“I’m not lying!” He takes a deep breath, and I can see him trying to calm down. “Since when am I just a suspect for you to interrogate?”

“Since you started getting texts you don’t want me to see!” I don’t expect to read his messages, but the fact that he’s actively hiding something—practically lying right to my face—is a humiliation I can’t just ignore.

If he’s cheating, I can’t be the last to know.

“Beckett, I—” He opens my bedroom door, then he turns back to me, still holding the knob. “You need to get help.”

I follow him into the hall just as he stomps past Penn and bumps his shoulder.

Startled and sweaty in spite of the cold, my brother pulls his earbuds from his ears. He glances from me to Jake. “What’s wrong?”

“Your sister’s lost her mind.” Jake disappears into the living room. The front door slams shut, then I hear his car start. His tires squeal as he backs onto the street way too fast.

“What the hell?” Penn says. “I thought you two broke up.”

“We did.” And I’m sure that’s awkward for my brother, because he and Jake have been friends since long before Jake and I got together.

“What was he doing here?”

Instead of answering, I go back into my room and close the door.

Penn follows me in without knocking. “Beckett. What happened?”

“The bag is his.” I flop down on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. “The duffel.”

“Whoa, seriously? Are you sure?”

“I recognized the bleach stain on the bottom left side. He swears he doesn’t know how his bag got there and that the baby isn’t his, but if it isn’t, what the hell was it doing in his duffel?”

Penn shrugs, leaning against the door frame. “Maybe someone stole it.”

“He says he lost it.”

“Okay, so maybe someone found it.”

“And held on to it, just in case they needed somewhere to put a dead baby?” I sit up so he can see how skeptical I look.

“That’s probably not exactly how it played out.”

“If he did cheat on me, maybe he doesn’t know he had a baby. Maybe he left his bag at the girl’s house, and she just kept it.”

“Is that why you broke up with him? Because he cheated?”

I shrug. “He denies it. But something went wrong between us, Penn. He’s been hiding texts from me.”

“And obviously that could only mean that he’s cheating.”

I sit up to frown at him. “I can’t tell whether you’re playing devil’s advocate for the hell of it or defending him because he’s your friend.”

Penn doesn’t answer, and I can see from the dip in his eyebrows that he’s moved on. “Does Mom know? About the bag?”