I turned away, unable to meet her gaze, unable to face the betrayal written across her features. I stood my body thrummingwith the need to move, to escape this conversation I’d been avoiding for fifteen years.
Her voice dropped. “Langston, answer me. Why?”
Something in her tone, the hurt beneath the anger, broke through my defenses. I turned back to her, shoulders slumping in surrender.
“Because you chose to save me. You looked at me and decided I was worth lying for. Nobody had ever chosen me before,” I admitted, the words raw in my throat.
Her expression of anger gave way to confusion. “What are you talking about? You had your grandparents.”
“Who took me in out of obligation? The whole town knew. Just like they knew my mom was a junkie who chose drugs over her kid every single time. They believed I was a lost cause, the troubled kid with anger issues heading nowhere good,” I countered.
I moved closer to her now, needing her to understand. “Yet you, student body president, honor roll, college scholarship, you stood up in front of the sheriff and said you were with me that night. You risked everything to protect me.” My voice cracked on the last words. “Do you have any idea what that meant to me?”
Aven’s eyes widened, realization dawning. “You just… let me lie? Let me think. I’d saved you from being wrongfully accused?”
“I was going to tell you after graduation. Then you got on the bus to college, and it seemed better to let you go without the burden of knowing,” I explained, grabbing the bridge of my nose.
“The burden of knowing what?” she pressed, still not understanding.
I exhaled heavily, looking up at the ceiling and anywhere but her face, as I admitted the truth. “That I didn’t deserve it. I was at that party getting fucked up, feeling sorry for myself while Dalvin Wright and his crew were across town setting a fire, thatyou put your good name on the line for someone who wasn’t worth it.”
My words hung between us; fifteen years of shame exposed to the light.
“Not worth it? Is that what you thought?” she repeated.
I shrugged; the gesture painfully inadequate for the weight of the moment. “What else was I supposed to think? The smart girl with the bright future lied for the town fuckup? Everyone figured you were being naive. That I’d manipulated you somehow.”
“And you believed that?” Anger flashed in her eyes again, but different now, directed not at me but at the situation, at the town, at the unfairness of it all.
“Didn’t matter what I believed. What mattered was that you believed in me. That was enough to make me want to be worth it,” I said, dropping into the chair I vacated, suddenly exhausted.
The admission cost me, stripping away the last of my defenses. I was unable to maintain the confident posture I had cultivated as armor all these years. In this moment, I was seventeen again, unworthy of the gift she gave me but desperate to earn it retroactively.
Aven sat still, processing everything I’d said. The security monitors highlighted the slight tremble of her lower lip.
“You built all this — your company, your reputation, your life here. Was that you trying to be worthy?” she said, gesturing to encompass not only the security room but the entire business beyond.
I looked at her, vulnerability a physical ache in my chest. “Every fucking day, every client I protect, every employee I hire, every system I built is all because you looked at me that day and decided I deserved a chance,” I admitted.
The weight of my confession hung between us in the quiet room. Years of unspoken truth had been given a voice. On the phone, teenage Langston was passed out drunk in thecommunity center he shouldn’t have been at, unaware this moment would define the next fifteen years of his life. He was unaware the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about would lie to save him, would leave him, and return years later to unearth the secret he’d built his entire identity around.
Aven looked at me as if she was unsure what to do with this new understanding between us.
Chapter
Nine
AVEN
I sat frozen after Langston’s confession. Fifteen years of believing I’d saved him from false accusations, only to discover he’d let me carry that lie. He allowed me to think I was his hero, when he could have cleared his name all along. This wasn’t the untouchable security mogul who’d driven me crazy for weeks; this was the boy I’d known, raw and exposed in ways I hadn’t seen since we were teenagers.
“This whole time, you’ve been what? Trying to earn something I already gave you?” I finally managed, my voice barely above a whisper.
Langston looked at me, his shoulders still curved inward and hands in surrender. “Sounds stupid when you say it like that.”
“Because it is stupid. You built an entire life around a lie I told for you. Why? What happened that night, Langston? What were you hiding that was worse than being accused of arson?”
He blew out air, running a hand over his face. For a moment, I thought he might shut down again and hide behind the professional mask he wore so well. Then his eyes met mine, and I saw something break open.
