Chapter 89 Not Mine to Tell

Chapter 89 Not Mine to Tell

Chloe

The moment Daniel said he needed a minute, something inside me collapsed.

He had promised he would come back. He had even taken the time to make sure I understood that he was only going downstairs, but none of it quieted the certainty that settled over me once the bedroom door closed behind him.

It was over.

Daniel was simply too kind to end things while he was angry. He would take a few minutes, organize his thoughts, and return with the calm, careful explanation of someone who had already decided he could no longer trust me.

By the time he came back, I had worked myself into full, breathless sobs. Then he crossed the room and pulled me into his arms, and somehow his tenderness made everything worse. The way he rubbed my back and held me against his chest felt like the comfort someone offered before saying goodbye.

“Because I’m a horrible person,” I sobbed into his skin. “And now you’re going to break up with me.”

Daniel’s arms tightened around me. “I haven’t said that.”

“You needed to get away from me.”

“I needed five minutes to think.” His voice remained gentle, but there was a firmness beneath it that made me lift my head. “Those are not the same thing.”

My vision blurred again as I searched his face. Hurt still lived there, impossible to miss now that I knew I had placed it there, but he had come back. He was holding me. He had not retreated when I reached for him, even though he had every reason to.

Daniel brushed his thumb beneath my eye, catching another tear before it reached my cheek. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

The question pulled the air from my lungs.

He noticed the change immediately. His hand stilled against my face, and the patience in his expression gave way to fresh concern.

“There is.”

“Chloe.”

“It isn’t something else I did.” I swallowed hard and forced myself to sit upright, though I kept one hand curled against his waist because I could not bear to lose contact with him yet. “It’s about the episode that was supposed to come out this morning.”

Daniel waited.

“I received an email last night.” My gaze moved toward the closed laptop on his desk. “I think it came from Liam.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Why would Liam email the podcast?”

“He didn’t sign his name. The account was anonymous, but the way it was written made me think it was him.” I paused, trying to explain without repeating more of Liam’s private pain than necessary. Even telling Daniel felt like crossing another line, but he already lived with them and would need to understand why the podcast had gone silent. “The message said that Liam and Max have been in a relationship.”

Daniel went completely still.

I watched surprise move across his face before recognition began replacing it. He glanced toward the bedroom door, as though he could see through the walls and down the hallway to wherever Max was in the house.

“They’re together?”

“That’s what the email said.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know exactly. Long enough that keeping it hidden is hurting Liam.”

Daniel stared at the floor between his feet, processing the information with the same care he had given my confession. “And Max won’t tell anyone?”

“He’s afraid to come out. According to the email, his family is extremely homophobic, and he believes they’ll cut him off if they find out.” My stomach tightened as I remembered the desperation threaded through every paragraph. “The person who wrote it wanted the podcast to expose them. They thought if everyone knew, Max would be forced to stop hiding.”

Daniel’s head lifted sharply. “Forced?”

I nodded.

“And that was supposed to be today’s episode?”

“It could have been.” Shame crept into my voice even though I had refused to publish it. The fact that someone had believed I might still felt like an indictment of everything the podcast had become. “I had enough information to create one. I could have released it at eight o’clock, and by now the entire campus would know.”

Daniel’s jaw hardened. “But you didn’t.”

“No.” The answer came with more certainty than anything else I had said that morning. “I couldn’t do that to them.”

His gaze stayed fixed on mine.

“That is not a secret that belongs to anyone else,” I continued. “It doesn’t belong to the person who emailed me. It doesn’t belong to the team, the campus, or the people who listen to the podcast. Max gets to decide when he comes out and who he tells. Even if Liam is hurting, exposing Max would take that choice away from him forever.”

Daniel’s expression softened slightly, though the tension had not left his body. “What did you do with the email?”

“Nothing. I didn’t answer it, and I didn’t finish the script.” I looked toward my laptop again, remembering the cursor blinking beside a half-written introduction that would never be recorded. “I sat there for hours trying to convince myself that publishing it would help Liam, but that was just another excuse. It would have created drama. It would have given me more material for my thesis. It would have made people talk, but it would not have helped either of them.”

The truth of that pressed painfully against my ribs.

“I kept telling myself the podcast was about accountability,” I said. “That I was exposing people who deserved consequences because no one else would hold them responsible. But not every secret is evidence of wrongdoing. Sometimes it’s just private. Sometimes revealing it causes harm that can never be undone.”

Daniel’s hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck, his thumb resting beneath my hair. He did not interrupt, and the quiet gave me the courage to keep going.

“I thought I was different from the people who hurt my friend because I believed my reasons were better. But I was still deciding whose pain mattered and who deserved to have their life torn apart. I was still treating real people like stories I had the right to publish.”

My voice cracked again, but I refused to hide from him.

“Max and Liam made me finally see it. I could not expose them, Daniel. The moment I imagined them waking up to that episode and realizing someone had taken the choice away from them, I understood that all of this is wrong.”

The tears that slipped down my face felt quieter now, stripped of panic and leaving only the weight of what I had done.

“I don’t want to run the podcast anymore,” I whispered. “I don’t want to use anyone else’s life for my thesis. I don’t want another Sunday morning to belong to someone else’s humiliation.”

Daniel studied me for a long moment, his expression unreadable but no longer closed.

“I don’t want to do it anymore.”