Page 78 of Everything We Found

“We both know you never believed him dead. I was protecting you! Look at what’s happening right now. Look at how I have to hide. The Hidalgos are murderers. Had you known about James when he first disappeared, you would have run off to Mexico looking for him and gotten yourself killed.”

“Stop fooling yourself. You were protecting Thomas. God, you’ve been protecting him all this time. It’s always been abouthim for you, hasn’t it? It all makes sense now. Why you pushed me to move on. Why you pushed me to go out with Ian.”

“That’s not fair. I wanted you to be happy?—”

“Happy? While you and Thomas collaborated behind my back?” She gasped. “The paintings! It was you, wasn’t it? You had a key. You let Thomas intomyhouse. I trusted you, Nadia.” Aimee sobbed. “You were my best friend?—”

“I’m still your best friend.”

“—I turned to you when I was falling apart.”

Nadia heard Aimee fight back tears, a blend of rage and pain coloring her words. She said the only thing she could at this point. “I’m sorry. I know you’re angry?—”

“Anger doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling.” Aimee talked through tears. “You sat with me all those nights I cried myself to sleep. You watched me mourn him. And all that time, you knew!”

“I didn’t have a choice,” she repeated, at a loss for words.

“We always have choices, Nadia. You chose Thomas over me. Over and over again.”

She heard Aimee’s ragged breathing as she fought her own tears. They slipped down both cheeks. She roughly wiped them off, aggravating her wound.

“I called because I don’t know when or if I’ll see you again,” she said quietly.

Aimee stayed silent.

“They’re killing off his family. We have to disappear. I—I have to go away for a really long time.”

“Good.”

The finality of the word slapped Nadia.

“Aimee—”

The line went dead.

Nadia’s chest burned as she tried to breathe through the pain of losing Aimee’s friendship. Her trust. Nadia didn’t have to tellher she’d never see her again because Aimee didn’t want to see her again. Ever.

She closed her eyes and let the tears fall. In seconds, a lifelong friendship imploded under a decade of lies. The truth should have set her free, but freedom had never felt so much like exile.

The porch screen slammed and she jolted.

Quickly wiping her face dry, she turned around, fully expecting to face Thomas. But the porch was empty. She was the only one there.

And time had run out.

24

NADIA

Nadia was shattered. She couldn’t believe she’d let slip a decade-old secret. In an exhausted moment coupled with an ever-present fear, she severed the most important friendship of her life. She could barely breathe through the crushing weight of the loss as she stood alone on Cammy’s porch. Aimee’s final “good” was a knife thrust directly into her heart.

She grasped the porch railing with a tight grip, her body trembling. All these years she’d rationalized she was protecting Aimee. Thomas had convinced her of that. But Aimee’s accusation rang painfully true: “You chose Thomas over me.”

She had.

Not because she didn’t love Aimee, but rather because of how much she truly cared for Thomas. That she was the only one who had. Something about him had pulled at her since they were teenagers. Maybe it was the way he protected people with a ferocity that bordered on self-destruction. Or, that his brokenness—the weight he carried of a fractured family—mirrored her own. Whichever it was, he noticed things about her no one else did. Her empty stomach, her reluctance to go home. When she’d lie about being okay. And he never pitied her, not once. He only responded with a quiet, stubborn presence.

For once, she saw their relationship with clarity. Thomas was the thread running through her life, sometimes visible, often hidden, but always there.