In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

Chapter 37

Now

I let myself remember. Let my shadow self flood me, the subterranean Jessica Miller who wanted so much, and especially the wrong things. It had been her in my dorm room, ten years ago, cutting up the pictures, swallowing the pills. Her breaking into the Student Affairs office, determined to steal back the fellowship. It had been her running to Coop, bloody and desperate, only to push him away the next day. It had been her, and so it had been me.

“What?” Coop studied my face. “You don’t remember?”

“Actually…” I shook my head, catching a glimpse of the floats out the window, the crowd growing close now. “I do. The first crime… It was me.”

Coop nodded. “You and me against the world that night.”

I had hated Heather. I’d hated her so much I’d tried to take away her fellowship, her future, the opportunity she’d carefully plotted and earned. That must be the wicked, unforgivable thing I’d done that had haunted me for a decade. That was how I’d gotten bloody, covered in cuts—escaping through the office window. Not stabbing Heather seventeen times.

I didn’t kill her.The sheer relief of it hollowed me until I felt as light as air. I almost couldn’t process the thought. I’d believed so deeply, and now it didn’t feel right to redeem myself.

I looked at Coop, and everything I felt must have been written on my face, because his eyes softened. “You didn’t hurt her, Jess. I know you. You’re not a murderer.”

He was standing so close, his lips, his eyes, the dark shock of hair, all within reach. There was suddenly only one thing I wanted, and it was the same thing I’d wanted for ten years, fourteen probably, ever since Caro pointed to him across the quad that first day and he lifted his head and looked at me.

But he loved Caro now. I’d lost my chance.

Coop brushed his hand down my arm, his fingers warm against the chill air from outside the window. His eyes were flecked with color, the patterns like twin constellations. Years ago, Coop had been a boy who’d loved me, who’d always been honest, who’d never wanted anyone else. Now he was a man who kept showing up.

A recklessness seized me. What if I was honest, this time without the alcohol? What if I betrayed Caro, became a different kind of villain… Could I have him? Was there a sliver of a chance?

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with crisp fall air. “I have to tell you something.”

The floor trembled. The sound of approaching footsteps, pounding up the stairs like thunder. Coop pulled away quickly, putting distance between us. I had only a moment to blink at the empty air before Courtney staggered into the room, her eyes lit with victory.

“Murderer!” she shrieked, pointing at me.

Oh god.

The rest of my friends streamed in behind Courtney, sweaty and winded from the spiral staircase, their faces tight with apprehension. All of them were here—Mint, Caro, Eric, even Frankie, still in his grand marshal cape. I took an involuntary step back. It was a tribunal.

“It’s not true,” Coop insisted. “She didn’t do it.”

Caro stalked forward, kicking over a stack of old newspapers, as angry as I’d ever seen her. “Coop, what are you doing here?”

“How’d you even know where to find me?” he asked.

This time, Caro didn’t look ashamed. “I used to follow you here sometimes. I knew this was your place.”

Mint stepped up behind Caro, brushing his hair, dark with sweat, off his forehead. His eyes were the exact shade of the sky outside—except hard and cold as flint. “You both owe us answers.”

Mint’s eyes—they were his tell. He was measured on the outside, but inside, I knew he was simmering with anger.

Eric wound around Frankie and Mint, stopping next to Caro. He said nothing, but he looked hungry.

I glanced helplessly at Coop, who turned to the shattered remains of the diploma frame laying on the floor. I knew instantly what he was after. Evidence. But I’d cast it out the window.

Coop squared his shoulders anyway. “I was the one who broke into the professor’s house ten years ago and trashed it.”

“What?” Caro gasped. “Why?”

Coop glanced at me. He wouldn’t say a word without my permission. He’d stay forever in this purgatory if I asked him.

But I wouldn’t.

“Coop did it,” I said, steeling my shoulders, “because the night Heather died, I told him Dr. Garvey made me sleep with him in exchange for a recommendation letter. I applied for the fellowship like Heather, and I wanted it more than anything. But I lost, and Heather won. Dr. Garvey wrote her a letter fair and square, but for me, he…” My voice trailed off. Ten years later, I still couldn’t bring myself to say the word Coop had written across every room of Dr. Garvey’s house.

No matter—the unspoken message exploded like a bomb.

Caro gasped, hands flying to her mouth.

“I’ll kill him,” Frankie said. “I’ll fly straight to DC and kill him right now.”

Courtney’s outstretched finger, which was still pointed at me, drooped a little as she glanced around, unsure.

But Mint.

His eyes were locked on me, so sharp they cut. His face was turning red—bright, painful crimson staining his skin, creeping up his neck. He looked angry, or…humiliated.

I searched his face. He was ashamed of me. Just like I’d feared.

“When Jess told me,” Coop said, oblivious to Mint, “I was furious. I broke into Garvey’s house and hurt him the only way I could think of.” He looked at Caro. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I don’t regret it.”

Eric crossed his arms, the movement drawing my eyes. He wasn’t surprised. There was something else in his face—was it a flicker of pity?

“After the break-in,” he said slowly, “with that word written all over his house, Duquette administration opened an investigation into Professor Garvey’s behavior. One of his TAs—it was a Phi Delt, actually, your year—came forward and said he’d witnessed the professor having inappropriate relationships with roughly half a dozen female students. He was asked to leave, but he got the university to seal the record and stay quiet. And then he skulked off to the White House.”

Half a dozen girls? My chest ached.

“I always wondered”—Eric’s voice caught, but he pushed forward—“whether Heather was one of the girls. If that’s how, with the letter…”

Did I tell him what I suspected? Tell him she’d lied to me about one thing, unwilling to admit the lengths to which she’d gone to get the fellowship, and so she might have lied about this, too? That the truth had died with her, and he would just have to live with the uncertainty?

I looked at Eric. His jaw tensed, waiting for my answer.

“She wasn’t one of the girls,” I lied. “I promise. He didn’t touch her.”

He nodded, and there it was—a flicker of gratitude.

“You said Garvey’s TA was a Phi Delt?” Frankie scratched his head. “I wonder who. Asshole should’ve said something way before it got to half a dozen girls.”

Eric’s voice turned bitter. “Yeah, well, you Phi Delts weren’t exactly known for your upstanding behavior, were you?”

A Phi Delt had known about Dr. Garvey. Something about that didn’t feel right. There was a connection I couldn’t quite grasp.

“You know what I don’t understand?” Mint’s eyes were cold, but his voice—his voice was low and taut, so intense it surprised me.

Fear bloomed in my chest, dampening my palms.

“Why did you go to Coop? I was your boyfriend. If Garvey…took advantage of you…why didn’t you come to me?”

Coop and I looked at each other. I could sense the storm in him. What would we say? It was the only secret left, and it was too big, too destructive, to ever speak out loud.

The silence stretched.

“Jess,” said Caro finally, her voice shaky. “Answer Mint’s question.”

I caught her eyes. Dark and beautiful, soft with pain. Caro, my best friend. Caro, who didn’t deserve this.

But I needed to do something I should have done years ago. It was much, much too late, I knew that—but for once, I was going to make the radical choice.

I took a deep breath. “Because I was in love with Coop. And I still am.”