“I don’t. There’s a key near the back door. I’m sure it’s still there. If it’s not, one of the upstairs bedroom windows doesn’t lock. We can get in that way. My parents won’t even know we were visiting.”
I turn off Interstate 90 and head toward Belle Valley and the cottage. We reach the cottage in about twenty minutes. Silence hangs between us like an unbreakable wall. Pure steel.
We aren’t boyfriends. We aren’t lovers. And we’ve never kissed. We’ve only been friends for what feels like forever. Always and forever friends. This is why I carry his bag into the cottage and show him around. “It hasn’t changed since I was here last. I was eighteen. It was after my incident with the college quarterback.”
“The criminal act of years ago,” he says to me. “You can say it. You’ve grown into a fin
