Forty minutes later, I parked my car in the guest lot of Zac's apartment complex and hauled my ass up the long flights of stairs to his studio. I knocked on the door. In less than five seconds, it swung open. Zac stood before me like a ghost. Pale, faded. Barely a shell of his former self. His eyes looked bleak and helpless. I flung myself into his arms. He clutched onto me as though I was an anchor amidst the sea of chaos that now threatened to swallow us whole.

He wept silently in my embrace.

Gently, lovingly, I stroked his soft brown hair and held the boy of my dreams while he crumpled to dissolution. All I could do was try to collect the broken pieces of his heart and hold them in place so he wouldn't fall apart completely. I felt his pain as though it were my own. His sense of disillusionment. His anger, his confusion, his sadness over his father's grave, unforgivable wrongdoings. My heart broke for Zac, over and over again, even while it brimmed with love, so much so that I feared I might burst from the emotion, from the desire to fix everything and alleviate his despair.

I held him through the rising tides of his turmoil and his descent into darkness, much like the time he had comforted me after my falling out with Nat and Amari and the night after the charity ball when my memories of Mamma became too hard to bear.

My dad kept calling me. Texting me. Harassing me. I turned off my phone. Tomorrow. I planned to deal with him tomorrow. For tonight, Zac needed me. We needed each other. We needed to grieve the loss of our innocence. We needed to rest our weary minds and heal our broken hearts. Not a word was spoken between us. There was no need. His emotions were so deeply entwined with mine that our hearts were practically beating as one. Eventually, Zac and I shuffled over to his bed and passed out in each others' arms from sheer exhaustion. We slept like the dead.

***

A Japanese philosopher named Miyamoto Musashi once said, "Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is; and you must bend to its power or live a lie."

Two years ago, when I was only a freshman, I stumbled upon this quote in one of my lit classes. It comforted me on some weird level because of how fucked up my life had been at home. Musashi helped me realize that there was nothing to be done except accept the truth about how horribly my own family was treating me.

As an angsty fourteen-year-old adolescent, I'd turned the words over and over in my head and believed that, in both my studies and future career, I could be the kind of badass who never shied away from reality. No matter how harsh or awful it might be. I could become the kind of person who never put up with an ounce of anyone's bullshit. This was the belief system in which I built my entire future on. It was what compelled me to continually claw my way towards my goals despite everything that threatened to knock me down.

Today, two years later, my understanding and interpretation of Musashi's quote felt greatly altered.

Last night, what Zac and I discovered on that little black flash drive inside his dad's lockbox was harrowing enough to shatter a person's entire worldview.

It helped me comprehend why some people might be unable to "bend" and chose instead to "live a lie." For sanity's sake. For survival's sake. It was simply easier to look the other way and pretend as though the world was still a bright and shining place that sang of goodness and justice.

These gruesome discoveries spurred me to set aside my blinding pride and marrow-deep grudges: I renounced my plan for revenge against Lily. The decision pained me—don't get me wrong, deep down, I was still a petty piece of shit—but I knew now, more than anything, that the one I wanted to feed, the one I wanted to win, was the angel inside me. The world felt too dark and heavy in its current state. I refused to contribute to its ugliness. I needed to be a glimmer of light. I needed to be strong for Zac.

While Zac was still sleeping beside me, I pulled out my phone and very deliberately and intentionally donated $1,000 to the Fellowship. I did this to protect Bea's ass while simultaneously allowing Lily to walk away from her crimes, untouched and unscathed, against me and everyone else who had ever succumbed to her psychotic schemes.

Inadvertently, by picking up my phone, I was also greeted with twenty-seven missed calls and texts from my dad. I sighed uneasily. Zac stirred from his slumber. As his eyes fluttered open, a listless gleam lingered in his amber orbs, but, at least, some color had returned to his cheeks.

He glanced at me and smiled weakly. "Hey."

I kissed him. "Good morning, baby."

"Damn, I wouldn't mind waking up like this every morning."

I kissed him again. "You deserve all the kisses and all the love after the shit you went through last night."

Zac pulled me to his chest and nuzzled my neck. "Thanks for coming over, babygirl. Honestly, I don't know how I would've gotten through that shit without you."

With a sad smile, I borrowed a line from his playbook. "What can I say? I had to step up my game. My man was feeling down. It's my job to make him feel better."

He attempted to chuckle at my joke. It was a strained sound. Zac might have appeared far more relaxed than he had been the night before, but I suspected that he was still deeply troubled by the disgusting videos and photos that we had uncovered on his father's flash drive. A person simply can't get over that kind of shit in a day, and, until Zac learned how to make peace with his dad's crimes, I intended to follow my man into this fucked up labyrinth that our dads had created until we made it out the other side.

Around this time, my dad texted me again.

Come home now, Cate. Or else I'm calling the police.

Zac glanced over my shoulder to sneak a peek at my dad's message. "Shit, does your dad know that you're with me?"

I grimaced. "I think so?"

"Fuck."

"Yeah, I should probably head out soon. I think the longer I keep him waiting, the deader I'm gonna be."

"I'm coming with you this time, babygirl. Don't even try to talk me out of it. There's no way I'm letting you go up against that guy alone."

"I don't know, baby. I'm really worried about what my dad has planned for us."

I quickly showed Zac the message that I received while I'd been driving over to his place.

On second thought, why don't you bring your boyfriend back to the house? I want to talk to the both of you. I'd rather you hear the truth from me than to have you continue down this path. You need to understand what's at stake here.

"What do you suppose he's trying to pull here?"

Zac blinked in rapid succession. He looked visibly nervous. "Damn. Your dad actually wants to talk to me, too?"

"It's hella suspicious, isn't it?"

"Definitely."

In a guilty voice, I admitted, "There's something else you should know. I think my dad might have figured out that we hacked into Mr. Sinclair's computer. I accidentally left my laptop and the flashdrive out in the open. I was in too much of a hurry to get here."

"Oh, shit. That's not good."

"What should we do about it?

His mouth flattened. "We should go talk to him."

My head whipped around in shock. "What? Do you have a death wish or something?"

Zac shrugged. "I mean, we've already fallen this far down the rabbit hole. Maybe your dad will actually reveal something important that we don't know yet. Don't you wanna know what he wants to say to us?"

"Yeah, I guess I kinda do."

Grunting softly, Zac rolled out of bed and tugged me along with him. "Come on, then, babygirl. Let's go see what your bogeyman of a dad has in store for us."

I clucked in disapproval even while I let him pull me off the bed, "You're either a very brave man, Zachary Mazur. Or a really stupid one."

He winked at me. A bit of his old cockiness came back. "Guess we'll find out soon, won't we?"