Chapter 1: Reunion Confessions

The taste of stale beer clung to my tongue as Derek leaned in, his shadow flickering under the buzzing fluorescent lights, the whole bar seeming to hush as if it was listening in too.

"Listen up, I’ve been sitting on this for years. Rachel didn’t kill herself. I saw it with my own eyes—somebody pushed her off the damn rooftop."

My heart jolted, so hard I nearly dropped my Budweiser. The air in the banquet hall grew thick, heavy with that haunted hush only found in small-town Midwest nights.

I glanced across the battered folding table, littered with half-eaten wings and red plastic cups, to Jason. He was already staring at me. Jason’s knuckles whitened around his cup. My pulse thundered. Neither of us blinked.

In that split second, we both saw it—bone-deep terror flickering in each other's eyes. The kind of panic you can't fake, not even after fifteen years.

Because the ones who’d pushed Rachel off that building all those years ago… were the two of us.