Chapter 120 Teams Don't Hide Things

Chapter 120 Teams Don't Hide Things
Jake POV

The message on my screen doesn't move, doesn't blink, just sits there glowing while my whole chest goes tight.
Ask him why he's been paying that man to stay quiet for the last sixteen years.
"Jake." Penny's voice sounds far away. "What does yours say?"
I turn the phone toward her slowly, and I watch her face do the same thing mine probably just did, go pale, then blank, then somewhere past blank into something that doesn't have a name yet.
"Sixteen years," she whispers. "Jake, that's my whole life. Somebody's been paying somebody to stay quiet about me for my entire life?"
"I don't know." My voice comes out rough. "I don't know anything anymore, Penny, and I'm so tired of not knowing."
We stand there outside the library, the evening light draining out of the sky, both of us staring at our phones like they might rearrange themselves into something less impossible if we just wait long enough. Neither of them do.
"We need to talk to my dad," I finally say. "Tonight. No more waiting for his hearing, no more giving him time. If he's been paying someone off about your birth certificate for sixteen years, he needs to explain it right now."
Penny nods, still shaken, and that's when something clicks fully into place for me, not about the message, but about her. About the tutoring. About the way she just stood there twenty minutes ago getting cash from a stranger's mom, clearly hoping I wouldn't notice, clearly carrying something heavy all on her own while I was too buried in my own family's collapse to even see it happening.
"Penny." I stop walking. "How long has the tutoring thing actually been going on?"
She hesitates, and that hesitation tells me everything. "About a week."
"A week." Something twists hard in my chest, and it's not anger at her, not even close, it's anger at myself, sharp and sudden and completely deserved. "A whole week you've been sneaking around doing extra work to help your mom, and I had no idea. None. I've been so wrapped up in my own family falling apart that I didn't even notice you were drowning too."
"You had a lot going on," she says softly, like she's trying to let me off the hook, which somehow makes it worse.
"That's not an excuse." I run a hand through my hair, frustrated with myself in a way I haven't let myself feel all week, because I've been so focused on surviving my own crisis that Penny's crisis apparently slipped right past me. "You've been sitting with me on porches at midnight, holding my hand through police stations, defending my family against Brianna, helping me survive every single terrible thing that's happened this week. And this whole time you were quietly picking up extra work because your family's struggling too, and you didn't think you could tell me?"
"I didn't want to add to what you're already carrying," Penny says, and her voice cracks slightly on the last word. "You had your dad, your mom's case, Lily, the reporter. It felt selfish bringing you my problems on top of that."
"It's not selfish. It's exactly what teams do, Penny." I take her hands, holding them tight, needing her to actually hear this. "We're supposed to be in this together. Not you carrying your stuff alone in some corner while I carry mine in a different corner. That's not partnership, that's two people quietly suffering side by side and calling it love because it's easier than admitting we're both struggling."
Her eyes fill up, and she doesn't try to blink it away this time. "I'm sorry. You're right. I keep doing the thing my mom taught me without meaning to, protect people by staying quiet. I didn't even realize I was doing it to you too."
"No more of that," I say firmly, pulling her into a hug, feeling her breathe out shaky against my shoulder. "Whatever's coming, this birth certificate thing, whoever this mystery man is, whatever my dad's been hiding, we face it together. All of it. No secrets, even the ones we think we're keeping to protect each other."
She nods against my chest, and for a moment we just stand there, holding on, letting the fear and exhaustion of the last week settle into something we're at least facing side by side instead of alone.
Then my phone rings, sharp and sudden, cutting the moment clean in half.
It's my dad.
I answer immediately, pulse spiking. "Dad, we need to talk. Right now. Somebody sent Penny a message about you paying someone off, about her birth certificate,"
"Jake." His voice cuts through mine, and something about the tone stops me cold, something urgent and afraid in a way I haven't heard from him yet, even through everything else this week. "Where are you right now? Is Penny with you?"
"Yeah, she's right here. Dad, what's going on?"
"Listen to me very carefully." His voice drops low, shaking. "Do not go back to the house tonight. Either of you. I just got a call from my lawyer. The man on Penny's birth certificate, the one I've apparently been quietly paying to stay away for sixteen years, he was released from custody two hours ago on an unrelated charge, and Jake, according to the paperwork my lawyer just found, he's not some random stranger."
"Then who is he?" My voice comes out barely steady.
There's a long pause on the line, my dad's breathing ragged on the other end, and when he finally answers, the words land like the floor dropping out from under me completely.
"He's the reason your mother's case got reopened in the first place, Jake. Because two years ago, right before she died, your mother finally found him. She found Penny's real father, and three days later, she was dead."