A Measure of Happiness (30 page)

She wasn't certain how this was going to end, only that it would.

She thought of Zach and Katherine opening Lamontagne's without her. She even thought of Barry, who never gave up, stopping by the bakery to get an eyeful of Katherine. But mostly, Celeste's guilt led her to Lincoln. She'd liked the way the grass smelled fresh and green in the early mornings, before the sun had dried the dew from its blades. She'd liked the stillness and the silence. Mostly, she'd liked the compliment of alone time with her favorite brother.

At fourteen, she'd tried out the CC75B, the compact Lincoln said she “couldn't shoot for shit.” She'd shot marginally better with the Beretta 92 7-round. But Lincoln's .22? Celeste and that .22 had become fast friends. She hadn't even cared that Lincoln had told her a .22 was a girl gun.

Lincoln would shake his long hair from his eyes, give her the signal, and she'd line up her sights. She'd make the hay bale–backed bull's-eye sit like a red ball on top of the middle sight, take a breath, and fire halfway through the exhalation. She'd hit the mark, every single time.

Lincoln's number one rule? Never point a gun at a person you didn't want to kill.

At Matt's door, Celeste paused to catch her breath and weigh her decision. She held her hand to her pocket and thought of going back to Old Yeller and that glove box. She thought of the decision she'd made and un-made as she'd traveled the highways. No matter what roads she'd traveled, the asphalt glowed black before her headlights, and the memory of what Matt had done played on repeat.

Celeste apologized to Lincoln for using one of his lessons to commit a crime. She flexed her hands to release the tremors. She slipped her Visa card from her back pocket and into the doorjamb behind the bolt. She pulled the card toward her and turned the handle. The door opened. She stepped into Matt's dorm room, shut the door, and turned the doorknob so it wouldn't click.

In the shade-darkened room, Matt slept in the bed, curled on his side and innocent looking. The covers pulled beneath his neck, one foot poking from the end of his comforter.

Stale laundry piled on his desk chair—jeans, socks, the jacket of his chef whites. For a second, she thought she might throw up. Nausea clogged her throat, and she swallowed, too loudly for the close space. For a second she marveled that her heartbeat, loud and hard and—to her mind—filling the room, hadn't woken Matt. For a second she hesitated, hand on her pocket.

Then she stepped up to the end of Matt's bed, took a wide, even stance, slid her weapon of choice from her pocket, and hit the light.

Temporarily blinded, Matt gave a growl of surprise and scrambled to sitting. She lowered her arm slightly, letting him blink. He stared straight at her, suddenly awake and understanding the situation.

For the first time since last night, Celeste grinned. “Start talking, douche bag.”

C
HAPTER
19

H
er hands jerked to the right. The impact didn't sound like a gunshot, like most people would think, but a puncture. The slow, clattering release of air reminded her of needles tumbling inside a rain stick.

“Blowout!” Zach yelled, as if Katherine hadn't known. “Don't hit the brakes!”

“I've got this.” Katherine pressed down on the accelerator to compensate for the loss of momentum. The SUV that had been pacing her had fallen behind, so she veered in the direction of the skid and into the right-hand lane. Katherine straightened the steering wheel, careful not to
over
compensate, and then tapped the hazard lights. She reminded herself to breathe and eased her foot off the gas. “We're okay,” Katherine told Zach, although he hadn't made a sound. “I need to wait for the car to slow down before I can pull over.”

“You're doing great,” Zach said.

No vehicles were behind her, the other drivers giving her a wide berth. She flicked on the directional, tightened her grip on the steering wheel, and tapped the brake.When the vehicle jerked beneath her, she let out a whimper.

“You can do it,” Zach said. “Keep going.”

Katherine repeated the process three more times. Each attempt yielded a little less of a jerk and a softer whimper. Then she glided into the breakdown lane, put the car in park, and cut the engine. Her skin hummed. When she unclamped her hands from the steering wheel, her fingers did a roadside jitter. She stared in stunned silence at the traffic whooshing by, the wind from the passing motorists buffeting the Outback.

Zach let out a whoop. “You kicked ass!”

Katherine gave her head a shake and laughed. They could talk about her kick-ass ways later, after they'd caught up with Celeste and brought her back home, safe and sound. “Let's change that tire.”

“Uh, no.
I've
got this,” Zach said, and he dashed from the car, sling and all. He opened her hatchback and pulled out the rubber trunk liner.
Hmm, hmm, hmm
pulsed through the air.

Katherine had no clue what song he was humming, but she smiled anyway.

One-handed, Zach raised the floor to get to the spare tire.

Katherine turned back around, allowed herself a deep breath, and sank into the seat.

Zach opened the passenger door, crouched, and peered into the car. He cocked his head. His brows rose, and his forehead furrowed. “Is there something you neglected to tell me? Something you might've forgotten?”

“I've told you everything—” Katherine stared at Zach, a memory hovering at the corners. They'd discussed Zach's biological father and the way her parents had left her. Then the tire had blown out, testing her skills a second—“The spare tire,” Katherine said, her voice hushed with realization. “I never replaced it after the first time I had a blowout.”

By mutual consent, Katherine and Zach agreed to freak out about Celeste.

 

Celeste refused to freak out.

When Matt's hand shot in the air and he flicked on the overhead light, she shut off her flashlight, but she kept it pointed at Matt. If need be, she could use the heavy metal flashlight as a weapon. She'd seen the damage she could accidentally do to a guy with her fist alone, when amply motivated. She'd never had more motivation in her life.

Not that she intended to let Matt close enough to test her theory.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Matt asked.

“I ask the questions, you answer them. Got it, douche bag?”

Matt chuckled, not all haughty and derisive, as she'd expected, but normal. More like the old Matt. “I really miss that about you.”

“What?”

“Your cockiness.” Matt stared her down, as though daring her to flinch.

Celeste forced herself to think of a rooster, strutting around a barnyard. She knew that wasn't the image Matt had in mind.

Matt stood up—bigger and stronger than her and wearing nothing but tightie-whities. His weapon of choice was bunched beneath the cotton.

“Stay there!”

He held up his hands. This time, his laugh was derisive. “I was gonna get my pants. But, hey, if that's not what you want . . .”

Celeste grabbed Matt's jeans from the desk chair and tossed them at him.

Matt caught the jeans in one hand. “Thank you,” he said, using his deeper, defensive voice. The voice he slipped from his back pocket and tried on whenever an instructor grilled him on his latest and greatest baking flub-up. Or, as Celeste liked to think of them, the 101 ways slacker Matt attempted to fake his way through culinary school. You could take the guy out of his job as a food stylist, but you couldn't take the food stylist out of a cheater.

The rasp of his zipper sent an ache down her arms. Another buried memory? Another detail of a horror story she'd yet to uncover?

Matt took a step toward her, but his hands dangled by his sides. “Ask me anything you want, baby. I've got nothing to hide.”

Matt didn't sound like Matt being an asshole, he sounded like Drake. Drake, who'd asked her out at the beginning of school and then dealt with her rejection by spending the better part of a week acting as though she were a lover he'd jilted.

Matt wasn't just a stylist and a cheater, he was a chameleon, willing to lower himself to fit in.

That explained why he'd bragged about having sex with her. That didn't explain the photos. And the thing he did to her in this room—

The floor tilted. Celeste's hands trembled, and she tightened her grip on the flashlight. She thought of Zach's breathing lesson. She thought of Zach, holding her through the night. She thought of Zach and the way he'd sounded as though he'd forgotten how to breathe.

If Matt wanted to prove he had nothing to hide, he needed to get real.

“What did you put in my drinks?” Celeste asked. “What crap did you drug me with?”

“Ah, honey, I didn't drug you.”

“Stop it! Stop talking like that. I don't know who you are. I want to talk to the Matt who used to be my friend.” Her voice echoed back to her, sounding shrill and panicked. She couldn't let Matt hear that. She couldn't let him get to her. She couldn't let him know she'd once believed he was a decent person.

With his longish hair and the way they'd joked around and spent time together, Matt had reminded Celeste of her brother Lincoln. She'd taken a few sketchy details, and then her brain had filled in the rest.

Matt was nothing like her brother. Matt wasn't even a good imposter.

“Whatever.” Defiance laced Matt's voice, but his expression softened. She'd taken the wind out of his bullshit sail.

“What did you do to my drinks?” Celeste asked. “I shouldn't have gotten plastered on two screwdrivers.”

Matt turned his head, a slight movement, an opening.

“Come on! I know you put something in my drinks.” The question had pestered her from Maine to New York. If Matt had slipped her one of those pills she'd read about in the newspapers, she might've never remembered the rape. Instead, the memory would've stayed trapped in her mind and body, along with all the other Celeste-is-crap lies she told herself.

“Did you slip me a roofie?”

“No,” Matt said.

“G?”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“Special K?”

“I didn't slip pills into your screwdrivers, okay? I'd never do
that,
” he said.

Spoken like a criminal. A criminal who set his own moral code and then violated everyone else's.

“What
would
you do?” Celeste asked. “What would you put in my screwdrivers that I didn't know about?”

Matt swung his hair from his eyes, his gaze a cross between wary and angry, like a boy caught shoplifting bubble gum or a pen or some other worthless trinket. He crossed his arms. “Switched out your vodka for grain alcohol.”

The obvious thing she'd missed.

No wonder she hadn't tasted the vodka. No wonder she'd gotten plastered. No wonder she'd gotten raped.

Alcohol was a date rape drug, too.

Celeste brought the flashlight up against her chest. “Why would you do that? Why would you drug me?” she asked.

“Get a grip. I didn't drug you. You were already drinking. I just switched your drinks. Big deal!”

More lies he told himself.

Celeste wanted to calmly walk up to Matt, smash him over the head with the flashlight, and watch him bleed out.
Get a grip, Matt. It's not like I
shot
you in the head!

If she got into a shouting match with Matt, she'd never find out what really happened. On
Cops,
the officers always kept their calm. On
Cops,
they talked to the douche bags as if they were reasonable human beings. On
Cops,
the men in blue made friends with their not-friends. “Why did you bother switching my drinks?”

Matt shrugged one shoulder. His gaze went to a spot on the floor between them, and Celeste thought of their instructor, Chef Jones, reprimanding Matt in front of the entire class.

Celeste thought of Natalie, her not-friend Natalie, pacing her every move at Drake's party while Matt went to get her a second drink.

“Why was Natalie in on it?” Celeste asked.

“Why-why would you . . . ?” Matt asked, a lame attempt at denial. Even though his stammer betrayed him first, his flushed cheeks came in as a close second. More embarrassed about Natalie's involvement than having drugged and raped Celeste?

Celeste made herself chuckle. “It's not like I can do anything about it, right? I just want to know. What's the big deal?” she said, throwing his words back at him.

“Yeah, sure.” Matt sat down on the edge of his bed and then glanced at the spot beside him, as if he thought she might join him. “You know Drake is a total dick, right?” Matt asked.

“Okay.” Yet Drake hadn't been the monster who'd attacked her. Funny—as in not at all—how these things turned out.

“You know how he's always baiting us,” Matt said. “You know, really looking for a place to stick in the knife.” Matt gritted his teeth and made a twisting motion with his fist.

Celeste's breath stuck in her lungs, trapped, as though Matt were still pressing his mouth against hers. She flicked her gaze to the door, but Matt remained seated.

“So one day after class,” Matt continued, “Drake noticed me looking at your ass, and he goes, ‘I bet you can't hit that.'”

Celeste imagined Matt running after her and smacking her butt. She knew that wasn't what Drake had meant. Funny—as in not at all—how Matt had used the term
baiting
. Because he'd totally taken Drake's.

Drake had used Matt to get back at her.

“You made a bet that you could get me.” Celeste thought of a faceless figure jumping out from an alleyway at night. She thought of the way something deep and dark in someone's mind could take him over, like an illness, until the friend you knew, the friend you thought you knew, ceased to exist.

Matt's smile made her take a step back. “That's right, kiddo.”

Celeste made a rolling motion with the flashlight. “So, Natalie. . .”

“Was the only other person who bet against Drake,” Matt said.

Other person?

“No wonder Natalie was shadowing me. She wanted to make sure your plan panned out. She wanted in on her payday.” How could Natalie do this to another woman?

How could Natalie have done this to another human?

“So this was about money?” Celeste asked.

“Don't be ridiculous. This was about me sticking it to Drake.”

By sticking it to her.

“Why did you take the nude photos of me?”

Matt slid his hands from his thighs to his knees and shook his head. “I had to do it,” he said, and Celeste thought of the words he'd spoken when she'd blinked awake from her drugged stupor:
Go back to sleep. I have to do this.

“But why?” she asked.

“To prove it,” Matt said.

Matt had tried to prove himself real by drugging and raping her and taking posed photos after she'd passed out.

“You cheated,” she said.

“So what? I still won.”

The day she'd overheard Matt bragging in class, she'd thought herself a slut and a fool for letting him betray her. When she'd learned about the photos, she'd understood he'd violated her, but she'd still deep down felt like it had been her fault. But when she'd remembered that he'd raped her? Then, finally,
she'd
gotten real.

“Okay, douche bag. Now you're going to listen to me. You're going to listen to the truth.”

A smile tweaked the corners of Matt's mouth. Amused? Nervous? She hoped he was scared to death.

Celeste pointed the flashlight at Matt. “First, you drugged me.”

“Grain alcohol!” Matt said, as if he was frustrated with her inability to believe the bullshit lies he told himself.

“Alcohol's a drug,” Celeste said.

“Jesus! You were already drinking.” Matt used his deep, angry voice, like an animal blowing itself up to scare away a larger prey.

Defensive much?

Celeste took a deep breath into her belly, the way Zach had taught her. If Zach knew she were here in this room, he'd jump into Matilda and come to her rescue, no red cape required. She was glad Zach didn't know where she was.