Boiling Point
Kate perches on the edge of her bed, hair twisted into a messy bun, half-zipped suitcase sprawled open beside her. I’m kneeling on the floor, folding one of her tops into a neat square, but my hands won’t stop shaking. The cotton slips from my fingers, falling limp into my lap.
She notices. Of course she does. Kate notices everything.
“You’ve been weird,” she says suddenly, voice flat, eyes narrowing. No smile. No warmth. Just suspicion curling at the edges.
My chest goes tight. “Weird?” I laugh, too quick, too sharp, and shove the shirt into her suitcase like it’s suddenly offended me. “I’ve just been tired. All the work your dad—” I stop. The word dad tastes like ash in my mouth.
Her gaze sharpens, locking on me like she’s waiting for me to slip again.
“Yeah, my dad’s been keeping you busy, huh?” she says, and there’s something underneath it, something that makes my stomach drop. She tilts her head, studying me like she’s trying to match puzzle pieces that shouldn’t fit.
I force a shrug, keeping my face neutral. “He’s intense. But it’s work, you know?”
“Mm.” She drags the sound out, still staring, still dissecting me. Then she leans back against the headboard, arms folded. “You don’t have to lie to me, Brooklyn.”
My throat closes. I want to say I’m not, I want to laugh it off, I want to bury my face in the suitcase and scream into her clothes until I suffocate. Instead, I keep folding, the silence heavy, pressing, dangerous.
“Look,” Kate says, softer now, but sharper too. “I don’t know what’s going on. But there’s something. You don’t look me in the eye anymore. You’re always… distracted. And when he’s in the room—” she stops, her lips pressing into a line. “It’s different. I feel it. You think I don’t, but I do.”
My whole body seizes up. She’s not wrong. She feels it, because the truth is dripping out of me, seeping into the walls, into the air between us.
Kate’s voice drops, quiet, accusing. “So, what is it?”
I can’t breathe. Can’t blink. Can’t stop the heat from crawling up my neck. The room feels like a coffin. The walls too close. The air too thick.
Down the hall, I swear I hear a floorboard creak — like Dean’s there, listening, silent, waiting to see if I’ll betray us both.
My fingers won’t work. They keep fumbling the fabric, smoothing, refolding, as if I just keep moving, Kate won’t see me coming apart at the seams.
She does.
She always does.
Kate leans forward, elbows on her knees, eyes sharp and unrelenting. “It’s not just work, Brook. Don’t play me. You think I don’t notice the way you freeze when he walks into the room? The way your voice changes?”
Blood roars in my ears. I feel like my skin is burning as if I’ve been caught in a spotlight.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whisper, throat too tight, words too thin.
Kate’s brows lift, and for a second she almost laughs, like the denial is insulting. “Please. I’ve known you since we were twelve. I can tell when you’re lying. And right now? You’re lying your ass off.”
The silence stretches, unbearable. My pulse pounds so hard I swear she can hear it. The air between us is crackling, dangerous, like she’s about to rip me open and look at all the rot I’ve been trying to hide.
Kate tilts her head, studying me the way her father does — predatory, probing. My chest caves.
“You’ve changed,” she says finally, softer now. “You think I don’t feel it, but I do. When I’m around him, when you’re around him—” Her voice falters, and she swallows, as if even saying it tastes wrong. “Brooklyn… tell me it’s not what I think.”
The words hit like a blade to the gut.
I almost choke.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes. No lie. No confession. Just raw silence tearing itself between us.
Her eyes glisten, fury and betrayal twisting behind them. “Jesus Christ.” She leans back, shakes her head like she’s trying to shake off the thought. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.”
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
Because I did.
And the longer I stay quiet, the louder the truth becomes.
A sound creaks in the hallway — heavy, deliberate. My stomach drops.
Dean.
Listening.
Kate’s gaze flicks toward the door, suspicion sharpening again. “Was that?”
“No,” I cut in too fast, scrambling to grab another shirt, shove it into her bag, anything to derail her. “Probably the pipes. This house is old.” My voice is shaking so badly I can hardly recognise it.
Kate doesn’t buy it. Her eyes narrow, scanning my face like she’s seconds away from tearing the whole secret out of me.
Kate doesn’t move for a long time. Just stares. Her jaw tight, her lips trembling like she’s about to curse me out or cry — maybe both.
I can’t take it. My throat burns with words I can’t say, with guilt I can’t purge. My fingers grip the shirt in my lap so hard I nearly rip the seams.
“Brooklyn…” her voice cracks on my name. “If you’re lying to me, if you’re—” She cuts herself off, shaking her head, whispering it instead. “He’s my dad.”
The room tilts. I almost dropped the shirt.
She sees it — the flicker of panic, the half-second too slow to school my face back into blankness. And it guts me, because her lips part, and her breath stutters like she just realised the monster in the closet isn’t in her imagination — it’s me.
“I knew it,” she whispers. Not a scream. Not a slap. Just raw, broken certainty.
I shoot up from the bed so fast I almost stumble. “Kate—”
“Don’t.” She holds up her hand, eyes glassy, wet but fierce. “Don’t you dare.”
Something thuds in the hallway. My pulse spikes — he’s still out there. He’s listening.
Kate swipes her hands over her eyes, shoving her hair back. “You need to figure out who the hell you are, Brooklyn, because right now? I don’t even recognise you.”
Her words knife through me, but before I can answer, she’s zipping her bag, movements jagged, frantic. “Three weeks,” she says, voice hardening like she’s bricking up her heart. “When I come back—this better not be what I think it is.”
She doesn’t give me a chance to reply. She yanks her bag off the bed and pushes past me, her shoulder brushing mine like an accusation, and then she’s gone, her footsteps pounding down the hall.
I stand there, shaking, chest caving in like it might collapse entirely.
The door clicks softly behind me. I don’t have to turn.
I can feel him.
Dean’s shadow stretches across the floor, long and heavy, swallowing mine whole.
The door’s barely shut before the silence thickens, pressing down until I can’t breathe. My chest feels cracked open, ribs splintering under the weight of everything Kate just said, everything she saw in me.
And then there’s him.
Dean doesn’t move. He doesn’t need to. Just standing there in the doorway, he eats the air, makes the room feel smaller, hotter, dangerous in a way that’s nothing like Rafe’s warning but just as lethal. His voice cuts through the static in my skull.
“What did she say?”
I can’t answer. My throat’s torn raw.
He steps closer. The scent of his cologne—darker, smokier tonight—wraps around me like it knows it belongs in my lungs. His eyes don’t soften. They burn, sharp and unrelenting, like he already knows the answer but wants to hear me choke on it.
I shake my head, words spilling anyway, broken and too loud.
“She knows something’s wrong. She sees it, Dean—she sees me. And I can’t lie to her anymore. I can’t look her in the face when—”
“Stop.” The command lands like a hand to my throat. He crosses the last distance and tilts my chin up with a rough finger, forcing my eyes to meet his.
“She doesn’t know. Not unless you hand it to her.” His jaw clenches, the muscles shifting like steel under skin. “You think I’ll let this blow up because you’re scared of a little guilt?”
“A little guilt?” My laugh is hollow, hysterical. Tears blur everything into streaks of shadow and heat. “She’s my best friend. She trusts me. She—”
“She’s not the one in my bed.” His words snap like a whip, cutting straight through the storm inside me. His thumb presses harder under my chin, forcing my lips to part. “You are. And that means you deal with the weight of it like a good girl, not like a coward.”
My tears spill harder, betraying me, because even when his voice carves me open, some traitorous part of me wants nothing more than to obey. Wants him to keep me pinned in place, wants him to tell me I belong to him and not to the girl whose heart I’m shredding.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper, chest heaving. “She’ll hate me if she ever finds out.”
His face dips closer, his mouth grazing mine like a threat.
“She’ll never find out.” His tone is pure darkness. “Because I’ll burn the truth to ash before I let it touch you.”
I break then—not all the way, but enough for my knees to buckle. He catches me before I hit the floor, his arms locking around me like prison bars. My sobs soak into his shirt, and still he doesn’t loosen his grip, doesn’t soften—he holds me tighter, like he’s daring me to escape.
“You’re mine,” he murmurs against my hair. “And if you think my daughter, or Rafe, or anyone else gets a say in that—you haven’t been paying attention.”
And I believe him. That’s the worst part. I believe every word.