Chapter 26
The cab ride home is a blur of city lights and existential dread, every familiar landmark feeling like a goodbye to a life I’m apparently never getting back. I’m clutching the seat like it’s the last stable thing in my universe, which honestly, it might be.
The apartment door slams behind me with the kind of finality that makes everything feel urgent and desperate.
“Leo!” I call out, my voice carrying the kind of panic that cuts through gaming headsets and closed doors. “Leo, I need you to pack everything. Right fucking now.”
He appears in his doorway looking at me like I’ve completely lost my shit, which is probably the most accurate assessment anyone’s made all day. The gaming headset around his neck and the confusion written across his face tell me he’s been blissfully unaware of the nuclear bomb that just detonated my existence.
“Jas? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or maybe become one.”
“No questions right now,” I say, my voice sharp enough to cut glass. “Just pack whatever you can’t live without. We need to leave the city, and we need to do it before anyone figures out where we are.”
He studies my face for exactly three seconds, then nods. “How much time do we have?”
“Not enough.”
“Scale of one to ten, how fucked are we?”
“Eleven.”
“Shit.” He disappears back into his room, and I hear him moving with purpose. No more questions, no arguments. Just action.
This is why Leo’s the only family that matters.
I’m throwing essentials into garbage bags because apparently my life has devolved to the point where trash bags are my luggage of choice.
Every sound from the hallway makes me flinch like I’m expecting SWAT teams or paparazzi or Adelyn herself to come kicking down the door.
Within an hour, we’re loading our hastily assembled life into a rental car that I booked through a phone call where my voice cracked like I was going through puberty again. Leo climbs into the passenger seat without a word, his face tight with worry but his loyalty absolute.
Leo climbs into the passenger seat, looking at me with that expression that says he’s worried but trusting me anyway. “Where are we going?”
“Away.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I’ve got right now.”
I grip the steering wheel with white knuckles as we drive out of the city. The familiar skyline blurs past, and Leo doesn’t press for details, which is probably smart because I’m about two questions away from a complete meltdown.
“You know, whatever happened, we’ll figure it out,” he says after twenty minutes of highway silence, “We always do. Remember when Mom and Dad—”
“Don’t.” I can’t handle that comparison right now. “This is different. This time it’s my fault.”
He’s quiet for a moment, processing. “How bad?”
“Career-ending, reputation-destroying, life-as-we-know-it-obliterating bad.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
Near sunset, we pull up to a place I found during one of my late-night panic drives when Leo’s debt was eating me alive. It’s a small farm about two hours outside the city—the kind of place that exists in gentle anonymity, far from cameras and consequences.
An older woman is feeding chickens in the yard when we arrive, her weathered hands moving with the kind of practiced efficiency that comes from decades of routine.
A man, presumably her husband, looks up from repairing a fence post, his expression curious but not unwelcoming.
I approach them like a refugee begging for sanctuary, which is basically what I am.
“Excuse me,” I start, voice barely above a whisper. “I know this is weird, but my brother and I… we need somewhere to stay. Just for a while. We can help with chores, pay rent, whatever you need.”
The woman studies us both with eyes that are kind but shrewd, taking in our garbage bag luggage and my obvious distress.
There’s a long moment where I hold my breath, waiting for rejection or questions I can’t answer.
“The barn’s got a clean loft,” she says finally, her voice carrying the matter-of-fact tone of someone who’s dealt with lost souls before. “Warm enough, and there’s space for your brother. We could use help with the morning feeding if you’re serious about working.”
“We are,” I say, relief flooding through me so intensely it makes my knees weak. “Thank you. God, thank you so much.”
“Martha,” she says, extending a hand. “This is my husband, Frank.”
“Jasmine. This is Leo.”
Frank tips his hat. “You look like you’ve had a hell of a day, young lady.”
“You could say that.”
“Well,” Martha says, “hell days pass. Always do.”
That night, I’m sitting outside the barn on a hay bale, surrounded by the peaceful scents of horses and pine. The sky stretches endlessly above us, unmarked by city lights or the chaos of my former existence.
The silence between us isn’t uncomfortable—it’s the kind of quiet that comes from understanding each other’s rhythms, from years of being each other’s anchor in storms neither of us created.
But eventually, the weight of everything I’ve been carrying becomes too much to bear alone.
“Remember that debt you had?” I finally ask, my voice barely audible in the peaceful darkness. “The loan sharks who were threatening to break your legs?”
“Hard to forget something like that,” Leo says quietly. “You said you got a bonus at work, paid them off.”
“I lied.” The words feel like swallowing glass. “I didn’t get a bonus. I sold something to get the money.”
He turns to look at me fully, and I can see the concern in his eyes even in the dim light. “What did you sell?”
“Myself.” The confession comes out in a whisper.
Silence. The kind of silence that makes you wonder if the earth has stopped rotating.
“Come again?” His voice is carefully controlled.
“There’s this website, Virtue Exchange. Rich guys bid on… experiences. I auctioned off my virginity to save your life.”
The silence that follows is the kind that makes you wonder if the earth has stopped rotating. Leo runs his hands through his hair, processing information that probably never occurred to him as a possibility.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Jas. The guy who won the auction—”
“My bosses. All three of them. The Blackwoods.”
I tell him everything then, the words spilling out like a dam finally bursting.
The desperate late-night research, the application process, the way the brothers had somehow transformed what should have been a simple transaction into something that felt real and meaningful.
The press conference, the photos, Adelyn’s calculated destruction of everything I’d built.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper when the story is finally told, my voice breaking with the weight of months of secrets. “I’m sorry I lied to you, sorry I dragged you into this mess, sorry I couldn’t find a better way to save you.”
Leo is quiet for a long moment, and I can practically hear him processing everything I’ve laid bare. Then he reaches over and takes my hand, his grip warm and steady in the cool night air.
“You saved my life,” he says simply, and there’s no judgment in his voice, only gratitude and love. “Whatever it cost you, whatever you had to do, you saved my life. That’s all that matters to me.”
