In a season known for gloomy weather, the afternoon graced us with a glimpse of rare sunshine and clear skies. Although, the air outside of Zac's heated car still felt sharp and cold, prickling across my cheeks and nipping at my gloveless hands almost painfully. I shivered. Zac pulled out a light fleece blanket from the grocery bag and offered it to me. Hesitantly, I accepted it from him and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders like a cape.

"Better?" he asked.

I nodded dumbly. My nerves were still winding down from the near hysterical eruption I had let loose in the car moments ago. A lone bird was chirping. I could hear the babbling sounds of the river at a distance. The calm and serenity that now enveloped me was not unlike opening my eyes to the quiet of my own bedroom after being trapped in a heart-pounding nightmare all night. Zac was leading me down one of the trails to yet another unknown destination. He acted as though everything was fine between us. It was trippy as hell. I didn't know why my feet kept moving to keep up with his stride when my brain knew better than to follow the tricky bastard down the rabbit hole again.

We stopped at a small clearing by the water. He let go of my hand. There was a large pine tree and a wooden bench that stood about twenty feet away from the riverbank. Zac walked over and set his grocery bag down on the grass. He pulled out two sandwiches, a package of chocolate-dipped strawberries, and two bottles of sparkling Perrier water and arranged everything very nicely on the bench. He looked up at me. His eyes were again the color of amber-hued whiskey under the golden sunlight. Our gazes lingered as dozens of unanswered questions continued to swirl around my head.

Zac's dark lashes suddenly swept downwards, almost shyly, as he mumbled, "I thought, um... you might be hungry after your flight."

My stomach answered for me with a rumble.

His lips curved into a crooked smile. "I'll take that as a 'yes?'"

I winced sheepishly. "I mean, I'm not gonna say 'no' to free food."

We settled on either end of the bench with the food and drinks nestled between us. I must have been starving because every bite of the sandwich seemed to contain just the right amount of toasty, savory goodness. The strawberries were ripe and sweet. A little juice trickled down my chin. I quickly dabbed at it with a napkin. For the next few minutes, Zac and I ate in companionable silence, just staring out at the river and the trees without any of the arguing, second-guessing, and doubting that had defined so much of our confusing relationship. It felt nice. Really nice. Almost like we were on a date or something.

Zac finished eating first. He glanced over to me and said, "My dad used to bring me here on the weekends whenever I had a rough week at school."

My chewing slowed as the weight behind his words settled over me.

"We would sit right here. On this bench. Under this tree. Sometimes I'd bring a comic book to read. He'd bring his laptop. Other times, we'd just sit here and do nothing. Make small talk. I always tried to keep the shit that happened at school to myself, but I think my dad kinda knew. He was far from perfect, but he tried to be a good dad. He made time in his busy schedule for me. I knew he cared about me."

I set down my food, feeling fully alert and irrationally nervous all of a sudden. For some reason, I sensed that Zac was about to drop a bombshell on me. His amber-colored eyes gleamed like liquid fire. I saw a mixture of sorrow and fury so potent that it made my heart ache.

Zac rasped hoarsely, "Last year, when I went to visit my dad at Otisville, he told me that he had been framed by his colleagues. Up until then, he always refused to say a word to me about what he did, or didn't do, and what actually happened behind the scenes at Wyman & Rimmel. It was the first time he ever opened up to me like that."

As gently as possible, I murmured, "What if he was only saying those things to spare your conscience?"

"I know what you're thinking, Cate, and I've contemplated those exact same thoughts as well, probably on an even more obsessive level than you could ever imagine," he muttered, "at first, I didn't wanna process what he was conveying to me, either. I tried to ignore it, thinking that my dad was just bitter and making shit up, but, then, I started digging around—"

Zac's pause suggested that he might have found something. With bated breath, I waited for him to proceed.

"For months, I searched through everything I could get my hands on. Bits and pieces of transcripts from his court trial. Evidence that hadn't been sealed by the judge. Old emails on his personal laptop that the court overlooked. Even copies of outdated tax returns. All of this led me back to Wellesley. To one of my dad's old colleagues. His name is Wally. Wally Sinclair."

My mind raced backwards to the afternoon I stumbled across Walter Sinclair's LinkedIn profile. I gulped.

Had my random hunch about Zac's dad and Lily's dad been accurate, after all?

Everything spilling out of Zac's mouth seemed to align with my theory. Numbly, I inquired, "Is that why you've been going after Lily this whole time? You're trying to get to her dad?"

Shadows clouded Zac's handsome features. A hint of defiance. A whisper of remorse. It was a conflicting combination.

"Yes," he replied.

"Oh, God."

I shut my eyes, unwilling to process the ramifications of where he was headed with this conversation.

"I know it's wrong and fucked up," his voice pulled me back from my reverie, "but, after examining my options, going through Lily seemed to be the easiest and quickest way to get to Wally."

"Do you really need her, though?" I couldn't help asking. "You had the ability to hack into Sassy without anyone's help. Why not do the same with Mr. Sinclair and his data?"

"I don't wanna get super technical with the cyber jargon here, but, obviously, the first thing I tried was to find a way around the VPN on his machine from a remote location. Unfortunately, he has AES-128 encryption, and that shit is near impossible to crack. Governments, banks, and large tech corporations use something similar to protect classified data, you know? 128-bit is lightyears ahead of the security measures put in place on Ashton Wellesley's database. Even if I had a top of the line supercomputer at my disposal, a brute force attack would take me about a billion years to execute."

All of the technological terms that Zac spit out flew over my head, but I understood enough to catch his drift. The pieces came together one by one. I talked myself through the timeline and motives behind Zac's one-man operation, pausing between each subsequent revelation, "Let me get this straight. You hacked the school database to access Lily's records. You used that information to get closer to Lily. Because you needed to get into her house. To access her dad's computer in person."

"That was the plan," Zac admitted.

"Does Lily know who you are?"

"Yeah, she does."

Eyes rounding out, my lips parted in shock. "She doesn't care that your dads might be at odds with one another?"

"For some reason, Lily despises her dad more than anything in the world. I just had to tell her how much I also hated my dad for fucking over our family, and we instantly bonded."

My stomach felt all tied up in knots. The creepy car that had been parked outside my house would be forever emblazoned in my mind's eye. If Lily had indeed been the mastermind behind that fucked up prank, if she had been willing to go to such lengths to scare the bejesus out of me, a girl she barely even knew, then I was terrified to find out what she might do if she ever discovered that Zac had been using her.

I nearly sputtered in my state of anxiety, "What you're trying to do is 100% illegal, Zac! Not to mention, so fucking stupid and dangerous—"

"You're right, it's extremely illegal, stupid, and dangerous," he agreed without letting me finish. "That's why I didn't want to get you involved."

"Aren't you scared of getting caught?"

"Technically, the Sassy posts are the only crimes I've committed to date."

I muttered, "That doesn't make me feel better about what you're doing."

Zac went on to say, "To be completely honest, I've only been to Lily's place twice, and, aside from memorizing the layout for her house and figuring out where her dad hides the key to his study, this whole thing is turning out to be an epic fail. Her dad was home the first time Lily invited me over, so I couldn't really do much. The second time, I made sure that he wouldn't be there, but I couldn't get away from Lily long enough to get anything done. "

"Is that why you're confessing everything to me now?" I asked hopefully. "Are you ready to give up?"

With downcast eyes, he said quietly, "Pretty much, yeah. It wasn't my choice, though. I hate that I'm being forced to jump ship right when I was so close to hitting payload."