Secrets We Keep (Thistle Cove 1)

“I think that it’s possible that Rose didn’t run away and she didn’t jump.”

“Then what?” Finn asks, speaking to me directly for the first time.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Maybe she was pushed.”

“What?” Ozzy asks. “Why?”

I don’t tell them what she said to me that night at the pool. The way she looked at me. “Because Rose was the kind of person all the other girls wanted to be, and all the boys wanted to possess. She was also the kind of person that could never be owned.”

“What are you talking about, Kenley?” Finn asks, his face turning pale.

I shrug, feeling hot, like I’ve said too much. “I don’t know. You asked what I thought and that’s it. I don’t have a reason.” Just a feeling. “Believe it or not.”

It doesn’t matter what I think, it never has, and Finn jumps up and rushes to the door.

Ozzy gives me an accusing look. I’d said that to hurt Finn. The way he’d hurt me.

And it doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would.

12

Finn

My stomach churns, and I scramble to the cottage door, pushing it open. Outside, I vomit into the bushes until the contents of my stomach are gone.

I hear footsteps on the staircase.

“I’m fine,” I say, wiping my mouth. “I think it was the weed. It’s not really my thing.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Kenley says. Fuck. Just hearing her voice makes it ten times more humiliating. Not that she’s done anything wrong. I’m the fucking asshole. “Here.”

The sound of a zipper rips through the quiet forest. I turn and see that she’s pulled a half-empty water bottle from her bag.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it from her. I wash out my mouth and spit it into the woods. When I look up again she’s holding out a tin of mints. I take a couple. “What else do you have in that magic bag, Hermione?”

That makes her laugh, and it’s nice to see a smile on her face, even if it’s brief.

“We did go through a hardcore Harry Potter phase, didn’t we?”

“Gryffindor forever.” I punch a fist halfheartedly in the air. “God, this sucks.”

“I know.”

“Rose…like I said, she’d been different lately. I was worried about her, but she started to cut me out.” I grimace. “I guess you’d know about that.”

She looks startled to hear me say it.

“Yeah, I guess I would.”

The strained tension that’s been between us for years instantly snaps back in place. I hate it, and I want to smash it, like I’ve wanted so many other times over the last three years.

“We fought sometimes,” I confess. “A few big ones lately. I did it on purpose, trying to get her so mad that maybe she’d explode and tell me what was really going on. She never did, or who knows, maybe she did, and I wasn’t listening.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but my phone buzzes loudly in my pocket. And hers must too, because she flinches at that very moment.

“Guys,” Ozzy calls from inside. “Did you get this?”

My stomach twists again as Kenley and I scramble for our phones, reading them at the same time.