FLASHBACK

An eleven-year-old Nate Jacobs and Zelena Lincoln were both in his bedroom when Nate had an idea. He knew about his dad's office room that he never let anyone into, but he never knew why. Nate was curious to know why, and Zelena herself was curious about it too. Zelena has been tied into the Jacobs family since she was born.

Cal Jacobs and her father, Anthony Lincoln, went to high school and college together. Best friends, they met their wives in high school and became an inseparable group. Their moms had their older brothers, Aaron Jacobs and Benjamin Lincoln, around the same time, and they grew up together. In college, they went their separate ways when Benjamin made something of himself, and Aaron lost himself.

Their parents also had Nate and Zelena around the same time, the two of them growing up inseparable. There was nothing that Nate wouldn't do for Zelena and the other way around. The two stood outside Cal's office, and Zelena grabbed Nate's arm.

"Come on, Natey. . this is a bad idea. What if your dad catches us?" Zelena whispered, and Nate shook his head.

"He won't, I promise. Aren't you curious about what he keeps back there?" Nate asked, and Zelena shrugged her shoulders. She never really thought it was much of her business what Cal Jacobs did in his free time.

"I don't know, Natey. I don't feel good about this. Your dad is scary when he's mad." Zelena whispered. They've seen Cal Jacobs get angry on a few occasions, usually at Nate's older brother, and Zelena has never liked anger. It scared her. Her parents learned that getting angry when she did something wrong didn't help her learn; it only made her scared of them.

"I promise, Zee. He won't catch us." Nate said. The young Zelena nodded before following Nate into Cal Jacob's office. Nate unlocked his dad's drawer and looked at his CD collection. Nate had learned earlier that his dad kept them very precisely color-coded. Nate picked up a random CD before inserting it into the computer's disk drive.

From this moment on, Nate and Zelena were never the same.

They both witnessed the same thing. Cal Jacobs, on top of a younger boy, is having sex with him. Cal's grunting and the boy's moaning rang through both of their young ears. Zelena looked at Nate, who only continued to watch the video with a stoic look in his eyes. Zelena looked back at the video and noticed that her body was starting to feel weird while watching what was happening in front of her. Did she like this? Did this turn her on? One thing she knew for sure.

She would never be able to look at Cal Jacobs the same way again.

Zelena grabbed Nate's arms when she heard footsteps, and Nate quickly turned off the video, ejecting the disk from the computer and putting it back into the exact spot that his father had it in before. Nate grabbed Zelena's hand, and they quickly left Cal's office before going back to Nate's room, where he closed the door behind him.

"Natey..." Zelena said in a small voice. She was nervous. She didn't know how Nate felt about seeing his dad having sex with someone who wasn't his Mom and let alone a boy at that. Zelena also knew that since that was only one disk, every disk in that drawer was probably a video of him having sex with a different person, which made her think.

How long has he been doing this?

"We didn't see anything, Zelena. We're never going to talk about this again. And you can't tell anyone about this, okay?" Nate said, and Zelena nodded her head.

"Okay." She said.

"Promise me. Promise me that you won't tell anyone. Not your parents, not your brother, no one." Nate said, and Zelena nodded her head.

"I do, Natey. . I promise. I won't tell anyone." She said, and he nodded his head.

"Good," Nate said.

From that day forward, neither child was the same after seeing that video. Zelena didn't know that Nate had gone back and watched more of the videos his dad kept hidden. They both had a warped view of sex that they didn't know how to talk through. They both kept their word and never spoke about that incident again, and maybe they were never going to, at least they thought. But everything reaches a boiling point, eventually.

Their boiling point came seven years later.

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there honestly won't be too many changes to this book
i loved the plot exactly the way it is.

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xoxo.