LOGINBrooklyn's POVI told Daisy to stay.She looked at me with wide eyes and I looked back at her with the most certain expression I could manufacture and then I went inside.The study door was open.I heard Patrick's voice first — low and careful in a way I had never heard from him before. Not controlled-careful. Afraid-careful. The specific measured tone of someone who is trying very hard not to make a sudden movement.I came through the doorway and stopped.Emerson was standing in the middle of the study.He had a gun.Not raised all the way. Held at his side, pointed downward, but held. His hand was steady and his jaw was set and his eyes were fixed on his father with an expression that had gone somewhere past anger into something else entirely. Something quieter and more frightening than anger.Patrick was on the other side of the desk.His hands were slightly out from his sides — open, unhurried, the body language of someone who had been trained at some point to handle a situation l
Brooklyn's POVI came downstairs at the wrong moment.I had told myself to stay in my room. I had told myself to make my bed and brush my teeth and give whatever was happening on the ground floor enough time to finish happening before I inserted myself into it. I had been very clear with myself about this.Then I heard Patrick's voice, low and controlled, and I needed a glass of water from the kitchen and I made the mistake of taking the main stairs.They were in the entrance hallway.Patrick with his coffee, still. Riley with her bag and her dress over her arm and her spine very straight. They both looked up when I appeared at the bottom of the stairs.Patrick looked at me briefly and then back at Riley.Riley looked at me.She didn't say anything. She didn't gesture or move or make any obvious communication. She just looked at me with those steady, assessing eyes and held it for a second longer than a glance — long enough to be deliberate, long enough to send something without using
Emerson's POV"I don't have to explain where I sleep to anyone," I said.Riley stared at me.The room was very quiet around us. Morning light coming through the gap in the curtains, her bag on her shoulder, the folded t-shirt on the chair between us like a small precise statement."That's your response," she said slowly."That's my response."She looked at me for a long moment. Something was working behind her eyes — the careful, composed version of her processing something that had gone further than she had expected."Is that how much you dislike me?" she said. Her voice was steady but there was something underneath it. "Or is it because of the nanny?"I went still."Because I've been watching," she continued. "Since last night. Since the hallway. Since the kitchen." She held my gaze. "I'm not imagining it.""Riley — ""Is it her?" she said. "Just tell me. Is it the nanny you're crushing on?"I crossed the room in four steps.She held her ground — I'll give her that. She didn't step
Brooklyn's POVThe knock came just after one in the morning.I had been half asleep — that shallow kind where you're aware of the house around you but not fully in it. I heard the knock and came to properly and lay still for a moment thinking I had imagined it.It came again.I sat up and reached for the lamp on my nightstand."Just a second."I got up, pulled the door open, and blinked against the hallway light.Riley was standing outside my door.She was wearing Emerson's t-shirt. I recognised it immediately — dark grey, slightly too large on her, the same one I had seen hanging over his desk chair earlier this week. Her hair was down and her makeup had been carefully redone at some point in the last few hours, the kind of effort that says I was waiting and I wanted to look like I hadn't been.She looked at me. Then past me into my room."Have you seen Emerson?" she said.I kept my face completely still. "No.""He hasn't come to bed." She said it plainly, without making it a complai
Brooklyn's POVHis door opened before I had taken three steps."Why did you point her to my room?"I turned around. He was standing in his doorway with his hand still on the handle and the question sitting on his face like it had been waiting since the hallway downstairs."She asked where your room was," I said simply."And you just showed her.""That's generally what happens when someone asks for directions." I kept my voice even. "She's a guest. She was going to find it eventually.""That's not the point.""Then what is the point, Emerson?" I turned fully to face him. "Your father wants you to spend time with her. She's here. She's in the guest room, not your room, which is exactly what you wanted." I spread my hands. "What is the problem?""The problem is that nobody asked me." He pushed off the doorframe. "My father makes decisions. Riley agrees with them. The Holloways agree with them. Everyone is very happy making arrangements for my life and nobody — " he stopped. His jaw shift
Brooklyn's POVPatrick's voice carried clearly from the entrance hallway."It's a wonderful idea." He said it with the warm certainty of a man who had decided something and was now watching it happen. "You two could use the time. Get to know each other properly."I stopped moving in the kitchen and listened without meaning to."They'll be married someday." Patrick said it the way he said most things — not as a question, not as a suggestion. Just a fact he had already filed. "Better to start building something now."James Holloway agreed immediately, the enthusiasm of a father who has been hoping for this outcome for longer than he's admitted.Mrs. Holloway said something warm and approving.And Riley said, "I think that's a great idea."I started moving again. Plates to the cupboard. Glasses in the rack. Normal things.I was not listening.I was absolutely listening.---I came through to the entrance hallway to collect the last of the glasses just as the Holloways were leaving. Riley
Brooklyn's pov "Time to feast."I heard Emerson say — cleats still on, grass-stained from soccer practice, heading straight for the kitchen like the fridge owed him something.I stayed on the couch and waited.The silence that followed was deeply satisfying."What the — " A pause. Then louder. "Why
Brooklyn's pov "I'm really sorry, Mr. Weston. I can't work for you."The words came out before I could stop them. Patrick turned from the hallway and looked at me slowly, the way someone does when they're deciding how serious you are."Brooklyn." His voice was calm. "You are contracted through th
Brooklyn's pov "Move!"Emerson shoved past me before I could even process what was happening. He threw himself over Daisy and me, arms spread wide, taking the full weight of the branch across his back.The crack was loud. Then silence.I scrambled to my feet, heart hammering. "Emerson — ""I'm fin
Brooklyn's pov"Teacher f***er."I heard it the second I walked through the doors of Westfield Academy. Nobody said it to my face. They never did. Just loud enough for me to catch it, quiet enough for them to deny it.I kept walking.Two weeks. That's how long this rumour had been following me arou







