He doesn’t even consider it. He steps around me, eyes on the door handle, but I sidestep him, blocking him just in time.

“Taylor, you need to—”

“I can’t believe this.” Is he really trying to throw me out? “Are you forgetting who she is?”

“I’m not forgetting anything. You’re the one who’s forgetting. We’re not friends. We’re not anything.”

I sigh. “I know I lied to you, but that was a long time ago. I was just confused, okay? I’m not the one who lied to you about who I am. Brandi has been pretending with you this whole time. You think you know her, but you don’t.”

“You don’t know what you’re—”

“She didn’t tell you about getting arrested, did she?”

“I lied to her, too, all right? I didn’t tell her about us. About our past. That doesn’t make me a bad guy, and Brandi’s omission doesn’t make her a murderer.”

Nate reaches for me again, softly but with a clear intention, and I move just out of his reach a second before he makes contact.

“Nate, stop.” I catch his eyes, which are as tight as his jaw. “She fucked my father at that party. She’s been fucking him since she started working at Van Doren. She doesn’t care about you. She was just using you. Or maybe she was using my father. Who knows? But she definitely didn’t love you. If she did, if she really cared about you, she wouldn’t have cheated on you. She definitely wouldn’t have been so careless.”

He pauses. “Careless?”

That’s it. I have him. Just need to reel him in now. Carefully.

I swallow to give myself a chance to gather my thoughts. “She didn’t even cover her tracks.”

“What tracks?”

“She barely cared if she got caught. Look what she did with the cyanide.” His stare is blank. I go on. “Just chucked the rest of the powder in her purse and threw it in the closet. She was so full of herself, she didn’t even try to get rid of the evidence.”

And then it stops. Time. Nate’s indignance. His loyalty to Brandi. He just stands there unblinking for a moment, trapped in such a deep trance that it seems like his respiratory system has paused.

Nate finally cocks his head. “Fuck.”

But there’s something odd about the way he looks at me then. His gaze drops down past my chin, to my feet, then back up to lock on to my eyes, a look of realization glowing inside them. And then I know I have him exactly where I need him.

“The cops found the cyanide in her bag...” The rest of his words trail off.

His mind is whirring. He’s putting the pieces together. I let him continue.