Chapter 3 The Line We Can't Cross

Paul's POV

I snatch the page off the floor before Garrett can move, but it's too late. He already saw it. I watch the words land on his face one piece at a time, like he's reading a sentence in a language he almost understands.

"She died," he says again, quieter this time, like he's testing whether saying it out loud makes it less true. "My mom didn't leave town. She died in a car accident. Everyone knows that."

"I don't know anything about this." The lie comes out of me fast and bad, the kind of lie that doesn't even sound convincing to my own ears. "It's old paperwork. Probably nothing. Probably my mom helping plan your dad's, I don't know, some business thing before they even—"

"Don't." His voice cracks on the word, and that one crack does more damage to me than any shout could have. "Don't make something up right now. Just don't."

I should have hidden the folder better. I should have shoved it back in that box the second I saw my mother's name on it, should have never opened it at all, should have grabbed the empty box I actually needed and walked away like a normal person who isn't cursed with the worst curiosity on the planet. Instead, I'm standing in a hallway holding proof that my mother helped bury something about his mother's death, and the boy in front of me just found out his whole life is built on a lie two signatures wide.

I try to walk past him. I just want to get to my room, lock the door, and figure out how to make this not be real for about five more minutes, just five, that's all I need.

He steps sideways and blocks me.

"Garrett."

"Tell me what's in that folder."

"Move."

"Tell me." He's not yelling. That's almost worse. His voice has gone flat and low, the kind of calm that comes right before someone falls apart completely, and I recognize it because I've used that same voice myself, plenty of times, standing in bathroom stalls at school pretending I wasn't about to cry. We're standing close enough now that I can see he's not breathing right, his chest going up and down too fast, like the air in this hallway isn't enough for him anymore.

And for one second, one stupid, awful, badly timed second, something passes between us that has nothing to do with hating him for three years. It's the way he's looking at me like I'm the only person on earth who might actually tell him the truth instead of managing him, the way his eyes won't let go of mine, even though every other part of him looks like he wants to run. My heart does something complicated and unwelcome, something I do not have room for right now, something that feels dangerously close to the opposite of hate.

I hate that I feel it. I hate it more because I can tell, somehow, that he feels it too, just for that one second, before the rest of the world comes crashing back in.

Then I remember exactly what's in my hands.

If I tell him the truth right now, in this hallway, on his father's wedding night, it doesn't just blow up his life. It blows up mine. My mother signed her name next to a payoff connected to his mother's death. If that folder ever sees daylight, my mom doesn't just lose a husband. She could lose everything. Maybe even her freedom, depending on what that settlement actually covered. I don't know the full story yet. I don't know if she did something terrible or just got pulled into something terrible by a man who's good at making people feel safe right before he uses them. But I know one thing for certain, standing in this hallway: the second I open my mouth and tell Garrett Holt what I know, I become the person who destroyed his entire family on the same night his father married mine.

I can't be that person. Not yet. Not until I understand what I'm even looking at.

So I do the only thing I know how to do. I shut it down.

"I told you," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel, "it's nothing. Old paperwork. You're imagining things because it's been a long day for everyone."

His face changes. Whatever almost happened between us in that hallway closes up like a door slamming, and what's left is something colder, something that looks a lot more like the Garrett Holt I've spent three years hating.

"Fine," he says. "Keep your secrets."

I brush past him before he can say anything else, before I can change my mind, before that look on his face has time to wreck me any further. I get into my room and lock the door behind me, hard, as the click of it will somehow protect me from everything that just happened in the hallway.

I slide down onto the floor with my back against the door, and the folder pressed flat against my knees. My hands are still shaking. I open it again, slower this time, forcing myself to actually read instead of just scanning for the parts that scared me.

That's when I see it. A second page, stapled behind the first, one I missed the first time completely because I was too busy panicking about my mother's signature.

It's a list of payments. Five of them. Spread out over almost two years. Each one bigger than the last.

And the very last payment on the list isn't dated two years ago.

It's dated three weeks ago.