Chapter 6: Tick-Tock

DERICK'S POV

Ciel stood in my doorway, his face white as the ice we skated on. His phone trembled in his hand. I didn't need to ask what he'd seen. I already knew.

"They sent you the video," I said.

He nodded, stepping inside. The door clicked shut behind him. His eyes swept across my room, the shattered phone on the floor, the glass from the wine glass still glittering near the wall. He looked at me like he wasn't sure if I was a victim or the cause of all this.

"They said twenty-four hours." His voice was hoarse. "Then they send it to my mother. My sponsors. Everyone."

"I got the same message." I picked up my broken phone, its screen a spiderweb of cracks. "Tick-tock, lovers."

He flinched at the word. Lovers. We weren't lovers. We were something much more complicated.

"This is your fault." He didn't yell. He said it quietly, which was worse. "If you hadn't staged that ridiculous confession at the party, if you hadn't screamed that word at me, nobody would have started watching us."

I couldn't argue. He was right.

"I know."

"I don't want your 'I know.'" He stepped closer, and I saw the red rimming his gray eyes. He'd been crying again. "I want this to stop. I've spent my entire life hiding who I am, and now someone is going to broadcast it because you decided I was your target."

The word target landed like a slap. Because that's what he'd been. A target. Prey. I'd called myself a hunter in my own head.

"Ciel." I reached for his arm. He pulled back. "I'm not that person anymore."

"You were that person three days ago."

"I was an idiot three days ago."

"And now you're what? A reformed idiot? Love doesn't work that fast, Derick."

I had no answer. Because he was right again. Real change didn't happen in seventy-two hours. But something had shifted in me. I just didn't know how to prove it.

"Let me help," I said. "We have twenty-four hours. Let me fix this."

"How?"

"Leo. He's good with tech stuff. He can trace the number, find out who sent the messages."

Ciel studied me. His trust was a thin sheet of ice, and I was asking him to walk on it.

"If this is another trick," he said, "if you're working with them, if this is part of some bigger plan to humiliate me—"

"I'm not."

"Swear it."

"I swear on my life."

"That's not worth much to me."

I flinched. He didn't apologize. He just turned toward the door. "Let's go find Leo."

Leo's dorm was in the medical wing, a tiny room crammed with textbooks and energy drink cans. He opened the door in sweatpants and a rumpled T-shirt, his eyes bleary. Then he saw our faces.

"What now?"

I held up my shattered phone. "Someone's blackmailing us. They have a video of us in the locker room. Starting tonight."

Leo went pale. He pulled us inside and locked the door.

"Show me everything," he said.

Ciel handed over his phone. Leo watched the video, his jaw tightening. Then he scrolled through the messages. The same unknown number. The same threats.

"Twenty-four hours," Leo muttered. "That's not much time."

"Can you trace it?" I asked.

"Give me a minute." He opened his laptop and started typing. Ciel stood rigid by the window, his arms crossed. I wanted to touch him, to tell him it would be okay, but I'd lost the right to comfort him.

"Tracy Holloway," Ciel said suddenly.

I turned. "What?"

"She's the one who would want revenge on you. You used her. You dropped her. Maybe she found out about your fake confession and decided to destroy you both."

My stomach twisted. He wasn't wrong. Tracy had every reason to hate me. I'd taken her to dinner, told her she was special, then ghosted her the next day. Just like I'd done to a dozen people before her.

"We can confront her," I said. "First thing in the morning."

"If she's the one sending these, she won't admit it." Ciel's voice was flat. "And if my mother finds out before we stop this—"

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

Leo looked up from his laptop. "The number's a burner. Untraceable. But the video was uploaded from a campus Wi-Fi network. East wing. That narrows it down to maybe fifty people."

"The east wing is where the hockey players live," I said. A cold feeling spread through my chest.

"Brett," Ciel whispered.

Brett Callahan. A hockey player who'd hated me since I quit the team for figure skating. He'd called me every slur in the book. If he'd seen us in the locker room—

"We don't know it's him," Leo said. "We need proof before we accuse anyone."

"Then we find proof." I grabbed my jacket. "We have twenty-four hours. I'm not spending them waiting around."

Ciel caught my arm. His grip was cold, but it was the first time he'd touched me voluntarily since the locker room.

"If this goes wrong," he said, "if my mother sees that video, my career is over. My life is over. Do you understand that?"

I looked at his hand on my arm. Then at his face. He was terrified. Not just of the blackmailer, but of being seen. Truly seen. The thing he'd spent his whole life running from.

"I understand," I said. "And I'll burn down this whole academy before I let that happen."

He searched my eyes. Whatever he found there made him let go.

"We start at dawn," he said.

Leo agreed to help us search the east wing's network logs in the morning. Ciel left first, slipping into the hallway like a shadow. I stood by the window, watching him cross the courtyard below. The moon was high. The snow was untouched.

Then my shattered phone buzzed.

A new message from the unknown number.

I opened it. A photo. Taken from above. Ciel walking across the courtyard, his silver hair bright under the moonlight. And in the corner of the frame, a reflection in a window. Someone holding the camera. A silhouette.

My blood froze.

Another buzz.

Unknown: You're not the only one who knows how to watch, Blackwood. How does it feel to be hunted?

I ran to the window. Ciel was still walking. He didn't know. He couldn't see the figure on the rooftop above him, phone in hand, watching him like a ghost.

I threw open the window and screamed his name.

He turned. Looked up at me. Then up at the roof.

The figure vanished.

Ciel stood frozen in the snow, his breath clouding the air. I was already running down the stairs, my bare feet slapping against cold concrete.

When I burst through the courtyard door, he was still standing there, staring at the empty rooftop.

"Someone was watching us," I gasped. "Right now. They're here. On campus."

Ciel turned to me. His face was no longer just scared. It was furious.

"Who?" he demanded. "Who is doing this?"

"I don't know."

"Then find out." His voice cracked. "Because if this video gets released tomorrow, I won't just lose my career. I'll lose everything. And it will be because of you."

He walked away into the dark, his footprints trailing behind him like a scar on the snow.

I stood alone in the courtyard, my feet numb, my heart pounding, and stared up at the empty rooftop.

Somewhere out there, the blackmailer was watching.

And we had less than twenty-four hours left.