Nathan turned the phone so she could see it, and watched the color drain out of Nina's face in real time.The clip was already past ten thousand shares by the time it loaded, climbing while they stood there watching it climb, the counter refreshing itself every few seconds like something alive. The thumbnail alone was enough. A woman who moved like Nina, tilted her head like Nina, tucked her hair behind her ear in that exact small habit only someone who'd sat across from her a hundred times would ever think to fake."That's not.." Nina's voice came out thin. "Nathan, that's not me. I swear to you, that never happened, I don't even know where that footage..""I know it's not real.""How do you know that so fast, you haven't even..""Because I know you," he said, simple, flat, no hesitation in it at all. "And because whoever built this got the walk right and the voice wrong. It's close. It's not you."She grabbed the phone from his hands and watched eleven seconds of it before she could

The hallway went very still."He..he wanted it out there so the world would turn on her. So people would side with him, see her as the one who threw away something real for.." Connor's eyes flicked toward Nathan and away again, fast, like even now he couldn't quite hold the look. "For him. He figured if enough people believed it, she'd have nowhere left to go but back to him. And he thought…" Connor's voice dropped further, ashamed of the words even as they came out. "He thought if Nathan saw her that way, saw her painted as easy, as nothing, he'd want out. That he'd cut her loose and disappear, and Austin would just be standing there waiting when he did.""And you agreed to this" Delano's voice was shaking now, not with sadness anymore. "You built it. With your own hands. To hand your sister to a man who's already proven exactly what he is.""I wasn't thinking about any of that, I was just.." Connor stopped himself, because there was no ending to that sentence that made any of it soun

The swing was painfully slow. The wide, sloppy haymaker of someone who had never actually had to fight for anything in his life. Nathan didn't even brace himself. He simply stepped inside the arc, caught Trent’s wrist mid-swing, and kept him moving. Trent’s own weight did the rest, driving his face straight into the lockers with a heavy, metallic boom that echoed all the way down the hall. The second one came in from the side, and Nathan turned into him instead of away, driving an elbow up under his jaw that folded him straight down onto the tile without a sound.The third hesitated, which was smarter than either of his friends had been, and still, it didn't save him. Nathan closed the distance in one step, caught his collar, and put him down with a single controlled sweep of the leg, the kid's own weight doing most of the work on the way to the floor.The fourth ran.He got about six feet before Nathan's hand closed around the back of his shirt and hauled him around, and whatever th

Nathan doesn't remember parking. One second he's behind the wheel and gravity is doing something wrong to the inside of his chest, and the next he's out of the car and moving slowly, both hands lifted slightly the way you'd approach something wild that might startle and run given half a reason."Amanda!!"She doesn't turn around right away. Her hands are wrapped around the rail, knuckles pale, the wind pulling strands of hair loose from a ponytail that's gone limp days ago and never been redone."You shouldn't be here," she says, without looking. Her voice comes out steadier than he expects, almost gentle, the voice of someone who has already made peace with a decision and doesn't want to be talked out of the peace along with it. "I mailed that so you'd read it after.""After what?" He keeps walking, careful, slow, close enough now to see her hands shaking against the metal despite how calm her voice sounds. "Amanda, look at me. Whatever this is, we can undo it. All of it. The bills, t

The apartment door was unlocked.Inside, the air was closed-in and stale, and everything was exactly where his memory had left it months ago. The card table with the matchbook still folded under the short leg. The bed with the frame that creaked. The corkboard on the wall, the photographs still pinned to it, curling at the corners now, the diner one still right in the middle where she'd put it.There was a mug on the counter with the handle broken off, kept anyway because they'd been too broke to replace it and then kept out of habit once they weren't. There was a scorch mark on the card table where a dollar-store candle had tipped over during a power cut, and he remembered laughing about it, remembered her swearing and beating the flame out with a dish towel and the two of them ending up on the floor breathless with it.He stood in the doorway a while before he could make himself come in properly.Then he crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, and it creaked exactly the w