Chapter 20
895 Words
Bryan’s POV — Later That Night
He was mid-scroll—half reading, half reeling—when his phone buzzed.
JACE CALLING.
A flicker of surprise. Then stillness.
He let it ring once. Twice. Then answered.
> “Yo. You home?”
Bryan swallowed the smirk threatening to surface. He made his voice easy, light.
> “Always. What’s up?”
> “Need to hang. Sht’s been insane.”*
And just like that, the fuse he’d lit was sparking back toward him.
The thumb drive.
His perfectly timed chaos.
It was supposed to rattle Jace, isolate him, unravel the carefully built image. Not… drive him here. Back to him.
---
Twenty minutes later, Jace dropped into the old beanbag chair like it was muscle memory. Hoodie half-zipped, eyes rimmed red, hands twitching against his knees.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“—and now my dad thinks it’s all about him,” Jace muttered, voice hoarse. “Like I’m just some PR bomb waiting to blow.”
Bryan sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his thighs, nodding along like he wasn’t screaming inside.
So Richard saw the footage.
And instead of burying Jace like Bryan hoped, the man circled the wagons. Tightened security. Asked questions.
The plan hadn’t cracked the Callahans. It had just made them alert.
Damn it.
“I swear,” Jace said, raking a hand through his hair, “he’s treating me like a liability now. Meetings, sealed records, f*cking body language analysis. I can’t breathe.”
Bryan hummed low in his throat. Comforting. Casual. Fake.
“You can’t keep living in his shadow, man.”
Jace looked up, bleary-eyed. “You think it’s stupid? That someone’s trying to dig this sh*t up again?”
“No.”
His voice was calm, steady. Too steady.
“I think it’s messed up. That anyone would do this to you.”
Especially me, he didn’t say.
But the guilt never showed. He was too good at this. Too practiced.
Jace exhaled, long and slow. “I feel like I can’t trust anyone anymore. Except… you.”
The words hit him in the center of the chest like a f*cking sledgehammer.
He masked the flinch with a soft smile. “You can always trust me.”
Liar.
He watched Jace fold in on himself, pulling his knees up, eyes flicking toward the window. Vulnerable. Exposed.
It made Bryan ache—for reasons he didn’t have names for.
“You think your dad would ever let the truth come out?” Bryan asked, voice dipped low, deliberate.
Jace scoffed, eyes sharp now. “Not unless he found a way to weaponize it first.”
Bryan leaned in. Closer. Slower. “Then maybe it’s time you start asking why everyone’s so afraid of your truth.”
Jace didn’t answer right away.
He just looked at him.
Looked hard.
And Bryan held that stare. Steady. Daring.
Smiling just enough to keep the mask in place—while underneath, everything was twisting.
---
Jace’s POV — Same Night
He waited until Bryan left the room to get drinks.
The second he heard the fridge door pop open, he moved—quiet and fast. Something in his gut hadn’t stopped gnawing at him since he stepped into the room. A pull. A whisper.
He scanned the window—same cracked sill from sophomore year. Same view of the old bike rack. But something was… off.
That tiny shift in the paint. A line too clean.
Jace slipped his fingers behind the sill and felt it—a folded photo, aged but intact, tucked like a secret too dangerous to destroy.
His pulse jumped.
He didn’t look at it. Not yet.
He slipped it into his hoodie pocket just as Bryan’s footsteps padded back down the hall.
By the time Bryan returned, balancing two sodas and that easy smirk, Jace was already leaning back on the beanbag like nothing had happened.
Business as usual.
They killed another hour—talking, joking, letting the night stretch long enough for the lie to feel real. But Jace never let his guard drop. Not completely.
Not after what he found.
---
He drove home with the photo burning a hole in his pocket. He didn’t even stop to take his shoes off. Just locked the bedroom door behind him, pulled the curtains shut, and unfolded the image.
His heart slowed.
It was grainy. Black and white. A printout from a camera phone, maybe. The angle was off, like it had been taken in a hurry. But he knew what he was looking at.
It was him.
Lexi.
And someone—cut off at the edge—standing just out of frame.
Watching.
And in the corner, barely visible: a handwritten date. The day before the anonymous leak.
His stomach turned.
He sat down hard on the edge of his bed, fingers clenched around the photo.
He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t.
Instead, he grabbed his phone and texted the only person whose voice grounded him now.
> “You up?”
Lexi replied almost instantly.
> “Yeah. You okay?”
He stared at the screen for a moment. Then typed—
> “Need to talk. Found something.”
His thumb hovered. Then:
> “I think I was wrong about who’s been behind this.”
---
- Writer
