Previously…
– Christian overheard his mother and Trevor talking about how Trevor acted in a porn film years ago.
– Rosie and Travis allowed a sample to be taken from Gabrielle so that her DNA could be tested against Brent and Molly’s.
– One of Loretta’s henchman posed as a police officer and tried to intercept the test in order to fix the results, but he was foiled before he could get his hands on the sample.

The sound of central air conditioning thrums subtly throughout the house. Christian Taylor locks the door to his bedroom and crosses to his desk, which sits in front of the window. He opens his laptop and turns it on; as he waits for it to boot up, he gazes out at the bright summer day outside. He can still feel the heat soaking into his skin from the three-mile run he just took, and he is grateful for the cool air flowing through the vents of his mother’s house. 

He sits down at the desk, still in his red shorts and white tank top from his run. WIth his heart beginning to race a little, he opens his web browser, switches into private mode, and then pulls up the bookmark that he saved a few days ago under the title ‘Ariana Grande Live Performances.’ When he clicks on the link, though, it is far from a list of appearances or collection of concert videos — instead, it is a forum post that he found after many sessions of furtive Googling. 

Right there on his screen are a slew of photos of Trevor Brooks from back in his modeling days. He has long thought Trevor to be an attractive man, even before he could acknowledge to himself that men hold sexual interest to him, but ever since he overheard his mom and Trevor talking about how Trevor did porn years ago, he has started to see the family friend in a whole new light. He scrolls through the post, at photos of a Trevor who can’t have been that much older than Christian is now — probably post-college, mid-20s, but he looks so young compared to the very hot but definitely middle-aged man that Trevor is nowadays.

Christian’s chest tightens as he moves through the photos. Some featured Trevor fully clothed: in a black turtleneck, in a leather jacket with broad lapels and a multitude of zippers, in a plain white t-shirt and jeans. Others exclude the shirts entirely, and one particularly intriguing shot depicts Trevor with his jeans unbuttoned, the top of his white underwear showing. 

Knowing what is coming, Christian scrolls further down. And there it is: an embedded video from a porn site. In the still, Christian can see a shirtless Trevor, in his 20s, with a sly grin on his face. As his hand moves to click the mouse and hit play, his other hand breaches the waistband of his shorts–

“Are you in there?” a voice yells out, as a series of quick knocks on the door almost send Christian toppling from his chair. 

He recognizes Marcus Gray‘s voice at once, and a moment later, he hears Bree Halston, too:

“Caleb let us in!”

With his heart now pounding for an entirely different reason, Christian closes the browser, shuts his laptop, and takes a moment to straighten himself out. 

“Yeah, one sec!” he calls back. He is still breathing hard when he pulls open the bedroom door.

“What are you guys doing?” he asks once he is face-to-face with his two friends. Embarrassed, he runs a hand over his eyes for effect. “I was just about to nap.”

“We’ll get coffees on the way,” Bree says. “Come on.”

Christian furrows his brow at her. “Where are we going?”

“Dorm shopping!” Marcus announces. “Now let’s get moving.”

“Oh, uh…” Christian’s mind is moving so quickly that he struggles to orient himself. “I, uh, I need to shower.”

“Just change and let’s go,” Bree says.

Without prompting, Marcus leans in and sniffs Christian. “Yeah, you’re good. Put on a different shirt and let’s hit it. We have a lot of shit to get before we move into the dorms!”

“Okay, okay,” Christian grumbles as he goes to his dresser for a clean shirt.

—–

Natalie Bishop stands before the open SubZero refrigerator in the expansive kitchen of her home. She knows that she should have the baby carrots and hummus for a snack… but the leftover Chinese food in little white cartons is calling out to her. She is still contemplating her choice when her mother-in-law breezes into the room, immediately dampening her mood.

“Well, hello there,” Loretta trills.

Doing her best to fight back a sigh, Natalie closes the refrigerator. “Hi, Loretta. How are you?”

“I’ve been better. But I’m glad I found you. I was hoping we could have a talk.”

Oh god. What now? Natalie thinks, even as she forces a smile.

“Sure,” she says with labored cheeriness. “About what?”

Loretta positions herself on the opposite side of the large, granite island. “As it turns out, I have a favor to ask you.”

Can I just eat some leftover Chinese in peace? Natalie wonders.

“A favor, huh?” she says instead. “What kind of favor?”

“I’m going to cut to the chase,” Loretta says. “I need you to get into a lab at the hospital and switch a little test for me. Nothing too difficult.”

“What? Why would I–“

“You can spare me the demure act. I know you found a way to switch at least one of Peter’s paternity tests a few years ago. You must have your ways.”

Natalie plants her palms on the island. “What kind of test do you need switched?”

“A DNA test. It’s nothing, really,” Loretta tells her. “Your niece is still in that coma, isn’t she? I’m sure you can steal someone’s badge while you visit her–“

“Steal someone’s badge? No!” Natalie shakes her head. “Why are you asking me to do this? Don’t you have… goons?”

“The person I hired for the job wasn’t able to see it through. And so, here I am, hat in hand, coming to my most desperate option: you.”

“Calling me desperate isn’t exactly coming to me hat in hand,” Natalie says. “And it’s not going to get you anywhere, either. I don’t want any part of whatever you’re up to.”

“That’s unfortunate, because you don’t have much of a choice.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because that nurse, Sonja Kahele, is back in town,” Loretta says, arching one eyebrow.

Natalie suddenly feels as if the kitchen is shrinking, its walls closing in on her, threatening to press every last molecule of air out of her body. 

“Do you understand me now?” Loretta asks.

“Sonja’s back? What? Does she know–“

“That you are the one who hired her to toy with my son and keep him from remembering his accident? No. Not yet. But I’ve kept that card to myself long enough — and if you don’t help me out now, I’ll have no choice but to play it.”

“Loretta,” Natalie says. “Please…”

“Unless you want Spencer to know the truth and take your son away from you so quickly your head will spin,” Loretta says, “you’d best do as I’m asking.”

The sharp cry of a desk phone cuts into the air as Rosie Jimenez walks through the bullpen of desks in the main area of the King’s Bay Police Department. She hears a detective answering the call in his typical dry, flat tone, but the remainder of his conversation fades into the background as she arrives at the water cooler and fills her water bottle.

“Nothing from the lab yet, huh?” she hears Brent Taylor ask from behind her.

Rosie’s finger lingers on the tab of the water cooler as she finishes filling the bottle. She has been avoiding her boss ever since the samples were taken for the DNA test, and now that he is right here, she isn’t sure what to say to him.

“We haven’t heard anything,” Rosie says as she slowly stands.

“I figured it was too soon, yeah.” Brent scratches the back of his head. “How are you and Travis holding up?”

She twists the cap back onto her water bottle before saying, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Make small talk. Try to act like everything’s normal.”

Brent slides his hands into the pockets of his dark brown slacks. “Nothing is normal, I’ll give you that.”

“No, and we don’t need to pretend like it is,” Rosie replies. “This is gonna be whatever it’s gonna be.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to see you or Travis be hurt. Molly and I, we’ve been through hell being told that our baby died–“

“And I’m sorry about that. I really, really am. But I don’t understand why you have to come after our family.”

“We’re not coming after you, Jimenez,” Brent says, his voice picking up in strength. “If our baby was a girl and she was taken away from us — it isn’t the craziest leap to think she could be the one baby who was dropped off at the station right around the same time.”

Rosie folds her arms in front of her uniform. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Travis was my nephew for years. I still think of him as family. And you — you’re a coworker, and a friend, and someone I care about.”

“Commander, I’m grateful for all the support you’ve shown me and my career,” she says, “even when I gave you good reason to doubt me.”

“So you understand this isn’t personal–“

“–but if this destroys my family…” She shakes her head ruefully. “I don’t know what I’ll do. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep working here, I can tell you that much.”

“Jimenez.”

“Let’s see what the test says, okay?” She shrugs and walks off before Brent can even reply.

—–

“How many pillows do you need for one bed?”

Marcus stands in the middle of an aisle at Target, his hands holding the red shopping cart that is already half-filled with items like towels and sheets. He watches as Christian loads a variety of plastic-wrapped down pillows into his own cart.

“Well, you need one for under your head, and one for between your knees,” Christian explains. “And then a body pillow to wrap your arms around.”

Marcus screws up his face. “You put a pillow between your knees?”

“If you sleep on your side, it’s good for alignment,” Bree chimes in.

“See?” Christian says as he selects a long body pillow and stuffs it awkwardly into the cart.

“Nah, I’m good. I sleep on my back and, like, don’t move,” Marcus says.

“That is not true!” Bree retorts. “You shift around soooo much. And, like, kick your legs all over the place.”

“I do not.”

Christian’s chest tightens as he listens to their exchange. After Prom, he should have assumed… but…

“So you guys are having sleepovers?” he asks, hoping the question comes off sounding casual even though it feels anything but that.

He notices the ensuing moment of conspiratorial eye contact between his two friends. 

“It’s totally cool,” Christian says as he wills his throat not to close up from emotion. “It’s not weird. If you felt like you had to sneak around behind my back — that’s weird.”

Bree takes a deep breath before explaining, “We’re not having sleepovers. We were watching a movie and I fell asleep in Marcus’s room, that’s all.”

“And then my mom almost killed me when she stuck her head into the room and realized Bree was still there at midnight,” Marcus adds.

“Okay. Cool.” Christian lifts both his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Should we go look at microwaves? I know Caleb isn’t going to buy any of the shared stuff for our room…”

Without awaiting their responses, he pushes his cart down the aisle. His mind keeps whispering that he needs to keep his reaction in check, that he doesn’t have anything he can actually be upset at his friends about… and yet, that sinking feeling in his stomach won’t quite go away as they continue shopping.

—–

Feeling trapped, Natalie glances around the kitchen. A set of Wüsthof knives, their black handles sticking out of the acacia-wood block, call out to her. If she could just grab one of them and jam it into the old bag… would anyone even miss her? 

Maybe, maybe not. Natalie knows that she has no way of guaranteeing how Spencer would react to the death of the woman who raised him, even if he claims to want her out of their house. And there’s no telling what associates Loretta has out there, ready to avenge her death, no matter how deserved it might be.

Instead, she decides to fight back with her words — and reason.

“Loretta, if that were something I could do, I’d do it,” Natalie says. “To get you off my back, to keep Sonja from talking — yeah, I’d do it.”

“Then you’d better get to it, no?” Loretta responds coolly.

“But this is not a solid plan. No offense. I’d have to steal a hospital employee’s badge, hope that it was one that could get me into the lab, hope that I could find the samples — if they’re even on-site and weren’t sent out — and then pray I didn’t get caught. There are too many ways this could go wrong.”

Loretta frowns, and the well concealed lines around her mouth become a little more visible.

“If you’re going to insist that I help you, we need to come up with something a lot more foolproof,” Natalie continues. She hopes that the older woman’s lack of immediate rebuttal means that Natalie is getting through to her.

After letting out a huff, Loretta says, “I suppose even a broken clock is correct twice a day. You might have a valid point.”

“Okay. See? We can figure something out.”

“We’re running out of time,” Loretta tells her. 

“Then why don’t you tell me what you need, and we can go from there?”

“Very well,” Loretta says after a thoughtful pause. “But let us be very clear about one thing: if you try anything clever, I will make sure that pesky nurse exposes you, and you will be lucky if you get to see Peter once a year in the visiting room of a prison.”

Natalie pulls out one of the chairs at the kitchen island, ready to listen, even as her brain is concocting ways to extract herself from this mess without angering Loretta any further.

END OF EPISODE 1142

Will Natalie be forced to aid Loretta?
Can Rosie and Brent’s relationship recover?
Should Christian be open with his friends?
Talk about it all in the comments below!

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