Page 134 of Stroke of Fate

Levi and I share a look, knowing she just admitted to everything in that one sentence alone.

Schooling my features, I raise a brow. “Did what?”

I need verbal confirmation. I’m trying to keep my anger in check, but it’s hard when I don’t know her role in all of this. All I see when I look at her is an accomplice to something awful.

Kristin’s eyes stay glued to the carpet beneath our feet as she speaks, her voice small. “Are you asking me because you don’t know or because you think I had something to do with it?”

When her eyes lock on mine, they’re wet with unshed tears. The time for her to feel guilty should have been beforethis happened, not after.

“Tell us what happened that night, and we’ll be on our way,” I say, knowing she could shut down and refuse to talk if we push too hard.

Kristin nods, and I’m relieved when she starts talking. But with each word, that relief slowly turns to dread.

“Before I tell you, you should know I had nothing to do with Sadie’s plans, I swear.” Her gaze flickers to Levi and me before dropping to a spot on the wall behind us. “The night of the Halloween party, she cornered me and demanded I hand over my phone. I gave it to her, and she started typing. When she handed it back, I saw she’d texted an anonymous number. I didn’t realize it was your number until I saw him next to you,” Kristin says, tipping her head in Levi’s direction.

That explains why she looked so frightened out there in the hall.

“So, I take it you saw the video she sent?” I ask, my voice tightening in disgust.

Kristen turns a deep shade of red and nods. “She didn’t bother deleting the text. I called her out on it, knowing that she dragged me into it by sending it from my phone.”

“Did you know she drugged me?” Levi demands, his tone colder than I’ve ever heard.

Kristin locks eyes with him.

“No,” she gasps, shaking her head. “Something about the whole thing felt off, but when I asked Sadie about it, she said the two of you weren’t doing anything you hadn’t done before. She said you were ‘relaxed’ enough to enjoy it. I thought she meant maybe you had too much to drink.”

Even though we knew this all along, it still makes my heart sink. A fleeting glance at Levi tells me he’s gone rigid. Besides his tightly clenched jaw, his face remains a blank mask.

“So, you knew what she did was wrong, yet you still kept quiet?” I ask, surprising myself with how angry I sound.

Anything could have happened to him after taking whatever had been put in his drink. It doesn’t matter if it was a muscle relaxer or worse. He could have died!

People have bad reactions to stuff all the time. Illegal or not, taking more than the recommended dose of anything or mixing medication with alcohol isdangerous.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. And I was afraid I’d get in trouble.” She swipes at a stray tear, her chest blotchy and red.

Under different circumstances, I would have been more sympathetic to her distress, but knowing I could have lost him in an entirely different way makes it hard to feel anything but anger.

A brush of Levi’s fingers against my hand pulls me back from the dark spiral of thoughts. I’m not sure if the touch was intentional or accidental, but the contact is enough to make me take a calming breath.

“Why did you hand over your phone in the first place? Why even bother being herfriend?” I ask once the tension in the room simmers down.

Kristen releases a shaky breath, clinging tighter to her books. The silence stretches on for a beat too long, and when I think she’s done with this conversation, she begins to explain.

“Sadie’s family is wealthy, and my mom has worked as their housekeeper for years. We weren’t close growing up, but her parents were kind to my mother,” she says, sounding defeated.“They offered to pay my tuition as a thank-you for my mom’s hard work. Unfortunately, that meant going where Sadie went, but I didn’t mind. Like I said, we weren’t close, so I had no idea what kind of person she was. But I quickly learned how manipulative she could be. If I didn’t do what she wanted, she’d threaten to make up lies about me to her dad and get him to pull my tuition.”

My initial anger eases slightly as I listen to her story. I can’t imagine sharing something so private with people I hardly know.

“I’m sorry she’s been holding that over you,” I say, meaning it.

She was just another pawn in Sadie’s game, and no one deserves to be treated that way. I can understand why she felt she had no choice but to go along with it. I don’t know if I would have done the same in her shoes, but I can at least sympathize.

“Where is Sadie now?” Levi asks.

He looks and sounds much calmer than he did earlier, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s making of all of this.

“She left this morning,” Kristin replies. “Went home to New York, and as far as I know, she’s finishing the semester online.”

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