BROKEN BLOOD

Chapter Two: Leverage

I didn't sleep that night.

Angel's breathing evened out beside me within twenty minutes, her hand curled against my chest out of habit, and I lay there in the dark memorizing the ceiling while my brain replayed the same four seconds on a loop — Dustin's hand on Paige's face, her eyes closing like she trusted him with something fragile, the two of them existing in a world that had no room in it for Sarah, for Angel, for any of us standing twenty feet away eating potato salad.

By 3 a.m. I'd stopped telling myself it was about loyalty to Sarah.

By 4 a.m. I'd stopped pretending I didn't already know exactly how long it had probably been going on.

The little things started rearranging themselves into a pattern once I let them. The "girls' trip" to Sedona two years ago that Sarah hadn't actually gone on, that Paige came back from with a tan and a silence she wouldn't explain. Dustin's sudden Tuesday night gym habit that never seemed to change his body. The way Paige always, always knew exactly where Dustin would be at family things without anyone telling her, like she had a map of him memorized.

Years. This had been years.

I got up before Angel's alarm, showered until the water ran cold, and drove to Paige's apartment before I'd fully decided that's what I was doing.

She opened the door in an oversized t-shirt and nothing that looked like it had a plan underneath it, hair pulled up messy, and for half a second her face did something soft and unguarded — Blake — before it caught up to the time on the clock and the look on my face and shuttered into confusion.

"Hey. It's early. Everything okay?"

"Can I come in."

Not a question. She heard that too, stepped back to let me through, arms crossing over her chest like she already knew this wasn't a social call.

I didn't sit. I stood in the middle of her living room — throw pillows, a candle burning even though it was nine in the morning, a mug of coffee going cold on the counter — and I let the silence stretch until she couldn't stand it either.

"Blake, what's going on—"

"I saw you." My voice came out rougher than I wanted. "Last night. In the hallway. With Dustin."

The color left her face in real time. I watched it happen, watched twenty different lies queue up behind her eyes and get discarded one by one because she could see in my face that none of them were going to land.

"It's not what you think," she said anyway, because some instinct makes people say that no matter how useless the words are.

"It's exactly what I think." I took a step closer. "How long, Paige."

She didn't answer. She sat down heavily on the arm of her couch like her legs had made the decision without consulting her, and the silence that followed answered the question louder than anything she could have said.

"How long," I said again.

"...Six years." The words came out of her like something being extracted. "It started at Dustin's wedding, if you want to know the ugly, pathetic truth of it. Before that, even. I don't know. It's always been— it's complicated, Blake."

"Complicated." I laughed, and it didn't sound like a laugh, it sounded like something breaking. "You've been sleeping with my brother for six years. While he's married to Sarah. While you grew up calling this family your own. That's not complicated, Paige, that's just betrayal with a nicer word attached to it."

"Don't." Her eyes came up sharp, some old fire in her under all that fear. "Don't stand there and act like you're some innocent bystander in this family's mess. You've been watching me for months, Blake. Don't think I haven't noticed. Don't think I don't know exactly what that look on your face right now actually is."

That landed somewhere I wasn't ready for it to land, and for a second neither of us said anything, the air between us gone thick and dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with anger anymore, or not only anger.

"This isn't about me," I said, low.

"Isn't it?" She stood, closing some of the distance I'd put between us, chin tilted up, daring me. "You didn't come here at nine in the morning because you're worried about Sarah's feelings, Blake. You came here because you saw something that made you jealous, and you don't know what to do with that, so you're dressing it up as morality."

"I could tell Sarah." The words came out before I'd fully decided to use them, a test, a blade I hadn't meant to draw yet. "I could tell Angel. I could tell my father right now, today, and watch this whole family come apart at the seams because of what you and Dustin decided you were entitled to."

I saw it hit her — real fear this time, not performance. "Blake—"

"I could." I let that sit. "Or."

"Or what?" Barely a whisper now.

I didn't fully know the answer myself until it was already leaving my mouth. "Or you make this worth my silence."

The words hung there, ugly and undeniable, and I watched something shift in her expression — not just fear anymore. Something more complicated. Something that looked almost like she'd been waiting six years for someone to finally look at her the way I was looking at her right now, consequences be damned.

"What does that mean," she said carefully. "What are you asking for, Blake."

I stepped closer. Close enough to see her pulse jumping in her throat, close enough to smell the coconut of a shampoo that wasn't Angel's but hit some of the same private nerve anyway.

"I haven't decided yet," I said, and it was the most honest thing I'd said all morning. "But you're going to find out. And you're going to keep your mouth shut about it, the same way I'm about to keep mine shut about you and my brother. That's how this works now."

I left before she could answer, before I could do something with the four inches of space left between us that I wouldn't be able to take back, and I sat in my car outside her building for ten full minutes with my hands shaking on the steering wheel, disgusted with myself and unable to stop replaying the way she'd looked at me like she wanted whatever came next exactly as much as I did.

Angel texted while I sat there. Morning babe, you left early, everything ok? 🖤

I stared at the message for a long time before I answered.

Yeah. Just had something I needed to take care of.

It wasn't even a lie. That was the worst part.