The Lie (Kings of Linwood Academy 2)

Stepping into the grand foyer, I head straight for the stairs, eager to get back to the safety of my room.

Jesus. That was weird.

I’ve been so removed, so distracted by my mom’s arrest and the search for clues about Iris’s killer, that I forgot for a little while how utterly bizarre this fucking household is.

9

I spend the day on Sunday packing up my mom’s stuff into boxes, which I stack neatly against the wall in my room. Lincoln offers to help me, but I turn him down. It feels… private, in a way.

It’s not that I don’t want him to see her stuff. It’s more that I want to spend time with it by myself, to be able to stop and stare at a trinket or favorite book and get lost in a memory for a moment without feeling like I need to rush to move on. Without having someone’s gaze on me.

I try not to let my thoughts turn dark, but there’s a finality to the act of closing up each box that makes my stomach seem to invert itself. When I’ve finally got the last box stacked neatly against the wall in my room, I shut the door and pad down the hall to Linc’s bedroom.

Fuck it. His dad already knows about us anyway, and his mom may or may not know but defini

tely doesn’t care.

He opens the door a second and a half after I knock softly, tugging me into his arms like he’s been waiting, hoping I’d come to him. I hug him back, shoving away any worries about how used to this I’m getting, and how terrifying that is.

Lincoln holds me for a while, just letting me breathe, and it feels good but strange to hug him like this—in a way that’s about something entirely different than sex or the fierce attraction that bubbles between us.

Of course, not long after I have that thought, my hands start roaming over his muscled back, and I press my body harder against him as my lips find his. Following my silent urging, he tosses me down onto the bed and makes me forget for a little while that I just dismantled my mother’s life, her last semblance of normality.

Later that night, River, Dax, and Chase come over, and we all convene in the movie theatre again, going over our list. It’s getting smaller, which is a good thing.

None of us are trained detectives or anything, and our resources are limited, but the guys’ status as the unofficial kings of Linwood Academy does give us a little bit of a leg up. They’ve got enough sway over the student body that they’ve been able to tap into the gossip mill and drag information out of kids about their parents or friends of their parents.

It’s been surprisingly helpful in narrowing down who on our list might have ties to Iris.

“What if it was Trent?” Chase says suddenly, leaning back in the cushy lounge chair and staring up at the ceiling.

“What?”

I glance over at him. Linc is sitting on my other side, with River and Dax in front of us.

“Well, I mean, he is a guy. So that fits. We know he was there that night, so that fits. You saw him and Iris argue, so there’s motive right there.”

My face scrunches up, and my head starts shaking even before I formulate my answer. “His car doesn’t match. It’s not the same shape or color.”

“Maybe he swapped out cars,” he says, but his tone implies even he doesn’t think that’s likely.

I twist my hair up in a knot and rest back against the seat, staring at the same spot on the ceiling Chase is, as if that’s where we’ll find the answers. “It’s possible. But that would imply premeditation, and he was definitely surprised to see Iris show up at the club.”

Memories flit through my head of the screaming match they got into outside the strip club—although maybe match isn’t quite the right word for it when only one of them was doing most of the screaming. Iris told him she needed a real man, someone who could step up, and told him that if he wouldn’t do it, she knew someone else who would.

Chase is right about one thing. That could be motive right there. If Trent was the one who knocked her up, maybe he didn’t want to get stuck caring for a baby while he was still in high school. Maybe he didn’t want to step up like she asked.

But how the fuck could he have swapped cars so fast? Where would he have gotten the sleek, dark one that rammed into Iris?

I snap my eyes shut, tilting my head down and swallowing the bile that tries to rise up in my throat as images rush through my head.

That night still fucking haunts me.

I try not to think about it more than I have to, but the vivid details are always there, just waiting to rise to the surface anytime they’re called.

That fight outside the club? Her ultimatum to Trent? Her hurling an empty soda bottle after his car as he drove away?

Those were Iris’s last moments on this earth.