“Does Luke need to know?” I asked, the question ripping clean even as my stomach knotted. “About what you destroyed?”
Her face softened at his name and went wary at the same time. “If you tell him, you can’t untell him.”
“He’s already in this.”
“So are you.”
We stared at each other across a tile floor that suddenly felt as long as a runway. Coffee steamed in the pot behind her. A car rumbled past on the street outside, tires humming against asphalt—ordinary sounds in a room that felt anything but.
“If you put this in King hands,” she warned, quiet again, “Dunn will know by dinner. That’s how these worlds move.”
Mom hadn’t said Luke specifically—only insinuated that by telling him I would be informing the entire family. “I’m already in it.” The truth came out steady. “Dunn made sure of that when he pulled us back here.”
She closed her eyes, only for a second, and when she opened them, something resigned had settled. “Then be smart. Be careful. Don’t let love make you stupid.”
I didn’t answer—couldn’t. The hammer lay on the counter between us, heavy and dangerous.
When I turned for the door, her voice followed, softer. “I’m doing the best I can.”
I paused, hand on the frame. “Me too.”
The shards sat in the trash—harmless and not. I left them there and carried the weight of Mom’s secret upstairs, where it pressed behind my ribs until school.
School was a blur. My goal was to make it through and corner Luke afterward. When the final bell rang, I pulled Luke aside before he could vanish into the locker room. The late afternoonsun had warmed the quad, heat rising off painted benches and old brick. Our tree gave thin shade, leaves clicking in a breeze that smelled of salt and cut grass. We’d stood here before, pressed up against truths neither of us wanted.
He came without hesitation—just that crooked look he wore when he already knew everything between us was about to shift.
“We need to talk,” I said.
His eyes flicked to my mouth then to my hands. “Tell me.”
So I did. In pieces at first—coffee, a hammer, plastic splitting, her careful answers that weren’t answers.
“Put together,” I finished, throat raw, “it looks like Dunn planted Darren, and Lorne eliminated him—or made him disappear. And if Mom destroyed anything tied to it, maybe it was what Darren found. Or what he stole.”
Luke didn’t move for a beat. Then the air left him slowly, as if breathing had become work. His grip whitened on the branch, tendon standing out in his wrist. His eyes tracked the ground, the bark, my face, then back to the ground, as if he needed somewhere safer to land than my words.
“And your mom,” he said finally, voice low, as if not trusting it.
“She destroyed something that shouldn’t be here,” I said. The words scraped. “Her phrasing.”
He braced a shoulder against the trunk. “Lorne—” He stopped. The denial dried up on his tongue. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he forced the rest through gritted teeth. “If Darren was a Dunn plant at King, it’s possible that Lorne moved to neutralize the threat.”
I swallowed, the taste of metal and coffee turning my mouth bitter. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He stared past me, eyes gone far. Then he looked back—rawness cutting through. “Thank you for telling me.”
“We promised,” I reminded him, softer. “No lies. No power plays.”
His mouth curved—not a smile but an ache. “Partners.”
“Not—” I couldn’t finish the line we used without feeling the ground tilt. Not today. “Partners,” I repeated anyway, and it steadied something in both of us.
“Okay,” he breathed. “I’ll look into Lorne’s potential role.”
He stepped in then, forehead to mine—a pause that made the world quiet. His breath brushed my cheek. The tree’s shadow cut a wobbly line across the grass between our shoes.
“Be careful,” I whispered.
