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For what reason—to punish me? to blackmail me?—I don’t know.

I do know that TJ isn’t just making an idle threat.

“I need to go,” I whisper as the camera pans down to the ground, no longer really processing what’s on the screen as I finally get my head together enough to say, “I have to go there and figure out how to stop them from releasing⁠—”

“What the fuck!”

I jump, the phone clattering to the floor, flinching back from Ace’s anger.

But he isn’t even looking at me.

No.

He’s spun on his heels and he’s heading to the door.

And the sight of him walking away from me hurts, knowing it’s how he must have felt when I did the same, when I kept trying to do it, hurts even more.

“Ace,” I whisper.

But he’s gone, tearing the door to his bedroom open, slamming it wide so hard it slams into the opposite wall.

I hear voices in the hallway, Joan concerned and Steve loud and Beck…quiet as he comes over to me.

“Come here, sweetheart,” he murmurs, wrapping a big arm around my shoulders and helping me up to my feet.

I didn’t even realize I’d collapsed.

“I’m okay,” I whisper.

“I think both you and Ace are about as far away from okay as you can be.” He draws me toward the door. “But if you stay”—he glances down, eyes locking onto mine—“if you let Ace be here for you and you’re here for him…sweetheart, I think you both will be.”

I still, thinking that he’s right. No. Knowing it.

Same as I know that it’s not that I have hope for the man he might become.

It’s that he’s already here.

Before I can tell him that, we hear shouting.

And a crunch.

Beck and I glance at each other.

Then he drops his arm from around me and takes off into the hall.

I’m only a few feet behind him, but by the time I make it through all hell has broken loose.

The door across and two down from Ace’s bedroom is hanging sideways by one hinge, its wood splintered, the drywall around it damaged.

And Ace…

Ace has Lex pinned to the wall beside that door, his hand around his throat, and he’s shouting, “You motherfucker! I know it was you! I saw your dumbass fucking shoes in the video, you asshole.”

I freeze.

Beck, who’d been reaching to pull Ace off Beck, freezes.

Steve and Joan freeze.