Chapter Twenty One #2
Griff’s eyes harden. “Sierra.”
I breathe out, shaking. “I’m done holding this secret in, it’s hurting so many people.”
Griff leans in, voice low and dangerous. “And you think detonating a bomb makes that better?”
“No, but it makes me honest,” I whisper.
His gaze flicks away, jaw working. When he looks back, his eyes are wet, and that almost breaks me more than his anger.
“You tell them,” he says quietly, “and you don’t just hurt people. You devastate them. You blow Jace’s life apart. You shatter whatever fragile balance Knox is standing on. And you don’t get to pretend you walk away clean from that.”
His jaw tightens. “Fuck how Mom and Dad take it. They’ll survive. You might not.”
I nod slowly. “I know.”
“And you still want to do it?”
My throat tightens. “I don’t want to. I have to.”
Griff stares at me like he’s trying to find another option in my face.
“There isn’t one, Griff,” I whisper, reading him before he says it.
His hands clench into fists in his lap.
Finally, he exhales hard. “Okay,” he says, and his voice sounds defeated. “If you’re doing this… you’re not doing it alone.”
I blink. “Griff…”
He points at me like a warning. “You don’t get to run off and be the martyr. You tell the truth, you do it with me there. Do you hear me?”
Tears sting my eyes. I nod once. “Okay.”
Griff swallows hard, staring straight ahead through the windshield like he’s bracing for impact. “Who first?” he asks.
The answer comes instantly.
Because I already know where the truth needs to land.
“Jace,” I whisper.
Griff’s jaw tightens immediately. “Yeah.”
“But if I’m being honest, I’m scared and need to build up my courage first.” I add quietly.
I look down at my hands, trembling in my lap. “I destroyed his life without giving him the full truth. I let him build a life on top of a lie, and told myself it was protection when really, he was just the solution.”
I used him to keep myself and Knox from being exposed.
My throat burns. “I can’t keep carrying this lie, knowing I built it to keep the truth buried.”
Griff turns toward me.
“If I do this in private, I’ll try to contain it,” I say quietly. “I’ll minimize it. Reframe it. Find a way to make it survivable.”
My throat tightens. “And that’s how I let this go on as long as it did.”
My voice drops. “I just know Jace has to hear it from me first. Before anyone else does. Before it turns into something even uglier.”
Griff’s silence is heavy, he watches me for a long beat. Then he nods once. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “That part’s not wrong.”
My phone buzzes again, and my pulse spikes.
It’s a text from Knox, but I don’t open it.
I can’t.
Because if I do, I’ll fall apart. I stare out at The Brew House doors like I’m looking at the last moment before a storm hits.
Griff’s voice is quiet beside me. “Once you start this,” he says, “there’s no going back.”
I swallow hard. “I know,” I whisper. And for the first time in months, I don’t feel relieved.
I feel the bomb is armed, and my finger is on the trigger.
Griff doesn’t speak right away.
He sits rigid in the passenger seat, forearms braced on his thighs, staring straight ahead like he’s mapping out every possible version of the disaster I just set in motion. His jaw is tight. His shoulders are locked. He looks like a man preparing to take a hit meant for someone else.
Which he is.
“I need you to hear something,” he says finally, still not looking at me.
I brace instinctively.
“If you do this,” he continues, voice measured now, stripped of heat, “you don’t get to decide how people react. You don’t get to manage the fallout or soften the landing.”
I nod once. “I know.”
“You don’t get to explain your way out of it either,” he adds. “There are no right words to make this better.”
“I know,” I repeat, quieter.
He exhales through his nose. “Good. Because the fastest way to lose what little control you still have is to pretend this ends clean.”
That lands harder than the anger ever could have.
Griff finally turns to look at me, and for a second, he doesn’t look like my older brother or the man who’s always stepped in front of me when things got ugly.
He looks tired.
“You ready to be the villain in someone else’s story?” he asks.
My chest tightens. “Yes, because… I already am.”
He studies my face like he’s checking for cracks. “You’re not wrong,” he says after a beat. “But once this comes out, you won’t get to be misunderstood quietly anymore.”
I swallow. “I’m not asking for quiet.”
He nods, once. Sharp and final.
“Okay,” he says again, and this time it sounds like commitment instead of defeat. “Then we do this the right way.”
My pulse stutters. “There is no right way.”
“There is when you stop hiding,” he counters. “You don’t run. You don’t spiral. You don’t let Mom and Dad corner you into rewriting reality.”
A humorless laugh slips out of me. “Good luck with that.”
His mouth twitches. “I didn’t say it’d be painless.”
We sit there for another moment, the café doors opening and closing in my peripheral vision. People coming and going with lattes and pastries and zero awareness that my entire life just tipped onto a different axis.
Eventually, Griff reaches for the door handle.
“Do you want me to come home with you?” he asks.
The word home lands strangely in my chest, heavy and undefined. Before I can answer, his phone buzzes. He glances at the screen, jaw tightening just a fraction.
“I’ve gotta take this,” he says quietly.
He steps out of my car and closes the door with care, like he’s trying not to spook me.
I watch him move a few steps away, turning his back slightly as he answers, voice low.
He doesn’t pace or drift far. He just plants himself there, half-turned toward my car like he’s still keeping watch over me even while he talks.
Of course he is.
I stay in my seat, hands slack now in my lap, staring at the steering wheel like it might tell me how I got here. Like it might explain when silence stopped being self-preservation and started being something uglier.
My phone buzzes a few times. I don’t have to look to know who it is.
Knox.
The weight of his unread message presses against my ribs. I don’t open it. I don’t delete it either. I let it sit there, unresolved, like everything else. Because this is the last moment I get where the truth is still mine alone.
And I hate how much part of me wants to cling to that.
I close my eyes and let the memory of his voice surface. ‘Hey, Star.’
Not accusation. No expectation. Just familiarity.
That’s what finally breaks me.
A tear slips free before I can stop it, tracking hot and fast down my cheek. Then another. I press the heel of my hand into my eye, annoyed at myself for the release, but it doesn’t stop there.
This isn’t grief or panic. It’s the relief of no longer pretending this is survivable. I breathe through it, slow and deliberate, until the pressure eases and my thoughts sharpen instead of scatter.
This is what I know, now that I’m done lying to myself:
I don’t get to protect everyone.
I don’t get to preserve versions of people that only exist because I fed them half-truths.
And I don’t get to decide who forgives me.
But what I do get to do is stop choosing comfort over honesty.
I wipe my face, straighten in the seat, and check my reflection in the rearview mirror. My eyes are red, but clear. My mouth is set in a way that feels unfamiliar.
Resolved.
Griff looks up the second I start my car.
“You good?” he asks, already halfway to his truck.
“No,” I say through the open window. “But I’m ready.”
He studies me for a beat, then nods once. “That’s all I needed to hear.”
I hesitate, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “After this… it’s going to spread.”
“I know.”
“Mom and Dad—”
“I know,” he repeats.
“And Knox—”
Griff’s jaw tightens as he opens his truck door. “One step at a time, Sierra.”
He climbs inside and starts the engine. The low rumble carries across the lot, heavy and grounding, like the first move in something that can’t be undone.
I pull out behind him, my headlights catching the back of his truck as we leave the lot together.
In the rearview mirror, The Brew House glows warm and ordinary, giving nothing away.
It looks exactly the same.
I don’t.
And I know, with a clarity that scares me, that this is the last quiet moment I’ll have for a while.
The catalyst has already ignited.
The rest is just timing.