𝗠𝘆 𝗘𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲 ⇉ 𝗝𝗝 𝗠𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗸

Right Thing

BY THE time Ariella and JJ reach the Maybank property, the afternoon had begun to sag beneath the weight of its own heat.

The air surrounding the house felt thick and motionless, trapped beneath a washed-out sky that offered no relief. Nothing moved except the brittle weeds pushing through the dirt and the faint rattle of something loose beneath the porch whenever the wind managed to reach it.

The place looks exactly as it always did—neglected, half-rotting, and hollowed out by years of anger—but there was something more threatening about it with Luke's truck parked outside.

Ariella notices JJ looking at it before he looks at the house.

His entire body changed.

It was subtle enough that most people would not have caught it. His shoulders did not visibly collapse, and he did not stop walking. He did not say that he was frightened.

JJ Maybank would have sooner swallowed broken glass than admit that Luke's presence still had the power to make him afraid.

But Ariella knew him too intimately to be fooled by the careless posture he tried to arrange around himself.

She saw the way his fingers flexed at his sides, opening and closing as though his body could not decide whether it needed to fight or run. She saw the hard swallow beneath his throat. The way his eyes moved instinctively toward the windows, searching for shadows, measuring where his father might be inside.

JJ could walk headfirst into nearly anything without hesitation. He laughed in the face of consequences. He threw punches at boys twice his size, mouthed off to men with guns, and treated danger like an old friend he had grown tired of impressing.

Luke is different.

Luke is not danger waiting ahead of him.

Luke is danger that had raised him.

Ariella steps closer until the side of her body brushes his. She did not crowd him. She had learned long ago that there was a difference between comforting JJ and making him feel cornered.

Her hand settles gently around his upper arm, her thumb moving slowly over his skin. "You want me to go with you?"

Her voice is soft, stripped of judgment and expectation.

JJ remains focused on the house.

His jaw shifts before he finally shook his head. "It could get ugly, and—."

"That's exactly why I should go, baby."

Ariella did not raise her voice when she interrupted him.

She did not have to.

There's a quiet firmness woven through the tenderness, the kind JJ recognized immediately. She's not asking because she feared witnessing something ugly. Ariella had witnessed enough ugliness in her life to know that looking away did not make it disappear.

She's asking because she refused to let him face it alone.

JJ turns toward her then.

For several seconds, he only looks at her.

The sun lit the loose strands of hair around her face, but it was her eyes that held him there—steady, watchful, already carrying more fear for him than she would ever admit.

Ariella had a way of looking at JJ that made every lie he had prepared feel useless. She saw beneath the jokes, the swagger, the reckless grin he wore when the truth was too humiliating to touch.

She saw the boy beneath all of it.

Sometimes he loved her for that.

Sometimes it terrified him.