Page 18 of Open Water

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He turned and walked toward his car. His footsteps on the gravel getting quieter.

I stood in the parking lot.

That's beneath me.

He was right. Braden was a lot of things — aggressive, bitter, relentless — but he wasn't sneaky. He came at you head-on and didn't apologize for the damage. Kind of like Liam.

The person texting me was different. Patient and calculated. Someone who understood the architecture of my life well enough to know which buttons to push and when.

I didn't have proof. But I had a shape. And the shape was starting to look like someone I'd known since I was eight years old.

I crossed the parking lot. Headed for the bridge. The cold wind cut through my warm-ups.

Halfway across, my phone buzzed.

Liam

I saw you talking to Braden. What happened?

I stopped walking on the bridge. The river underneath me. Both campuses visible — Riverside on the left, Kingswell on the right.

Alex

Yeah. I'll tell you later. It's not him.

Liam

How do you know?

I thought about Braden's face. The anger that was too real to be performed. The exhaustion underneath it. The father on the phone every Sunday. Three accusations for shit he hadn't done.

Alex

Because I recognized him.

Liam

what?

Alex

I know who it is. And I really wish I didn't. We need to talk.

Liam

Who? Tell me.

Alex

You're not going to like it. Let's meet later. My dorm.

Chapter 5: Liam

Alex's dorm room smelled like the expensive soap he used.

I'd crossed the footbridge at nine. Noah hadn't asked where I was going. He just looked up from his textbook, saw me grabbing my jacket, and said "tell Alex I said hi." It made me smirk and heat rise in my body, it felt almost normal. The walk across the bridge had been fast. Not because of the cold but because I needed to know. All day my mind kept circling back to Alex's text.

Whatever he'd found out, it was bad enough to make Alex Harrington send something that raw over text.

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