And even after all the rehearsing, the words fell right out of my head. I tried to wave my hand around, but it didn’t achieve much. It only made Brooke look kind of confused. Then the words came back to me.

“I’m the person who runs locker eighty-nine,” I said. “It’s always been me. I started doing it a couple of years ago. I got the locker combination from the master list in the admin area the first year, then erased it from the records.”

Brooke’s mouth fell open, and she glanced around us to check for eavesdroppers. Everyone else in the cafeteria was minding their own business, totally unaware that the biggest secret of my life had just been revealed for the second time this year, feet away from them.

If they’d known what we were talking about, I had a feeling not many of them would keep minding their own business.

“How … but … why didn’t you tell me?” Brooke asked, eyes shining. She looked equal parts astonished and impressed.

She didn’t seem mad at all that I hadn’t told her. I’d kept this enormous secret, and her immediate reaction was to ask for more information, but only in order to understand.

But the penny hadn’t quite dropped yet.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” I said. Best to leave out the whole Brougham thing, for now. “It started small, then when it got big so quickly I didn’t know when to tell you, and I also didn’t want to put anyone in a weird position.”

“Oh my god. I mean, I hate you for hiding this, because what? This is the coolest news ever, I can’t believe it was you, but I’m not mad.”

Hah. “I’m not finished. Ray wrote in about you a few weeks ago. A couple of days before Alexei’s mixer.”

Brooke took a second to process this news. “And that’s how you knew?”

“Yeah. She explained what she did, and said she was thinking of confessing to you.”

“Wait … and you told her not to?”

“No.” I hesitated. “I didn’t reply at all.”

“But when you told me, you said nothing about her wanting to tell me. You made it sound like she was never planning on letting me know.”

“I know,” I said simply. I didn’t make any move to defend myself, to say I only wanted to look out for her, because, honestly, I didn’t know how much of that I believed anymore. And Brooke would see right through that if I tried it. If I wanted her respect, I had to own my shit. Even if the way she was looking at me right now was straight out of my worst nightmares.

“You wanted me to dump her.”