My eyes burn.
“Knox,” I whisper.
He shakes his head once. Sharp. Immediate. Then he turns towards the door.
Griff reaches for him. “Knox—”
Knox jerks free violently. “Don’t touch me.”
Their eyes lock.
“You knew and you didn’t tell me?” Knox says.
Griff just stands there looking at him not knowing what to say. Doesn’t deny it either.
And that’s when it hits Knox, not all at once, but like a slow, brutal compression in his chest. The way Griff is standing. The way he isn’t asking questions and the way his face already looks prepared for damage.
Something I can’t name flickers across Knox’s face. It isn’t rage. Not even close. It’s the same look he used to give me when we were younger, when I said something careless or reckless and he’d just stare at me like I needed to grow up, except this is twisted into something unrecognizable.
This is pain so deep it has nowhere to go.
It drains the tension from his shoulders and leaves something hollow behind.
Knox lets out a short, bitter laugh, looking me in the eyes. “So what was I?”
His eyes cut back to Griff. “Collateral? You are my best friend and you didn’tfuckingtell me?”
Griff’s jaw tightens. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”
Knox stares at him for a long beat, then shakes his head once. Griff reaches for him again, but he steps around him like he’s stepping around something he finds disgusting. “No,” he says quietly. “Don’t.”
My mother finds her voice again, sharp and desperate.
“Griffin, get him out of here.”
But Griffin doesn’t move.
My father takes a step forward, face dark. “This is not the place for family drama.”
Knox doesn’t look at either of them. Instead he looks directly at me.
“You don’t get to stand here and pretend this happened to just you.”
Then his gaze flicks to my mother. There’s something lethal in it. “You’rethe reason,” he says, so softly it almost doesn’t register, “she never learned what being loved actually looks like.”
My mother’s face goes white.
My father’s jaw tightens. “Watch your mouth.”
Knox doesn’t even look at him.
Griff steps forward then, finally placing himself between me and them — not blocking me, just there. Solid. Unmoving.
“That’s enough,” Griff says.
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
“Don’t,” Jace says.
