Carter: why are we having this conversation here instead of by ourselves?
Jaxon: because you’re an idiot and keep replying.
Beck: Logan just texted me a few seconds ago so he definitely sees these.
I glare at my screen, then click leave.
Logan has left the chat.
**Carter has added Logan to PCU.**
asshole
Carter: HE LIVES
Jaxon: thanks for the sign of life at least. how’s rehab?
Knowing Beck will fill them in, I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and start the car.
The drive back to the Rhodes’ house is quiet, the winter sky low and pale like it’s trying not to commit. My knee aches witheach press of the pedal, but the ache is honest. It’s physical. It’s something I can measure and ice and rehab into obedience.
The ache in my ribs doesn’t listen.
Because I keep picturing Cameron finding out.
Not even in some dramatic, caught-in-the-act way…just…the information reaching him eventually, like everything does in this house.
Sloane letting it slip in a moment of anger.
Cameron reading her face, or mine, and justknowing.
Pops clocking the tension because Pops clocks everything.
And then what?
Cameron’s disappointment would be worse than his anger.
Because Cameron has given me so much.
A place at his dinner table when my mom forgot I existed.
A bedroom down the hall when I needed somewhere safe to sleep.
A brotherhood that didn’t ask me to earn it.
If he decides I’m a threat—if he decides I’m not safe anymore—I don’t just lose a friend.
I lose my place.
When I turn onto their street, the house looks the same.
One-story. Clean yard. Basketball hoop by the driveway that’s seen a thousand hours of Rhodes sibling wars.
Nothing about it screams that someone is dying inside.
But the second I pull into the driveway, I know the difference anyway.
Because the air in the house feels different after hospice has been there.
