[ The viper seems to pick up on that failure to definitively answer more than Julie herself does. It spits and hisses again, but Julie places a hand on its neck, her first real acknowledgement that it's even present. She's spent months working out her control of the snake, her ability to contain her rage and fear so that it doesn't just continually show up and strike everyone who bumps into her on the street. ]

You wouldn't. [ She looks at him with a dark sense of resignation, her jaw set firmly. ] I mean, that says it all, don't it? You can't say it. That if you hafta make a choice between me and someone else, you can't say you'd choose me. And like, I'm not sayin' I'd expect that from someone I didn't tell. But you took it on your fuckin' self to puzzle it out. And you knew, you fuckin' knew from the second you first suspected, what kinda dangerous this shit is. And you still kept diggin'. Did you just want leverage on me or somethin'?

[ Because that's what it is. Leverage. The second Rhy or Jack or any of his other little boyfriends gets caught out for something serious, she's the magic get-out-of-jail-free card. And there is no leverage she can ever get on anyone else that will be equivalent.

There are others who know about her, to varying extents. Most of them are people in her daily orbit, people she is physically close to. The others found out accidentally, but have been protective all the same. And they haven't been lying to her for as long as they've known her. She doesn't worry about Stephen or Wanda -- they are both so powerful in their own ways that she knows they won't break. Rhy cannot sell her out without selling out himself, and he does not know the full truth of her connection, not identical to his own. Everyone else is in Cadens, with her.

Kyle does not fit any of those boxes so neatly.

It begins to rain. Julie stays dry, but her cheeks don't. ]

And now it's not hidden anymore. Hope your god's happy.