Video. Five seconds long. Playing on loop.
Basement stairs. My basement stairs, the ones with the loose third step Mom keeps meaning to fix.
Harper’s arms are around my neck. She’s giving me one of those quick kisses she steals sometimes—the kind that taste like defiance and hunger and all the things we’re not supposed to want.
My hand is on her ass. Squeezing.
The video quality is grainy, shot from below, probably from the bottom of the stairs. But it’s unmistakably us. Unmistakablywrongin every way that matters to the people watching.
Text flashes across the screen:Caleb Graham, Brother of theYear
Then it loops. Again. Again. Again.
My brain goes blank. Completely, utterly blank.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think past the roaring in my ears.
My hand goes to my tie. I yank it loose without thinking, destroying the perfect knot. The wrongness of it hits me like a physical blow. Uneven. Unbalanced. Ruined. I blink rapidly, trying to find the pattern—four, seven, eight—but I lose count. Start over. Lose count again. The numbers won’t stay in my head.
All around me, voices break through in snippets here and there.
“Holy shit?—”
“Did you see?—”
“That’s Harper, right? His stepsister?”
“Sick.”
“I always knew something was off about him?—”
My head yanks up. Finds Kevin’s wide eyes staring back at me.
“Dude,” he whispers.
I don’t say anything. Because what the fuck is there to say? Yes, I fell in love with my step-sister. But it’s nothing like the tawdry video is making it look.
When I scan the crowd—and itisa crowd now, everyone’s stopped moving, everyone’s staring—I don’t have to look far for the source.
McKenzie Davis leans against the trophy case like she’s posing for a photoshoot. Perfectly pressed uniform. Hair that probably cost hundreds of dollars to highlight. A smile that could cut glass.
When our eyes meet across twenty feet of stunned,gawking teenagers, she raises one hand. Wiggles her fingers in a slow, deliberate wave.
It’s a wave that communicates more than words ever could. A wave that says:Remember when you humiliated me in front of the entire school? This is payback, and it’s just getting started.
And then—because the knife wasn’t buried deep enough—McKenzie slides her arm around someone else’s shoulders.
Marie.
Harper’s best friend. The quiet girl who Harper defended. Who Harpertrusted.
Marie looks miserable. Her face is pale. She won’t meet my eyes.
I don’t know what McKenzie’s holding over her. Don’t know what blackmail or manipulation got us here. But it doesn’t matter.
Because Harper trusted her. And Marie wasthere. She’s the only one who could have taken that video.
Rage floods through me, hot and unfamiliar. I’m not someone who gets angry—anger is messy, uncontrolled, dangerous. Anger is what got me in trouble when I was twelve and stealing things.