“I told her everything, yeah. I had to talk to somebody. I was going crazy.”

“Don’t even pretend it’s not true.” The look Piper’s giving him could melt steel. If I didn’t truly believe she meant it when she said she wanted us to be friends again, I would believe it now. She’s ready to kill for me.

He lets out a long breath before finally shrugging. “I’m not going to pretend. It’s all true—I’m sure she didn’t exaggerate anything. I’m not proud of it, believe me.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Piper turns to me, her eyes going wide. “I don’t get it. Why would you?”

Even if Colt wasn’t here, I wouldn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated. I don’t understand it myself.”

“It is complicated,” Colt adds.

“I don’t even want to look at you.” She throws her backpack on her bed and plops down, arms folded. “Even if your dad made you do it, you could have told Leni why.”

When I turn to Colt, lifting an eyebrow, I find him staring at the floor with his thumbs hooked through the belt loops on his jeans.

“She does have a point,” I tell him. Amazing how her being here makes it easier for me to say all the things that have been on my mind. He has a way of mixing me up, but Piper’s presence gives me back a little bit of myself.

“It’s not that easy, and it wasn’t like I knew everything ahead of time. We knew my dad was obsessed with you and that he wanted us to befriend you. We figured if we did the opposite, you wouldn’t want to be around us… including my dad.”

“Oh…” That does make sense, but it doesn’t explain many other things. “That was before. What about the past few weeks?”

“Again, we didn’t think he would ever take it this far. He did this whole thing in stages, always telling us to do one more thing and then he would be done. Well, that one more thing always turned into more, and by that time, we were already so entangled he would have blamed all of it on us anyway.”

“I know he’s your dad, and I know you feel like you have to be loyal to your father or whatever, but I can’t let him get away with what he did. And if you care about me the way you say you do, you’ll have to prove it by helping me make him pay for what he did.”

He’s slow to sit on my bed, and suddenly, he looks drained. “I can’t do that.”

“Why the hell not?” I blurt out. All the pain, frustration, loneliness, and confusion are in that question, ringing out in the room.