Carissa hadn’t meant to ask it yet. But the name was out now, and she watched the smallest shift move through him—wariness, possessiveness, insecurity. The Cross brothers had spent their whole lives living in each other’s shadows, except only one of them acted like light was finite.
“I’m curious,” she said. “Does he know you’ve been lying about your life for a decade?”
Damen scoffed. “Jackson thinks he’s better than everybody.”
“Maybe he just is better than you.”
His face hardened.
The silence that followed had edges.
Carissa went upstairs, packed two overnight bags, then unpacked them again because she suddenly remembered something essential: she did not need to leave her own house.
That night she slept in the guest room again. At 2:14 a.m., her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
An unknown number.
She almost ignored it.
Then a second message arrived from the same number.
Jackson here. Damen called me ranting. Are you okay?
Carissa stared at the screen in the dark.