Mara took the frame, her arm shaking slightly before she even turned it over. Maybe a part of her knew what she would see. Or maybe it was just a reaction to Avery’s sadistic smile or the sound of Trent ramming his shoulder against the door again. But when she turned the picture over, only a small gasp escaped.
“Now you see,” Avery spat. “You’re not the love of Trent’s life. She is.”
Mara clutched at the wooden frame until her fingers turned white. In the picture a much younger Trent grinned back at the camera, a look of carefree joy on his face. The girl in the picture had her arms wrapped around him and a beautiful open smile on her face.
Even her smile looked identical to Mara’s own.
“She looks like me,” Mara whispered. “This isn’t possible. We met at college. It was totally random.”
It seemed so long ago now, that first day on campus when they’d met. Matt didn’t even know that she’d met Trent on campus before she’d seen him in Matt’s room. They’d bumped into each other in the registrar’s office. She’d been there clearing up an error on her class schedule. He’d seemed so interested in her and she’d been flattered.
All the emotions she’d expected to feel when she first saw the picture suddenly slammed into her like a tsunami. A soft sob escaped before she could hold it back.
What she’d assumed was interest must have been shock. The way he’d stared at her … Then he’d shown up in Matt’s room as his new roommate. Their friendship had been a foregone conclusion at that point.
But had he really been interested in her or was she just a stand-in for the girl he’d lost?
Chapter Seventeen
TRENT SLID TO the ground on the floor outside the closet. As soon as he’d heard Mara’s broken cry, all the fight had drained from his body. His shoulder ached from where he’d been ramming it into the door but he didn’t even care. The pain was just one of many at this point and the majority weren’t even physical.
How had things gotten to this point? He stared blankly into the room. When he’d seen Mara in her evening gown it had signaled a turning point in his mind. She’d embraced his world with warmth and a willing enthusiasm to adapt. Galas and socializing weren’t important to him and he could have gladly continued to ignore all those things but they were important to his parents. His sister. His world.
Mara had seen all that before he did. She’d made the effort to be a part of things and had functioned as a bridge, pulling him from his solitude and back into the light. Watching her work the room at his sister’s side earlier that night had seemed so right. Like the kind of thing he could imagine doing for the next ten, twenty or even fifty years. For the first time, he’d been able to see a future completely unencumbered by the past and that future had been bright.
But now, the joy he’d experienced earlier was only a distant memory.
When the door finally opened, Avery stepped out. The yellow-hued light from the closet spilled out into the room and her shadow loomed on the floor. She didn’t say anything just stood next him, waiting. He could feel all the questions she wasn’t asking and the comments she wasn’t making swirling through the air between. When she knelt beside him, he turned his head away. A few minutes later, he heard the soft pads of her footsteps as she walked away.
He didn’t look at her as she left. The next time he looked up, Mara stood in the doorway.
She stepped over his legs, the small train of her gown swishing around her legs. Bracing one hand against the wall, she carefully sat next to him. Her cell phone was still clutched in her hand and a picture frame rested in her lap.
When she spoke, her voice sounded rusty. “Sophia told me that day when we went shopping that you’d had a girlfriend who died. She mentioned that she looked like me. But the way she said it, I thought she was just being bitchy. Everyone has a type. I’ve always had a thing for blond guys. I figured you have a thing for naturally tanned brunettes, no big deal.”
Trent wanted to reach out for her so badly, to just pull her into his lap and kiss the tortured look off her face. But even though she was sitting next to him, talking to him, her body language screamed stand back. He had to respect her space. Especially when he hadn’t been giving her the respect she deserved in any other aspect.
“Sophia was upset that day when she met you. We argued over lunch
. I made her promise that she wouldn’t say a word about Tia. That was something I needed to tell you myself. Then when you came home and asked about her, it was an opportunity. I’ve never told anyone exactly what happened before.” He chanced a glance over at her. She was watching him with the kind of care you give a person who could go off the deep end at any minute.
“No one? What about your parents? The police?”
He shook his head. “My family’s lawyer told me to answer the questions posed to me and offer nothing additional. I told them the facts. Tia and I had gone on a date and then I’d taken her home. I had to tell them that we were intimate, which was humiliating enough, but no one knew what we argued about. It wasn’t just myself that I was protecting.”
“James. You were protecting your brother.” She let out a soft sigh.
“If they’d known that she was heartbroken over James, it would have just thrown fire on the rumor mill and for what? It wasn’t going to bring her back. It didn’t matter.”
“But it does matter. All of this matters. Because it’s still affecting you now. It’s affecting you, your brother and Avery. I think that’s why Sophia told me. She wasn’t just trying to be mean; she was trying to protect both of us. Because this,” she held up the picture frame. “You have to see how incredibly disturbing this is.”
“I was going to tell you tonight. That’s why I wanted to come straight home. I knew that it was just a matter of time before someone said something to you. Or until another picture surfaced. I just needed to make you understand first.”
Mara closed her eyes. “This whole time, I’ve been trying to understand. Even after you told me about Tia, there was this distance between us that I could never cross. And I knew that she was at the heart of it. Her death was a defining moment in your life.”
Her hand shook as she picked up the picture frame again. She stared down at the image. Trent knew exactly which one it was, too. The one he’d stared at for so long that day.
“And I kept wondering, what’s the big deal about Tia? He already told me how she died so what else is there? We looked something alike but if it was just a coincidence, then why would you go to such lengths to hide it?” Tears slid down her cheeks as she looked at him directly for the first time. “But it wasn’t just coincidence, was it?”