All Chapters of THE PASTOR'S SON'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRECT : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Chapter 177LEON POVI sit on the floor with my back against the side of the bed and the locked door a few feet away.The attic room is dark except for the thin line of light that still leaks under the door from the hallway. Downstairs the crying has gone quieter, but it hasn’t stopped. Every soft, broken sound travels up through the floorboards and settles in my chest like extra weight. I pull my knees up, rest my forearms on them, and stare at the opposite wall while the evening’s damage replays itself in no particular order.I am so angry at myself I can barely sit still.The words I shouted keep looping. *Yes! Maybe I am! Is that what you wanted to hear?* I didn’t mean to say it like that. I didn’t mean to say it at all. I had the thin laugh ready, the denial, the careful version of myself that has survived years under this roof. Instead I snapped and handed her the truth in the ugliest possible shape. Now the silence downstairs is full of it, and I am the one who put it there.I

Chapter 179Leon walked through the front doors of the school with the untouched apple still in his hand and the morning’s confusion sitting heavy behind his ribs.The corridors were already loud with the usual Tuesday noise—lockers slamming, voices overlapping, the scrape of shoes on linoleum. He kept his head down and moved with the flow of students, the backpack straps digging into his shoulders. The conversation in the kitchen replayed in fragments. *Sweetie, the pancakes are almost ready.* His father’s brief glance and the quiet return to the newspaper. The realization that his mother had said nothing. The absence of the disaster he had braced for felt almost more unstable than the explosion would have been. He still did not know whether her silence was protection or something closer to denial, and the not-knowing followed him into first period like a second shadow.Classes passed in a blur of half-heard lectures and pages he turned without reading. He sat through English and his

*Chapter 181*AARON POVI found him after the last bell near the edge of the parking lot where the buses lined up.Leon stood with his backpack over one shoulder and the same closed-off expression he had worn in the hallway earlier. Students streamed past in noisy groups. Someone shouted about practice. A car horn sounded near the exit. I walked straight toward him anyway. He saw me coming and didn’t move. The message he had sent—*Can we talk?*—still sat unanswered in my phone. I had read it on the roof and come looking.We ended up on the low wall behind the science wing where the noise of the lot stayed distant. Leon sat first. I stayed on my feet for a second longer than necessary, then dropped down beside him with enough space between us that it didn’t look like I was crowding him. The concrete was still warm from the afternoon sun. Neither of us spoke right away.Leon broke the silence without looking at me.“I don’t understand you anymore.”The words were quiet but steady. I kep

*Chapter 183*Leon walked the familiar blocks home with the weight of the afternoon still sitting in his chest.The conversation with Aaron behind the science wing replayed in fragments—the persistent questions, the way the denial had cracked, the quiet that had settled after he finally said the words about his mother’s discovery and the shouted confession. Aaron had listened without a single joke. He had shifted closer on the low wall and told him he wasn’t crumbling. Then the handshake, brief and deliberate, and the simple *yes* that had made the air feel less impossible for a few minutes. Leon kept replaying that part most of all. The contact. The lack of teasing. The fact that Aaron had noticed he was off and refused to let him fold the truth away.By the time he reached the modest white house the afternoon light had gone soft and gold. He climbed the porch steps slowly, key already in hand, braced for whatever version of the morning’s careful normalcy—or the night’s fallout—might

*Chapter 185*The house sat at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac that had stopped being quiet hours earlier.Cars lined both sides of the street in uneven rows. Bass from the speakers inside thumped hard enough that Leon felt it in the soles of his shoes before Damian even killed the engine. Colored light spilled from the open downstairs windows in shifting patches of blue and red. A cluster of people stood on the front lawn with red cups, laughing too loud at something one of them had said. Someone had already strung cheap string lights along the porch railing; half of them were flickering.Damian clapped him once on the shoulder as they walked up the driveway.“Loosen up. It’s not church.”Leon gave a short nod he did not fully feel and followed him through the front door.The noise hit like a physical wall.Music poured from a speaker system someone had pushed against the far living-room wall, the bass turned up past the point of clarity. Voices layered on top of it in a constant overl