He shakes his head as if he’s trying to shake the words from his brain, then rubs both hands over his hair. Soft, curly hair I remember digging my fingers into.

I sigh. “Nate, just listen.”

He stops walking. When he swings his head around to face me, his expression is brutal. I try to stop what’s coming, but he speaks over me. “No, you listen. Brandi told me what she heard you telling your friends at that party. You were planning to kill your dad then. Who says you didn’t go through with it? I saw the emails too, all right? Even if Brandi was sleeping with your pops, she didn’t poison him. She was in bed with me all night.”

That gives me hope. He thinks it’s a possibility that she slept with my father. I cling to that and try to not think of them in bed together, touching, holding, fucking.

Nate is closer to me now, waiting for me to react.

“I never planned to kill my father,” I say, looking him straight in the eyes.

“Yes, you did. Brandi told me—”

“That’s just her clumsy cover-up.”

He hesitates. “What?”

“She told you that because she knew you couldn’t handle the truth.”

His frown deepens. “The truth about what?” he asks, sounding impatient now.

I shake my head and scoff. “You want to know what really happened at that party, Nate? When you two split up and she was ‘looking around at the house’?” I pause for effect, swallowing hard. “She was having sex with my father.”

His eyes bore so deep into mine I think I forget to breathe for a second. “You’re lying.”

I roll my eyes, like my heart isn’t beating out of my chest. “My heel broke, so I went upstairs to change and walked in on them. I was so shocked, I just ran back down the stairs.” I take a breath, moving my eyes up and down his frame. “But not as shocked as I was when you showed up at the party with her.”

He makes a face. “What does that mean?”

“I recognized her. She was the intern that my father’s assistant warned me about. Apparently, they’d been hooking up all over the city. She walked in on Brandi on her knees in his office once. He made her sign an NDA and everything.”

I reach into my purse and pull out a folded piece of paper.

Lines appear between his brows. “What’s this?”

“Just read it,” I say, handing it to him.

He holds my gaze, his eyes challenging mine for a moment, then takes it from my grasp a little too firmly. It’s not exactly a snatch, but there’s some aggression there. I don’t take it personally. I watch him as he unfolds it slowly, like he’s afraid of what he might find.