Page 192 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

“Yes. Think of it like power steering. If the correction becomes too aggressive, the failsafe reduces input long enough for the pilot to regain control.”

“So the system is supposed to back off.”

“Exactly.”

I look back at the highlighted sections. “But this one didn’t.”

“No. It kept escalating instead.”

“That sounds important.”

“It is.”

“And it’s not doing that?”

“In the corrupted demo, no. The layer appears intact during diagnostics, but under specific conditions, it’s bypassed.”

I stare at the screen. Some of it still looks like nonsense. But the shape of what he’s saying makes sense. “So it looks safe until it actually needs to be safe.”

His gaze fixes on me. “Yes.”

“And Megan’s plane? How is it linked? Show me.”

He stills. “Addy?—”

“Show me.”

“This isn’t?—”

I fold my arms across my chest. “I know it’s not easy.”

“That’s not the concern.”

“Then what is?”

He holds my gaze. “I don’t want to pull you into something ugly.”

“Ethan, I was dumped at an airport by a man who lied about an entire apartment and then reappeared in your dining room with his affair girlfriend. Ugly and I are already acquainted.”

His mouth tightens.

The mention of Bryce still changes the atmosphere.

“I’m not fragile,” I add.

“I know that.”

“Then stop treating me like I’ll break if I see the hard parts.”

He turns the laptop fully toward me. “Here.”

And just like that, I’m in.

The next twenty minutes are a crash course in systems I have no business understanding and yet somehow start to follow because Ethan explains them like a pilot, not a tech bro. He doesn’t dumb it down, which I appreciate. He just builds the logic step by step until the pieces begin to connect.

I don’t understand the code itself.

Honestly, most of it still looks like someone taught a spreadsheet anxiety.