One Tiny Lie A Novel

her left and right, her eyes narrowing at the bushes as if someone might be hiding behind there. “No one knows, Livie.”
    “Are you serious? You think no one knows?” I watch with great satisfaction as her blush deepens. “I think everyone knows. Or at least suspects.” Connor made an off-hand comment the other day about Grant chasing Reagan around. I’ve even noticed Ty shaking his head at them a few times and if he’s clued in, then the rest of the world must be.
    She bites her lip in thought. “Come on. We can’t just stand here.” We start back up at a light jog. “I guess it’s been brewing for a while. I’ve always liked him and he’s been flirting with me for the past year. Then I ran into him at the library one night. There was a quiet corner. No one was around . . .” She shrugs. “It just kind of happened.”
    “In the library!” I squeal.
    “Shhh!” Her hands wave in front of her as she runs, giggling.
    “But . . .” I feel my face scrunch up. “Where?” I’ve been to that library plenty of times. I can’t think of any corner dark and secluded enough to do anything in besides read.
    She grins impishly. “Why? Want to get your freak on with Connor?”
    “No!” Just thinking of suggesting that to Connor makes me scowl at Reagan.
    That doesn’t dissuade her, though. With a quirked eyebrow, she asks, “Ashton?”
    I feel the burn crawl up my neck. “There’s nothing going on between us.”
    “Livie, I saw you two at Shawshanks the other night. I see the looks you give him. When are you going to admit it?”
    “What? That I have a roommate with an overactive imagination?”
    I get an eye roll. “You know that the more time passes, the harder this is going to get, right?”
    “No, it won’t, because nothing is going on between us!” Remembering, I ask, “Hey, did he break up with Dana?”
    She shrugs. “I haven’t heard anything, but with him, who knows. Ashton’s a vault.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, he could have a dozen brothers and sisters and you’d never know.” Reagan breaks to chug a mouthful of water from her bottle. Wiping her arm across her mouth, she continues, “My dad makes a point of knowing his team. You know—their families, their grades, their majors, their plans after college . . . He thinks of them all as his boys.” Thinking back to the big, burly man from the weekend and all the pats on the back and the questions, I can see what she means. “But he knows very little about his own captain. Almost nothing.”
    “Huh . . . I wonder why.” Small alarm bells start ringing in my head.
    “Grant thinks it has something to do with his mom dying.”
    My feet stop moving. They just stop. Reagan slows to jog in place.
    “How?” I ask, taking a deep breath. Meeting other people who lost their parents always strikes a chord deep within me. Even complete strangers can instantly become friends through that kind of familiarity.
    “No, clue, Livie. I only know because I was eavesdropping on him and my dad one night in our study. But that’s all that my dad managed to get out of him. He has a way of evading topics. I mean . . . you’ve met Ashton. You know what he’s like.”
    “Yeah, I do.” With a growing pain in my stomach, I also know that not talking about things like that normally means there’s a reason. A bad reason.
    “Come on.” She gives my butt a slap and starts moving forward again.
    I’m forced to join her, though I don’t feel like running anymore. I want to sit and think. Vaguely remembering what Connor told me at Tiger Inn, I ask, “Have you met his dad?”
    “At the fall race. He’s usually there with a woman.”
    “A wife?”
    “I’ve seen a few different ones over the past four years. Maybe they’re wives. Who knows? Then again, Ashton fell from that tree, so . . .” She turns to give me a pointed stare.
    “And what’s he like?”
    “He seems normal enough.” There’s a pause. “Though I get a weird vibe around them together. Like Ashton’s very careful about what he says and does.”
    So Connor’s not the only one who senses something off . . .
    “Anyway, so what if he did?”
    “So what if he did . . . what?” I repeat slowly, not understanding.
    “What if he broke up with Dana?”
    “Oh.” Reagan may avoid awkward situations, but she doesn’t hold back on asking the hard questions. I like that about her. Right now, though, I could do without the interrogation.