Secrets We Keep (Thistle Cove 1)

“Thank you,” I reply, stepping back in the hall. I lean my back against the glass trophy case and close my eyes. The last time I saw Rose comes to mind. She’d been upset, angry, but not specifically at me. She’d been like that more and more lately when we were alone, moody and upset. Restless. We hadn’t had sex in months. She barely let me touch her anymore.

I didn’t say any of that to the police. It’s none of their goddamned business.

“Hey, Holloway.”

I open my eyes and see Ezra.

“You look like shit.”

“Not today.”

“You want to get out of here?” He raises an eyebrow.

I’m not into drugs or whatever it is that Ezra’s selling, but I do need to get the fuck out of this place.

“Yeah,” I say, pushing off the trophy case. “But I’ve got to lay low. The last thing I need is the police following me around.”

“The police?”

“Yeah, they came by this morning asking a bunch of questions about Rose.”

He nods thoughtfully. Ezra’s encounters with the cops are well known around The Cove. The fact he’s not in military school or some kind of lock-up is only because his father is a lawyer. I’d said as much to Rose last spring when he got busted dealing down at the marina. It’d seemed like the one that would send him away for good. It didn’t.

That’s how good Ezra Baxter, Sr., is in front of a judge.

“Can you help me avoid them?” I ask him.

“Yeah, I think I can.”

I hesitate, just for a second, wondering how the kid I’d grown up wi

th playing Pop Warner turned into the town dealer. Yesterday, I would have said no to going off with him. It wasn’t worth the risk. But today? I start walking toward the door, everything is different and having a guy that knows how to cling to the edges? That’s just what I need.

8

Kenley

I have regrets about coming to school before I even get to my locker. The whole school is caught up in Rose’s disappearance. Juliette is surrounded by cheerleaders, all of their faces red and splotchy. Teachers whisper to one another, deep lines of concern slashed through their foreheads.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alice says with a dramatic eye roll. “Half of these people didn’t even know her. Obviously, it makes sense that they’d be the ones crying; they have no idea what a conniving bitch she really is.”

“Alice!” I say, looking around to see if anyone heard her. “Really?”

“Sorry, Kenley, but count me out of the people thinking this is a big deal. I’m in the camp that her car broke down, and she hopped in an Uber for the airport.”

Alice is talking about the rumors that started swirling immediately. There were a lot of them. That’s the curse of social media and too many true crime documentaries. Did Rose run away? Maybe with a secret boyfriend. She’d always said she wanted to move to New York. On and on and on…

But there was one other one. A scary one.

That she jumped.

“Then again,” Alice adds, scanning the new posts on social media, “I can totally see her finally getting sick of living with her traitorous self and jumping off the bridge to put an end to her guilt.”

“Alice!”

I slam my locker shut.

She looks at me innocently. “What?”