Chapter 5
The room seemed to lose all oxygen.
Landon felt a shiver tear through his entire body. The hatred, the rivalry, the six years of weaponized glances—it wasn’t just about Julian. It had never been just about Julian. Julian had been the excuse, the tragic buffer keeping the two of them from colliding like twin stars collapsing into each other.
“You’re sick,” Landon whispered, but his voice was trembling, stripped of all venom, reduced to a raw, breathless friction.
“We’re both sick,” Everett murmured against his mouth, his lips brushing Landon’s upper lip with a fleeting, electric roughness that made Landon’s stomach drop into freefall. “We spent half a decade tearing a frail boy in half just to see who could pull harder. And now he’s dead. And there’s no one left between us.”
Landon reached up, his fingers curling into the fabric of Everett’s shirt, intending to shove him back, to re-establish the gulf of hatred between them. But as his knuckles pressed into Everett’s solid chest, the sheer, burning heat of the man beneath the silk paralyzed him. He didn’t push. His fingers gripped tighter, anchoring himself to the very man he was supposed to despise.
Everett’s breath hitched. His silver eyes darkened to slate. For a single, suspended second, Landon thought Everett was going to crush his mouth into a brutal, unforgiving kiss—and god help him, Landon realized with a sickening jolt that he wouldn't pull away.
Then, a sudden, violent crash of thunder rattled the study windows.
A floorboard groaned beneath their shifting weight, followed by a sharp, hollow *click* from beneath the edge of the desk.
Everett stiffened instantly.
The spell shattered. The raw, suffocating heat in the air broke like brittle ice. Everett pulled back, his hand releasing Landon’s throat as though burned, his chest heaving as he stepped back into the shadows of the desk.
Landon scrambled upright, his back hitting the mahogany chair, his legs shaking violently. He pressed the back of his hand to his lips, his skin burning where Everett’s mouth had nearly touched his. His mind was screaming in chaos, horrified by the pulse thrumming between his thighs and the profound, shameful guilt clawing at his chest.
*Julian’s body is barely cold,* Landon thought in sheer agony. *What are we doing? What is wrong with us?*
“Did you hear that?” Everett’s voice was suddenly clipped, stripped of desire, retreating back behind that impenetrable wall of aristocratic coldness.
Landon tried to steady his breathing, looking down at the dark Persian rug beneath the desk.
The heavy leg of the desk had shifted slightly during their struggle, exposing a faint seam in the dark oak floorboards where the carpet had been kicked aside. A small brass corner, concealed beneath a false piece of parquet, gleamed in the lantern light.
“There’s a latch,” Landon whispered, his voice still hoarse, pointing a shaking finger at the floor.
Everett dropped to one knee, pushing the heavy desk chair aside with a rough scrape. He hooked his fingers into the seam of the floorboard. With a sharp tug, a wooden panel lifted free, revealing a dark, velvet-lined recess carved directly into the floor joists.
Inside the cavity lay a single, heavy object: a thick, hand-bound leather journal with brass corners, sealed shut by a miniature padlock.
Everett didn’t touch it immediately. He remained kneeling, staring down at the book, his shoulders rigid.
Landon stepped forward, looking over Everett’s shoulder. The cover of the leather was worn smooth by desperate hands, scratched and stained with dark circles that looked suspiciously like dried tears and spattered black ink.
“His private diary,” Landon murmured, a fresh wave of cold grief washing over the feverish heat of a moment ago. “The one he said he kept under lock and key. The one that holds the truth.”
Everett slowly reached out, his large hand wrapping around the leather spine. He lifted it into the circle of lantern light, his jaw working as if chewing on glass.
“You wanted Julian’s truth, Vance?” Everett said, his voice deadly quiet as he looked up, his grey eyes piercing Landon with a challenge that felt like the cocking of a gun. “Let’s find out which one of us he was running from.”
His challenge hung between us in the cold dark like the cocking of a hammer, daring me to flinch. Looking down at Everett kneeling in the dust, lifting the hidden volume into the amber lantern light, every nerve in my body flared with territorial fury. For six years he had dictated the terms of Julian’s existence; he wasn't going to dictate this. Before he could rise or pull the book back toward his chest, I stepped forward and tore it straight from his grip.
The brass padlock was cold against my fingertips, biting into my skin, but the dark leather surrounding it was still faintly warm from where it had rested in the recess beneath the floorboards.
“Back up, Everett,” I said, my voice shaking with an unsteady mix of adrenaline and triumph as I clutched the volume against my ribs. “He hid it under his own desk. In his own sanctuary. This doesn’t belong to the Calderwood estate. It belongs to the only person who actually listened to him.”
Everett didn’t back away. Instead, he rose from his knee in one fluid, terrifyingly controlled movement, planting himself directly between me and the arched study door.
He didn't grab for the book immediately. He stood there, his damp white shirt clinging to the broad expanse of his shoulders, the storm lantern casting deep, bronze hollows beneath his cheekbones. The physical disparity between us had never felt more pronounced. He looked like an inquisitor waiting for a heretic to run out of breath.
“You think you’re walking out of Blackwood Ridge with his private papers in your coat, Vance?” Everett’s voice was dangerously smooth, pitched low enough to rumble beneath the rattle of the rain on the windowpanes. “You haven’t even checked the lock. Do you have the key?”
A vindictive, razor-sharp smile touched my lips. Reaching beneath my damp collar, I caught the thin silver chain I had worn beneath my shirt for thirteen months. With a sharp tug, I pulled it free, letting the miniature silver key dangle between my fingers. The silver caught the lantern flame, flashing bright against the gloom.
“He gave it to me in Florence,” I told him, reveling in the sudden, violent tightening of Everett’s jaw. “November of last year. When he slipped away from that exhibition you forced him to attend. He pressed it into my palm while you were downstairs schmoozing the patrons, Everett. He told me, *‘When the time comes, Landon, open the box. Don’t let him rewrite who I was.’*”
Everett’s grey eyes fixed on the key, his pupils dilating until the silver was swallowed by black. A muscle in his throat ticked with raw, murderous tension.
“Florence,” Everett murmured. It wasn't a question. It was a venomous recalculation of every memory he possessed. “He told me he was having an anxiety attack in the courtyard. I went down into the rain looking for his inhaler while he was giving you the keys to his grave.”
