Page 153 of Sunkissed Colorado
Like a hurricane was inside me.
“I’ll take you home,” Winnie said soothingly. “You look way too pale.”
We walked to her car, which was parked on a side street off Main, and I stuck my phone back in my purse. I’d text Callum back as soon as I was home.
It was getting darker by the minute, all the colors of the downtown commercial district bleeding away into shadow.
“So, what’s this long story?” Winnie asked as she started the engine.
I did my best to convey what I remembered, fitting in the parts Leo had shared with me. How Jessa had a crush on a football player but wouldn’t tell anyone the guy’s identity. How Leo had read Jessa’s diary and had a huge fight with her afterward.
“I remember that fight,” Winnie said. “Leo told me his sister was keeping something from him, and he thought it was about a guy. He was worried about her.”
“Well, Russ just told me tonight thathewas Jessa’s football crush.”
Winnie swerved slightly as her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Russ? For real?”
“That’s what he said. He was a football player at the beginningof the year and quit right after Jessa died. He said he’s felt guilty about her death for all these years.”
“Why would he feel guilty?”
“Because he was supposed to meet her at the creek that night, but he didn’t show.”
Yet talking about this didn’t make me feel better. Only worse.
My whole body was shaking now, confusion and dismay swirling through my insides. All this time, I’d thought if someone else was really there at the creek that night, it had to be Jessa’s crush. But Russ had sworn he wasn’t there.
Was he lying?
Had the police been right that I’d imagined that other voice?
Too much of that night was flashing through my mind. Garish still images. Jessa sipping the beer I’d brought. How she’d kept checking her phone. The moonlight on the creek, and the slash of red on her forehead.
Bile rose in my throat. Ugh. I was going to be sick. “Winnie, I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I need you to pull over.”
She pulled us off the street and onto the dirt shoulder. I shoved the door open, leaving my purse in the car. I took a few steps, bending over and coughing, as if everything I’d learned the past few days was too much. Like every part of me wanted to reject it. Just push it far, far away.
So much for letting go of what happened that night. I’d been fooling myself.
My blood rushed in my ears, but I still heard the car door open and close, and then Winnie was beside me. “Probably adrenaline,” she said. “This is really messing you up, huh?”
I was heartsick. I wanted Callum. Everything had seemed good the other night when we went to the field of sunflowers. I’d genuinely believed I could move on from the night of Jessa’s death, but here it was again, tearing me apart from the inside out.
Because I still didn’t know the truth, and Inever would.
When I stood up, I realized that rushing sound wasn’t in my head at all.
It was the creek.
We’d pulled off the road just before the bridge, and the water was right below us at the bottom of a shallow slope. This wasn’t the stretch of the creek where Jessa had died. That was miles from here. But in the dark, it looked so much the same.
“I remember that night too,” Winnie said softly.
I turned to look at her, but she was mostly in shadow.
“I was with Leo at the bonfire party. For days, he’d been upset about that fight he had with his sister. That big secret she’d been keeping. He was getting drunk and going on and on about it. He barely noticed I was there.”
Her voice was a monotone. Like she was in a trance. And I felt the same thing. A strange vibration in the air, that cold seeping into my bones. I looked back at the water, as if the creek was pulling me. Forcing me back to that night. Making me relive all the small details I’d avoided for so long.
