My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 32

Most of the script had the same spacing. The same structure. A line would start, indent, close, indent again like steps on a staircase but halfway down the screen the rhythm broke, just slightly.

I squinted. The letters still swam when I tried to read them normally, but the shapes didn’t lie.

That section looked... crooked like someone had kicked one stair out of place. My heart beat a little faster. I leaned closer.

07:43

Okay.

Okay.

I dragged the window wider so the lines stretched across the screen. When the code got longer, it was easier for my brain to see the structure instead of the letters.

I didn’t try to read the words, I watched the shape, bracket, indent, command, close, bracket.

Again and again.

Then—

There.

My finger hovered over the trackpad.

One bracket pointed the wrong direction. It was small, almost invisible. To most people it would probably look normal but the pattern was broken.

My brain liked patterns. It held onto them the way other people held onto sentences. I clicked the line and moved the cursor slowly across it.

The letters still blurred, but I knew the structure.

Open.

Close.

Open.

Close.

Except here, my stomach dropped.

The bracket was backwards, not just backwards. It was sitting in the wrong place, pushing the rest of the line forward like a domino.

The room felt hotter by the second.

Without thinking about it, I reached up and loosened the top buttons of my shirt. The collar had been pressing against my throat, and suddenly it felt like I couldn’t breathe properly.

The fabric shifted slightly as I leaned forward again.

I pressed backspace, and the line shifted slightly. Then I typed the correct bracket. The cursor blinked.

For a second nothing happened.

My pulse thudded in my ears, then the entire block of code realigned itself like someone had straightened a crooked stack of papers.

The structure snapped back into place, the shapes were clean again.

Perfect stairs.

Working.

My head snapped toward the timer.

00:14

Fourteen seconds.

My lungs finally pulled in a full breath. I leaned back slowly in the chair, my heart still hammering like I had just run a mile.

For a moment the room was completely quiet.

I finally looked up. Raphael hadn’t moved from where he was sitting across the table. His arms were still crossed over his chest but the tapping of his finger had stopped.

Then slowly, he stood up, straightened his jacket, and then footsteps followed. I kept my eyes on the laptop screen even though the code had already stopped moving. The program was running clean now. Perfect rows of data scrolled down in rhythm.

Then his shadow fell across the keyboard.

Raphael stepped up behind my chair and leaned forward. One of his hands came down on the table beside the laptop, long inked fingers spreading against the black surface.

The other hand rested against the back of my chair. He bent slightly, towering over me.

From the corner of my eye I saw the sleeve of his suit stretch over his forearm as he leaned closer to the screen. The faint scent of his cologne drifted toward me, dark, expensive, something sharp under it.

His gaze moved over the laptop, scanning the lines of code that were now running smoothly.

A low sound left his throat, “Interesting,” he said quietly. His voice was close enough that I felt the vibration of it along the back of my neck. My fingers curled slightly against my lap.