Chapter 22: something has to break

Bronte’s

The days that followed felt like waiting for a storm that refused to break.

Mom was quieter than usual. She still smiled at breakfast, still asked about my classes, but there was a distance in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

She watched Rufus more carefully too the way he touched my shoulder when he passed, the way he looked at me when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.

Nothing obvious and nothing she could call out but I could feel her noticing.

Rufus felt it as well.

That Friday night, after Mom had gone to bed, he pulled me into his office and locked the door. He didn’t touch me right away. He just leaned against his desk and studied me for a long time.

“She’s getting closer,” he said finally.

“Jake is pushing her, Chloe is pushing you. The pressure is building.”

I wrapped my arms around myself. “What do we do?”

Rufus pushed off the desk and walked over to me. He took my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him.

“We stay calm,” he said. “We don’t give them anything solid. And we start planning for the moment when calm isn’t enough anymore.”

His thumbs brushed over my cheeks. “I need to know something, Bronte.

If it all comes out if your mother finds out, if Jake forces the issue are you going to stand with me?”

The question hit harder than I expected. My throat tightened.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

Rufus’s expression didn’t change, but something colder settled in his eyes.

He leaned in and kissed me slow, deliberate, almost punishing in its softness. When he pulled back, his voice was quiet.

“Then we need to make sure you do know.”

He didn’t take me to bed that night. Instead, he made me sit with him while he worked, his hand resting possessively on my thigh the entire time.

Every so often he would glance at me, as if reminding himself that I was still there. Still his.

The next morning, everything shifted.

I was in the kitchen making coffee when Mom walked in holding her phone. Her face was pale.

“Bronte,” she said carefully. “Jake just sent me something.

He says he has photos of you going into Rufus’s apartment multiple times when I was out of town. And he says he has more.”

My blood went cold.

Rufus walked into the kitchen at that exact moment. He took one look at Mom’s face, then at mine, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Mom turned to him, voice shaking. “Is it true?”

Rufus didn’t answer right away. He looked at me first a long, heavy look that asked a silent question.

Then he turned back to Mom.

“Catherine,” he said calmly. “I think we need to sit down and talk.”

The way he said it made my stomach twist.

Because I knew this wasn’t just a conversation.

This was the beginning of the end of the careful, secret life we had been living.

And no one in this house was ready for what came next.