Semua Bab Nanny To My highschool Nemesis : Bab 121 - Bab 130

Brooklyn's POV I told Daisy I would be back in five minutes. She accepted this with the trust she extended to everything I said and went back to arranging her pillows and I pulled her door quietly shut and went downstairs as fast as I could without running. Riley's light was on under the guest room door. I went straight past it. Through the hallway, through the front door, across the driveway and to the gate with my phone in my hand and my heart doing something unreasonable in my chest. Jordan was pacing. He had his own phone in his hand and he was moving in the short tight way people move when they have been standing in one place long enough for the energy to need somewhere to go. He heard the gate and turned and the second he saw me something in his face cracked open. Not anger first. That was what I had expected — the anger, immediate and loud. But it was the other thing first. The hurt. Sitting right on the surface before anything else had time to arrange itself over it.

Brooklyn's POVNobody moved for a long moment.Patrick stood at the centre of the driveway looking between the three of us with the patient, assessing expression of someone who has learned over a long career that silence is often more useful than questions.Jordan's phone was still in his hand.I was trying very hard not to look at it.Emerson stepped forward."Dad." His voice was easy. Composed. The version of him that had learned from a very young age how to present surfaces. "This is Jordan. He's Brooklyn's boyfriend." He paused exactly the right amount of time. "He came by to see her. I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding about — about Brooklyn's role here. He got the wrong impression."Patrick looked at Jordan.Jordan looked at Emerson.The look lasted about three seconds. It communicated several things clearly and none of them were friendly. I watched Jordan absorb what Emerson had just done — the way he had taken the situation and arranged it into a shape that serv

Brooklyn's POVMy hands went cold around the mug."Riley — ""I'm not interested in the explanation." She set her cup down again, precise and final. "I've heard enough explanations. I've sat through enough dinners and conversations and arrangements and I've watched Emerson look at you across rooms for weeks and I've been very patient about all of it." She held my gaze directly. "What I'm interested in now is practical."I looked at her."My silence about last night," she said. "About what I saw from the window. About Jordan and the photograph and all of it." She kept her voice even and low. "That has a price.""What price.""You help me end this." She said it simply. "Once and for all. Not behind doors, not in private promises that last forty-eight hours before he's back at your door." She held my gaze. "I need Emerson to step back publicly. Convincingly. In a way that leaves no room for anyone — including you — to think there's something still there worth pursuing."I looked at her.

Brooklyn's POVPatrick looked at the folder in Emerson's hands.Then at his son's face."Why," he said.One word. Quiet and absolute in the way Patrick's single words always were.Emerson held his gaze. "I needed to see what I was agreeing to.""You've been told what you're agreeing to.""I've been told a version of it." Emerson kept his voice level. "What's in that folder is the actual version. The terms. The specifics." He paused. "I wanted to read them before anyone asked me to sign anything."Patrick's eyes moved briefly to me.I kept my face still.Then to Riley.Riley was looking at the folder with an expression I could not fully read from where I was standing — something tightly managed, something that had gone very controlled very quickly when Emerson appeared in the doorway holding it."You broke into my safe," Patrick said."I know the combination," Emerson said."Because I trusted you with it." Patrick's voice didn't rise. That was the thing about Patrick — the anger never

Brooklyn's POVMy legs were not entirely reliable on the way to the study.I walked steadily enough that nothing showed — or I hoped nothing showed — but the steadiness was the deliberate kind, the kind you manufacture when everything underneath is doing something unreliable. One foot then the other. Down the hallway. Through the door Patrick held open and stood aside for me to pass through.I went in.The study looked different in the morning than it had the night I had stood outside it listening to the sound of Patrick's hand connecting with Emerson's face. Morning light through the window made it more ordinary. Just a room with a desk and shelves and a safe that now sat properly closed, and a man lowering himself into the chair on the other side of it with the unhurried movements of someone who had decided how this conversation was going to go before it started.I sat in the chair across from him.The same chair. The same desk. The same window.Patrick did not open immediately. He