The others glared at him.
“What?” Drew said. “We all know they’re secretly dating.”
That caught me off guard.
“Taylor with the piercings?” I asked.
He nodded. “Her parents are out of town.”
Twenty minutes later, I stood outside a small blue house and knocked.
Taylor answered in an oversized sweatshirt, her eyes widening when she saw me.
“Cindy?”
“I’m sorry for showing up,” I said quickly, “but the police and Caleb’s parents came to my house this morning looking for him.”
The moment I said Caleb’s name, her expression changed.
Then footsteps sounded behind her.
Caleb appeared in the doorway, exhausted and pale, like he hadn’t slept at all.
“Cindy…”
I folded my arms tightly.
“You were there the night of the fire?”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Caleb stepped outside.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
Hearing him say it out loud made my stomach twist.
“What happened?”
He looked down.
“When I was nine, I saw Mason sneak out late. He used to do stuff like that all the time. I followed him on my bike because I thought it was a game.”
His voice shook.
“I lost sight of him for a while. Then I saw him climbing out of a window at your house. A few minutes later, smoke started coming from the kitchen.”
I stared at him.
“I got scared and rode home. The next morning, when everyone started talking about the fire and what happened to you…” He swallowed hard. “I kept thinking if I told anyone, Mason’s life would be over.”
“So you stayed quiet?”
His face crumpled.
“I was nine.”
That stopped me.
Because he had been.
He had been nine. A scared child protecting an older brother he didn’t understand yet.
Caleb explained that Mason kept getting into trouble as he got older. Fights. Juvenile detention. Eventually, prison. But Caleb never stopped thinking about that night.
Especially once we ended up at the same school.
“At first, I avoided you,” he said. “Every time I looked at you, I thought about the fire.”
But avoiding me had become impossible. Classes. Hallways. Football games. Group projects. And somewhere along the way, guilt became something messier, quieter, and more painful.
Then he told me something I hadn’t expected.
Before prom, he overheard some guys joking that nobody would ask me to dance.
“I snapped,” he said. “One of them almost punched me over it.”
Taylor stood silently behind him.
Caleb looked straight at me.
“I didn’t ask you to dance because I felt sorry for you. I did it because I was tired of pretending I didn’t care about you.”
For a moment, I forgot how to speak.
Then I asked the question that still mattered most.
“Why would Mason do something like that?”
Caleb shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Then his expression shifted.
“But maybe it’s time we asked him.”
An hour later, Caleb drove us to the correctional facility two towns over. Taylor stayed in the car while Caleb and I went inside for visitation.
The whole drive, my stomach stayed in knots.
