Invisible To Her Bully (Jessa and Noah) novel Chapter 107

Noah

It was close to midnight when my phone lit up.

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I’d been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for over an hour, headphones in, music playing low just to drown out my own thoughts. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the flashes of last night — Daniel’s smirk,

– my fist connecting, the shock on everyone’s faces.

So when I saw Jackson’s name on the screen, I sat up fast.

“Hey,” I answered, voice low. “You good?”

A pause. Then a bitter laugh. “Define ‘good.”

I leaned back against my headboard. “That seems to be the question of the week.”

Jackson exhaled into the phone, a long, shaky breath. “I just blew up at my mom.”

That made me frown. “About what?”

“Everything,” he said, his voice rough. “Jessa, the fight, the way she didn’t know what’s been going on… me.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “What happened?”

He hesitated for a second, then the words just poured out. “She found out about all the crap online – the stuff about Jessa. She saw the comments, the videos. Asked why I didn’t stop it sooner, why I didn’t protect her. And I just… lost it, man. Told her I’m tired of being the only guy in that house. That if it weren’t for your dad, I wouldn’t even know how to shave.”

My chest tightened. “Damn, Jacks…”

“Yeah.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Real Hallmark moment, right?”

I stayed quiet, letting him keep talking.

“I told her I’m sick of trying to hold everything together. I’m supposed to be this perfect son, this good brother, this leader on the team… and I don’t even know who the hell I am half the time.” His voice cracked. “I feel like I’m screwing up all of it.”

I sat there for a second, staring at the faint glow of my phone screen in the dark.

“Hey,” I said finally, “you’re not screwing it all up. You just… had a breaking point. Everyone does.”

“Not like that,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have gone off on her. She looked at me like I’d turned into someone she didn’t recognize.”

“Yeah, well, maybe she needed to see that side of you,” I said quietly. “Because she’s been running herself ragged for years, and you’ve been pretending like you could handle it. That’s not her fault, but it’s not yours

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Chapter 107

either.”

He didn’t respond right away. I could hear him breathing, slow and heavy.

“Sometimes,” I added, “you’ve got to say the ugly stuff to finally get to the truth.”

Another pause. Then he said, “You sound like your dad.”

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Jackson actually chuckled – tired, but real. “He always made it look so easy. Like being a dad, being that guy everyone looked up to. I don’t have that. I keep thinking if I just act like everything’s fine, it’ll be fine. But it’s

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