LOGINLEON'S POVI read the message four times.*Yeah. We are.*Three words, twelve fourteen in the morning, sent to a group thread that included Damian, which meant Aaron had just answered a question about us in front of a witness without hesitation, without qualifying it, without the usual layer of careful distance he put between himself and anything that could be taken from him.I locked my phone. Unlocked it and Read it again.Then I typed in the group thread, before I could talk myself into something more measured: *Yeah. We are.*Damian's reply came back in under thirty seconds.**Damian:** *okay cool. good. I'll handle Reid.*Then, after a beat:**Damian:** *also for what it's worth Aaron you could have just said something instead of making me watch you two be weird about each other for like a month***Aaron:** *Go to sleep Damian.***Damian:** *I'm just saying***Aaron:** *Goodnight.***Damian:** *congrats tho genuinely* šThe thread went quiet.I lay in the dark for another few mi
LEON'S POVI didn't watch.Or at least I can say I tried not to. I got in my car, shut the door, stared very deliberately at my steering wheel, and gave them the privacy of the parking lot.I lasted approximately forty-five seconds before I looked in the rearview mirror.They were standing about ten feet apart, Aaron having stopped short of closing the full distance, which I understood immediately as the most Aaron thing possibleāgoing to Marlowe without hesitation but leaving the last step for Marlowe to decide.Marlowe was taller than I'd expected from the silhouette earlier, same broad shoulders as Aaron but carried differently, less like armor and more like something he hadn't quite grown into yet. The blue hoodie was too big. His hands were still in his pockets, and he was looking at Aaron with an expression I couldn't read from here, but whatever it was made Aaron take one step forward and then stop again.Then Marlowe's hands came out of his pockets.And he closed the ten feet.
LEON'S POVMy hands went cold on the steering wheel.I sat in the parking lot staring at the screenshot for a long time, the engine running, students thinning out around me, the decade-old sedan three rows back still unmoving.The DMs were all there. Every single one. *Keep him safe. Please.* The photo of Aaron at the school entrance. The conversation about the argument before Marlowe left. *He reads them.* All of it, laid out in Reid's message like evidence at a trial.How.I went through it fast, methodically, the way Aaron had taught me to handle pressureāstay still, think first, react second.Marlowe's account was new. Private. Following only Aaron, and now me. I'd accepted the follow request from my own account, which wasāPublic.My Instagram was public.Which meant anyone who knew to look could see that **@marlowe** followed me and I followed back. Reid had apparently known to look. Which meant Reid had been watching Marlowe's movements, had noticed the new account, had connect
LEON'S POVI stared at the photo for the entire length of first period.Not at the composition of it, not at the technical detailsājust at what it meant. Marlowe Pierce, somewhere across the street from our school at eight forty-seven in the morning, close enough to photograph his brother walking through a door, far enough that Aaron would never have noticed.*He looks okay. Good.*Like that was enough. Like seeing him from a distance, confirming he was upright and moving and walking into a building, was sufficient to settle something that had apparently been unsettled for two years.I thought about what Aaron had said last night. *A P.O. box I send things to that I don't know if he ever picks up.*He picked them up.He had to. Because he knew things about Aaron's life, about me, about the porch light, that he couldn't have learned from the outside. He'd been reading whatever Aaron sent. He'd been present in some form even while being absent in every form that counted.I typed careful
LEON'S POVI sat in the car for five minutes without moving.Just me and those four words glowing on the screen and the distant sound of Aaron's engine starting somewhere behind me, pulling away, his taillights disappearing around the corner without him knowing any of this had just happened.*Keep him safe. Please.*The please was the part I couldn't get past. Not a demand, not an instruction from someone who felt entitled to make demands. A please, small and unguarded, from someone who'd been gone for two years and had apparently spent at least some of that time learning that asking for things directly was its own kind of courage.I looked at the account again. No posts. No followers except me, now, because I'd accepted without thinking. Following only Aaron, who didn't know his brother had found him on Instagram, who was driving home right now to a house with a porch light he'd leave on in case Marlowe decided to walk up to the door.My thumbs moved before I'd fully decided what to
LEON'S POVI turned the phone toward Aaron slowly.He looked at the screen. Looked at it for a long time, his expression doing nothing, which was worse than if it had done something.Then he took a step back, a single, small step, but I felt the distance of it like it was much larger."Aaron.""I know who sent that.""Okay. Who?"He didn't answer immediately. His jaw worked once, the muscle jumping under the skin, and he looked down at the pavement for a moment like he was running through something internally, some private calculation."Reid doesn't take his own photos," he said finally. "He never has. He has someone who does it for him when he needs documentation.""Documentation," I repeated flatly. "He documents things.""It's how he builds leverage. He's meticulous about it." Aaron's voice was low and very even, the particular evenness that I now understood wasn't coldness but control under pressure. "The number won't lead anywhere. Burner, probably. He'll have set it up specifica
LEON'S POVHe opened the door before I knocked, which meant he'd been watching for me, which meant whatever he had to say had been sitting in him the entire drive over, building pressure.He looked different than Wednesday. Not disheveled exactly, but worn down at the edges, like he hadn't slept ei
LEON'S POVI stared at the photo until my eyes went dry.Then I put my phone face down on my bed, stared at the ceiling for thirty seconds, picked it back up, and stared at it again.Same face. Same cold eyes. Same hand on Aaron's shoulder like a claim.I went to Damian's profile and scrolled back
LEONāS POVI didnāt sleep.Not really. I did that thing where I lay in bed for six hours cycling between almost-asleep and wide awake, staring at the ceiling with Aaronās location pin still open on my phone like it was going to disappear if I stopped looking at it.Come here instead.Iād typed back
LEONāS POVI answered on the first ring this time.No deliberating. No standing on the pavement counting my heartbeats. Just my thumb hitting the green button before the rest of me had a chance to vote on it.Silence again. But different from before. This one had textureāI could hear Aaron breathin


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