Page 160 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
Tessa is slumped forward in her chair, her forehead resting heavily on the edge of my desk. Her hands are gripping the wood with enough force to drain the blood completely from her fingers.
“Tessa?” Owen is there instantly, crouching beside her. “Hey, hey. Look at me.”
She lifts her head. Her face is a sickly gray, and thick sweat is beading at her hairline.
“I’m… sorry,” she whispers. “I just… the screen… the scrolling…”
She gags.
It is a visceral, wet sound. She claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide with absolute panic.
“Trash can,” I bark at Ethan.
Ethan grabs the metal wastebasket from the corner and slides it over just as Tessa lurches forward. She doesn’t throw up, but she dry heaves, her small frame convulsing violently with the effort. It sounds painful.
It sounds entirely wrong.
I am out of my chair in a microsecond. I drop to my knees beside her, completely ignoring the code, ignoring Nebula, and ignoring the fifty million dollars.
“Tessa,” I say, my voice low and urgent as I put a hand on her back. She is burning up, or maybe she is freezing—her temperature regulation is completely haywire. “Breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.”
“I can’t,” she gasps, hot tears leaking from her eyes. “I’m dizzy. The room’s spinning.”
“Your blood pressure is bottoming out,” I say, grabbing her shoulders. “We need to get you horizontal.”
“No,” she protests weakly, trying to stubbornly push herself up. “I have to finish the statement… Markus…”
“Screw Markus,” Ethan snarls, looking entirely terrified. I have seen Ethan face down hostile boardrooms and angry ex-commanders without flinching, but I have never seen this expression on his face.
Helplessness.
“Asher, the screen,” Owen says, his voice incredibly tight.
I look up.
[Unknown User]: Oops. Did I hit a nerve? I see activity slowing down. Giving up? Releasing the first batch in 10 minutes.
“Ten minutes?” I snarl. “He said two hours.”
“Nebula is accelerating the timeline,” Ethan says. “They want us dead right now.”
“Asher,” Tessa whispers, grabbing my wrist. Her grip is incredibly weak and clammy. “Go back. Fix it. Please. Don’t let them destroy Mosaic. It’s… it’s our family.”
Her eyes lock fiercely onto mine. Hazel, terrified, and totally desperate. She loves this company. She loves us.
She is explicitly asking me to save the thing we built.
I look at the screen. The countdown timer sits at 09:59.
I look back at Tessa. She is violently trembling. She is sick. She is scared.
Logic dictates that I return to the keyboard. The probability of saving the company drops by four percent for every second I am not typing. The rational choice is to prioritize the many over the one.
But I am not rational anymore. Not when it comes to her.
“Owen,” I command, my voice maintaining an icy calm. “Take my seat.”
“What?” Owen blinks in shock. “I can’t code like you. I can’t stop Greg.”
