Page 12 of Until You

“Brad,” she says, her voice breaking. “He’s been seeing someone else all along.”

Noah’s hands shake as she finally tells us both exactly what she walked in on earlier today, the things she heard and saw. Noah clenches his jaw and listens patiently, but I know he’s already plotting Brad’s demise. I know, because I am too.

Noah raises his hand to her face and pushes her hair out of the way carefully. “You’ve got me, Aria,” he says. “Thisis your home. Gray and I, we’re your family. You don’t need Brad. Fuck him, okay? Fuck that asshole. I never liked him anyway.”

Aria smiles at his words, but another tear drops down her cheek. Noah looks at me, and I nod. Brad’s going to pay. He’ll regret hurting Aria the way he has.

I’m going to hit him in ways he won’t ever see coming. He’ll never recover. I won’t stop until his life is in pieces, and even then, it won’t be enough.

9

Grayson

Noah closes Aria’s bedroom door and leans against it. He looks devastated and it’s obvious he’s feeling Aria’s pain as though it’s his own. He straightens and clenches his jaw, his expression shifting from pain to angry determination. He turns resolutely and heads toward the stairs, and I fall into step with him.

“You’re a doctor,” I remind him. “Your hands are precious. Do you really want to damage them? Those hands should be used to save lives.”

He glances at me and clenches his jaw. “She’s my sister. I haven’t seen her cry like that in over a decade. I don’t give a fuck about my hands, Gray. I’m burying that douchebag.”

He reaches the door and bends down to put on his shoes. I sigh. I get it. I want to beat Brad up just as much as he does, but will it help?

“All right. I guess I’ll have to bail you out for aggravated assault, then. How much do you think it’ll cost me? Do you think they’ll still let you work in a hospital if you have a criminal record? I’m not sure, you know.”

Noah freezes and looks down at his shoes. He looks defeated and helpless, feelings I understand all too well. “What do you want me to do, Gray? I can’t just let this slide. He broke her heart. He made hercry.”

I nod and lean against the front door, blocking his exit. “What I want you to do is leave this to me. I’m here, aren’t I? Beating him up might put him in the hospital, but he’ll recover. He’ll get over it, and in a month, it’ll be like it never happened. We can’t have that. Aria is my family too, Noah. I won’t let him get away with what he did. I’ll ruin his fucking life. Trust me, okay?”

Noah looks into my eyes, as though he’s wondering whether to put his faith in me. He nods hesitantly, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“I want him to pay for using her, Gray. I want him to regret hurting her the way he has.”

I smile at him smugly and cross my arms. “Noah, I’ll make him regret ever approaching her.”

Noah nods and I tip my head toward the living room. “Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s make this son of a bitch pay.”

I lead him to the dining table where I’ve been working this week and start up my laptop as we both sit down. Noah is restless as he watches me type line after line of code, and I sigh, forcing myself to talk him through what I’m doing, even if it’s just to ease his worries.

“Aria said she helped him with software, didn’t she? If not for her, he’d never have a working project. I’ve just gained access to both his work computer and his laptop, and I’m corrupting all his files and back-ups. Not in an obvious way, though. That’d be too easy. I’m altering the code,” I say, pointing out specific lines of code that likely mean nothing to Noah, but he nods nonetheless. “This makes it so that every piece of software he’s worked on starts to act more and more buggy over the next few days, and every day, the issues will get worse. He won’t realize until the software has already been delivered to his clients, and by then, it’ll be too late for him to fix it.”

Noah grins and looks at me with wide eyes. “You can do that?”

I nod as my fingers fly over the keyboard. “This will ruin his reputation in the industry. He’ll lose his job, but more importantly, he’ll never be able to work as a software engineer again. Not after the mess he’ll be left with. Issues this big will result in a big investigation, and they’ll trace it all back to him.”

Noah crosses his arms and frowns. “He won’t know?”

I shake my head. “It’s quite obvious which parts of his software were coded by him, and which were crafted by someone else. Aria, I assume. His coding is a fucking mess, using ten lines where he could use one. He’s never going to figure it out, and I’ve made sure all issues point back to him.”

The short, tight lines of code look familiar to me. There are patterns I recognize, but I can’t quite place where I’ve seen them before.

Noah sits with me and stares at my screen intently as I finish writing the amendments that will ruin Brad’s life before removing every trace of my presence.

I sit back and sigh in relief when it’s done, but I don’t feel much better. It’s not enough. The damage I’ve done is extensive, but it doesn’t ease my anger.

“All done,” I tell Noah.

“Thank you, Gray. If you hadn’t been here, I might actually have ruined my career in a fit of rage. Aria would blame herself if that happened, and that’s the last thing I want to do to her. I don’t know, man. Just… thank you.”

I nod awkwardly. I’ve known Noah for over a decade, but I still don’t know what to say to stuff like this. He smiles knowingly and rises from his seat.

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