Raven couldn’t stop thinking about the man’s voice. He’d choked out I’m so sorry and Raven’s entire body had gone still. Then the shaking had started, and he might’ve fallen down right then and there if Lily hadn’t appeared around the side of the house, her eyes blazing and her fingers curled around gardening shears.

The absurdity had saved him.

Things were different now. He was sitting in the quiet of Jack’s bedroom, and everything was painfully familiar. The jade walls. The Halloween costumes hanging in the closet, one from fifth grade, when Jack had dressed as Robin Hood, and another from eighth, when she’d gone as Link from The Legend of Zelda. Raven lay down on the green patchwork comforter. He felt the bed shift as Jack sat beside him, placing a hand on his arm. Suddenly his heart was racing and it had nothing to do with the man Lily had been visiting.

Raven looked up. “What is it?” he asked, acutely aware of the silence around them. When they’d arrived at the house, Jack’s brothers had been heading to a nearby park, and her mother was nowhere to be found. No one could interrupt them. But the second their eyes met, Jack pulled her hand away from his arm, sending sparks shooting across his skin. He’d never felt about anyone the way he felt about Jack. He’d never wanted someone so completely. Why couldn’t he tell her that?

“There’s something you should know,” Jack began, speaking to the wall instead of to him. “I did something last night, and you aren’t going to like it.”

He pushed onto his elbows, his eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you let me decide that?” She always did this. Always assumed there were parts of herself that he would reject, or actions he wouldn’t agree with. But Jack was the most noble person he’d ever met, and he didn’t think anything about her would surprise him.

Still, his pulse picked up as she unzipped her forest-green backpack and pulled out a file. The name Andrew Kane was written across the tab. “Before I came over to your house last night, I broke into your stepmother’s office with Lily.”

“You what?”

“Lily had this theory, and I thought it was smart. If Belle didn’t kill your stepmother, and none of us did either, who does that leave? Evelyn spent her evenings with your dad and her mornings and afternoons at work. So while Lily went through her mother’s emails, looking for anything suspicious, I went through her files.”

“That’s incredibly illegal, Jack.”

“I know.” She nodded, color darkening her cheeks. “And unethical. And dangerous. And—”

“Did you find anything?”