Page 116 of Beautiful When He Breaks

He looks down at the flash drive again. “I can’t just hand it to someone and pretend it’s not about me.”

“No,” I say softly. “But you can hand it to me.”

I hold out my hand, palm up, and wait. I don’t take it from him or make the choice for him, even though every protective instinct in me wants to snatch that little piece of plastic out of his hand and keep it from touching him ever again. He needs control right now more than he needs speed.

His throat bobs. “Jules.”

“I’ll go through it for you. You can sit right here, or you can go upstairs, or you can tell me to stop at any point, and I’ll stop. If there’s something Mara needs, we’ll call her. If there’s something you need to know, I’ll tell you in a way that doesn’t drop you straight into the worst of it. You don’t have to look at it raw.”

His eyes shine with unshed tears. “You shouldn’t have to see it either.”

I almost smile. “Maybe not. But I can.”

That isn’t bravado. Not completely. This will fuck me up too, I know it. I’ve spent months trying to claw Blakely’s hands out of my head, and now I’m volunteering to open a drive that might contain proof of what someone did to Eli while he couldn’t consent.

But I know the difference between wounds. I know what belongs to me and what doesn’t. More than that, I know Eli doesn’t need to watch himself being hurt in order for the harm to become real.

His fingers loosen slowly, and he drops the drive into my hand. The second it leaves him, he exhales deeply.

I stand, reach for my bag, and pull my laptop out with movements that feel weirdly ordinary for the size of what we’re doing. Liam appears at the edge of the room with a glass of water and a face carefully trained into calm. Behind him, Luca is already there too—because of course he is—barefoot and in sweats, expression going dark the second he sees Eli’s face.

“What happened?” Luca asks quietly.

Eli looks at me. I answer because he shouldn’t have to repeat it yet. “Possible evidence about Celeste. From someone in the sorority.”

Luca’s jaw tightens. “Mara?”

“After I see enough to know what we’re dealing with,” I say. Then I look at Eli. “Unless you want her now.”

Eli shakes his head, then hesitates. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know.”

Liam sets the water down beside him without making him take it. “Then Julian checks enough to identify what it is, and then Mara gets called,” he says, voice so even it calms the room by one degree. “Nobody opens anything unnecessary.”

I glance at him. “That works.”

I sit on the other side of the coffee table, facing away from him enough that the laptop screen won’t be in his line of sight. Luca stays near the doorway, not hovering exactly, but ready. Liam disappears and returns with Killian less than a minute later, which tells me the house crisis network is officially active. Killian takes in the scene with one sweep of his eyes, then moves behind my shoulder where he can see the screen without crowding me.

“Before you open it,” Killian says, “don’t move or alter files if you can help it.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m just going to check the directory and preview enough to identify contents.”

The phrase makes Eli make a small, awful sound from the couch. “Jesus Christ, my entire life is evidence now.” I look over my shoulder. He’s hunched forward again, hands clasped between his knees now that the flash drive is gone. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“Don’t apologize.” I keep my voice low. “This is fucked up legal language because fucked up people did fucked up things. That’s not on you.”

He looks at me, and for one second the fear on his face is so open it almost sends me out of my body. “Just tell me if it’s bad.”

I hate that question because there’s no answer that won’t hurt him.

So, I give him the only honest one I can. “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

He closes his eyes and nods.

Then I plug in the flash drive.

36

Julian