My dad’s office.
The dining room with the twelve-person table that’s rarely all filled.
Lane gets shots of me walking past portraits. Running my fingers along the edge of the piano keys I never learned to play. Staring out the huge windows at a perfectly manicured lawn I never cut.
By the end, my chest feels hollowed out.
Lane’s eyes are shiny when she calls cut.
“Okay,” she says. “We’re going to put this together. Not polished. Not glossy. Just you. Talking about privilege, family, guilt, and… her.”
Tristan leans in. “When do we post?”
“Tonight,” she says. “First one is the confessional. You own your part. You own your failure. You don’t make excuses. You make yourself human.”
She looks at me. “Ready?”
No.
Absolutely not.
“Yes,” I say.
That night, the edit lands in my messages.
It’s not long.
Two minutes, maybe.
The video opens on me sitting on my bed. No music. No filters.
Just me.
Looking a little wrecked.
“I’m Leo,” I say in the video. “Most of you know me as the guy who hurt Jade Bryan.”
Cut to a slow pan of the hallway portraits, my parents’ faces, cold and perfect in oil paint.
“I was born with everything. Money. Houses. Cars. The ability to make problems disappear with a check.”
Cut to my hands on the piano I never learned to play.
“But the things that matter? I didn’t have those. I didn’t have a mom who had time to sit and help with homework. I had tutors. I didn’t have dinner around a loud table. I had formal meals where no one talked about anything that mattered.”
Back to my face.
“That doesn’t excuse anything I did. It just… explains why I was so good at being selfish.”
The video cuts to me staring out the window.
“I hurt Jade. I broke her heart. I listened to fear and privilege instead of love and courage. I chose my mother’s approval over the girl who actually saw me.”
My voice in the video goes softer.
“I watched what they did to her at homecoming. I watched her get slimed and humiliated. And I didn’t protect her the way I should have.”
Cut: my hand clasped, knuckles white.
