Page 65 of Thicker Than Water
I spring up, energized by this revelation. I pace the length of the couch, cycling through options, planning my next move. Do I want to track down Henry and talk to him directly, or is it better to find the co-worker who drove him home that night?
“Beck doesn’t think so,” Wyatt says.
My footsteps stutter to a stop. “If it hasn’t been clear yet, I don’t give a fuck what Beck thinks. Not when he also thinks Jason’s a killer.”
“He has to fol—”
“Follow the evidence. I know. You’ve told me.”
“But you understand, right,” Wyatt says, “why Jason’s a better suspect?”
I blast him a scorching look.
Still, he continues. “There’s nothing physical tying Henry to Gavin that night. No means or opportunity we know of. But Jason had Gavin’s phone and—”
“Gavin’s blood, and a missing hour in his timeline,” I finish for him. “Yes, I get it. I understand it looks bad for Jason. What I’msayingis: there has to be more to this story.” I resume my laps along the couch. “Did you tell Julia about Henry’s supposed alibi?”
“Not specifically. Just that he had one.”
“And she was satisfied by that?”
The possibility claws at me—that she might have let this go so easily, exactly like Beck.
“I don’t know,” Wyatt says. “We didn’t really get into it.”
“So she didn’t even press on it. Didn’t ask any follow-ups.” I crossmy arms, stopping again. “She gives a complete stranger the benefit of some vague alibi, but when it comes to her husband, she— She—”
The energy drains from my body. I drop onto the couch, pressing my forehead into the heels of my hands. “This is so fucked,” I whisper.
“It wasn’t like that,” Wyatt says. “She didn’t accept it, or not accept it, it’s just—the conversation… moved on to something else.”
I look toward him, just in time to catch him dodging my attention. “Moved on to what?”
The shake of his head is shallow, a back and forth so slight it’s almost stillness. I know that gesture, a blend of embarrassment and dread. I saw it the night he confessed to cheating on me, and seeing it now makes my stomach tumble with nausea.
“Wyatt, what?”
He rubs his hands on his thighs, as if wiping something off them. “I accidentally let it slip,” he says, “that you and I have been seeing each other.”
My heart plunges. Shame blasts into my cheeks, sudden as an explosion.
“No,” I say. “She knows?”
Wyatt nods, but still won’t look at me. “Yeah, Si. I’m sorry.”
The shame spreads—not just in my face, but my neck and shoulders and chest. I feel it like a sweater of sandpaper, scratching at my torso. Then it rockets through the rest of me until I feel it everywhere else, too: this hot, scraping thing.
She won’t understand why I lied. She won’t understand that to speak it out loud—Wyatt did something awful, but I still let him back into my arms—would be to make the betrayal real. Not Wyatt’s betrayal. That’s always felt vivid to me, like a scab I keep picking at, a wound that won’t heal. No, the worse betrayal, the one I try so hard not to look at, is the betrayal of myself.
Each time I kiss Wyatt, or clutch him close, I might as well be saying,It’s okay that you hurt me, I don’t matter that much.Each time I sleep with him, each time I lose myself beneath him, I’m letting him off easy, letting him go unpunished for the bad thing he did.
“How could you tell her?” I ask. “You know that this—us—it’s supposed to be a secret.”
“I know,” Wyatt says. He massages the back of his neck, face tensing with pain. “But I don’t want to be a secret. I honestly didn’t mean to tell Julia, but I wish I wasn’t being disloyal to you, slipping up like that. I want us to be something you talk about with your best friend.”
His eyes are so tender, raw with hurt and yearning, that I struggle to meet his gaze. He kneads his neck, harder now, and I see that the ache he’s working against is not a physical one.
“Wyatt—”
