Who Falls Hardest (Clearwater University)

A car door slams, pulling my attention away from him, and a second later, I catch sight of Claire Cooper walking toward us from the other side of the parking lot.

“Mom,” Trent murmurs under his voice. He sounds slightly pained, but not surprised, just like I’m not all that surprised to see my father.

Claire’s gaze catches on my dad, and her footsteps stutter slightly. He hesitates when he sees her too, and something I can’t quite read passes over his face. Then they both turn to face the four of us.

“Are you all right?” Dad asks, walking up the stairs to meet us halfway as we begin to descend the front steps of the building.

“Yeah.” I nod, trying to force my expression into a smile. “It’s okay. We’re getting it sorted out.”

“This Leslie—she’s your roommate at Clearwater? Or, was your roommate?”

Dad shakes his head as he speaks, his brows pulling together. He sounds like he’s having about as much trouble believing it as I did at first. When I first met her, Leslie seemed chipper and vivacious. A little quirky, maybe, but definitely not sociopathic. Then again, I guess that’s what makes her such a sociopath.

“Yeah. Her.” I shrug.

“Why is she doing this? What happened between you two? I thought you were friends.”

It’s a more loaded question than he realizes, and my stomach seems to turn in on itself at the thought.

There’s so much our parents don’t know.

A muscle in Trent’s jaw twitches, and he squares his shoulders. He glances at me, his blue eyes burning, then turns to my father.

“Sir, we—”

Oh God. He’s going to tell him. Everything.

And when he does, my dad is going to hate him. My dad will be angry at me for a while for keeping secrets from him, but I don’t think he’ll ever forgive the Icons for what they did to me in high school.

I’m not ready for that to happen, I suddenly realize. I’m not ready for the fragile truce the men and I have developed to be broken by hatred from an outside observer. So much has changed since high school, and even since last semester, but my dad wouldn’t understand that now. He would experience only the fresh anger of learning that these three men who were once my friends had turned on me and tormented me.

“Leslie sabotaged one of my class projects last semester,” I say quickly, stepping forward and putting myself between Trent and my dad on the stairs. “When I found out about it and confronted her, she reacted badly. She went after me, and when the guys stood up for me, she went after them too.”

Dad looks horrified that anyone could be so awful. He reaches out to give my shoulder a squeeze, then extends his hand toward Trent. “Thank you for trying to take care of my little girl. I’m sorry you got mixed up in all of this too. Were the police able to help?”

The look on Trent’s face make my chest ache. He looks like he hates himself in this moment, as if being the object of my father’s gratitude is physically painful for him. As if he knows he doesn’t deserve it.

He dips his chin once but doesn’t say anything in response.

“Um, not very much. They said they’ll look into Leslie’s whereabouts and see if they can link any of this to her,” I say, picking up the thread of the conversation to cover for Trent’s silence. “We’ll figure something out though.”

“Can we do anything to help?” Trent’s mom asks as we head down the stairs and into the parking lot.

She shoots another strange look at my dad, and it suddenly occurs to me that they didn’t come here together. They didn’t even seem to know the other would be here.

Are they not together? Have things gone south between them? Dad seemed so in love with her that it’s hard to imagine that happening. But the truth is, I haven’t been in very good touch with him recently. Maybe something happened and I just don’t know about it.

“Yes. Do you need anything, Ems?” Dad reaches out and catches my elbow, tilting his head as he regards me. “Why don’t you come back home and stay with me for a while? At least until you get this whole mess sorted out?”

I feel all three of the Icons stiffen around me, and even without looking at them, I can feel them hanging on my answer, waiting to see what I’ll say.

My dad is probably trying to make amends for his earlier refusal to let me stay with him after I got kicked out of Clearwater. Now that he knows there were other circumstances, maybe he doesn’t see me as a giant fuckup who blew her chance to rebuild her life.

I should probably say yes. Staying with the guys at their house is a bad idea for several reasons—and the fact that I just referred to it as “home” makes it an even worse idea.

It would be smarter to get some distance from the three of them. To step back and clear my head.