, I knew for a fact I’d still have it tucked away safely, even after all this time.
A first love never died.
“It just seems odd you’d choose to take something that painted you in a bad light,” I said. “A suspect.”
He was unimpressed with my hedging, and he asked point-blank, “Are you insinuating that I killed her and took the evidence that would lead the police to question me?” When I only stared, he went on, “Smart, but no. I did not kill Sabrina—which is exactly what I told Ash when she asked the same thing.”
Ash had suspected him and never told me? She’d suspected him and spent so much time with him still? What the… I didn’t know what to think of that knowledge. Ash had been hiding things from me, evidently. I didn’t know why, but it hurt. I didn’t want her to lie to me.
I’m a liar, Declan. She’d told me those words, once. When she’d said them, I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe her even after she handed me the journal and refused to tell me where she got it from. Now…now I was really starting to wonder.
What else was she hiding from me? What other things did she not want me to know?
“And how do I know you’re telling the truth?” I questioned, not wanting to fall for his games. Travis was the kind of person who could manipulate you and make you believe you were doing everything out of your own free will. He wasn’t your normal wealthy HU student.
“I suppose you don’t,” Travis spoke simply, blue eyes bored. “You either believe me, or you don’t. I have no reason to lie to you about this, not now.” He turned his head, glancing at the doors we’d come out of. “Not when Ash is…upset like this.”
“Upset?” I echoed. I knew something was wrong, but she didn’t look too upset. Mainly annoyed, aggravated. Not angry or raging.
“Something’s clearly off about her,” Travis said, confidence oozing out. He thought he knew her so well…hell, maybe he did. “And I don’t just mean the hit and run. She’s freaked out.” I could tell just by the way his blue eyes drifted to the side that he lost himself for a moment.
His words, despite me not wanting to believe them, rang true, because I was currently thinking back to Ash and how she’d acted, too. The things she’d said were downright mean, and they came completely out of the blue. If something was bugging her, if something was freaking her out and making her act like this, why couldn’t she just come out and say what it was? The truth always worked better.
I’d had enough of lies for the rest of my life.
Travis didn’t stop there with his theorizing. “What if it wasn’t just a hit and run? What if someone hit her on purpose and left her there to die? If Ash suspects who did it, then…” A helpless shrug.
It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered whether Ash’s accident was truly accidental, but hearing Travis mention it made me contemplate the entire thing differently. If someone was out for Ash, not because she was close to me, but for another reason altogether? Travis obviously didn’t do it, and he was honestly the only one I’d suspected.
What the hell could I do, especially if she didn’t talk to me about it?
“You think someone tried to kill her,” I spoke it not as a question but a statement, and by God, getting those words out took a lot out of me. I didn’t want to say them, fearing in my gut he was right, that I was right. “Do you think Sawyer had anything to do with this? He has the whole student body rallied against me.” I didn’t think Sawyer was capable of doing something like that, but maybe I was wrong. It could be that I underestimated him. He could pay anyone to do anything, and they’d gladly do it, seeing nothing but green.
“No, Sawyer’s…” Travis shook his head. “He’s too far gone. One of his downward spirals. And last night, he was preoccupied.”
Sawyer spiraling didn’t surprise me. It happened a lot, although I hadn’t heard a word about him this last year, save for the shit he put me through. “You know for a fact he was with someone else?”
Nodding once, Travis said, “He was with Ash.”
A slap in the face. That’s how I felt, after hearing that. Ash was with Sawyer last night?
“You didn’t know,” Travis said, studying me with a renewed interest. “She didn’t tell you.”
