Chapter 8 Not Part of the Plan
L ena’s father waited until they reached the far side of the garden before he disappointed her properly.
That was considerate of him.
Coach Evan Hart never corrected his daughter in the middle of a crowd if he could avoid it. He believed in privacy for family matters, even when privacy felt less like kindness and more like a closed door with no witnesses.
Behind them, the donor party glittered on.
Champagne.
Soft laughter.
White tents breathing in the spring breeze.
Nico Reyes standing beneath the string lights with his hands in his pockets, looking like a beautiful storm someone had forced into formalwear.
Lena did not look back at him.
She wanted to.
Which was precisely why she did not.
Her father stopped beside the stone fountain near the edge of the garden. Water spilled quietly behind him, soft and pretty and useless against the tension in his face.
“You need to be more careful,” he said.
Lena folded her arms, then immediately unfolded them because defensive body language was apparently her body’s way of betraying guilt she did not deserve.
“I’m being careful.”
“No.” His voice stayed low. “You’re being convincing.”
“That is the assignment.”
“The assignment is to help stabilize Nico’s public image. Not create a spectacle.”
Lena looked past him toward the courts beyond the hedges. The sun had dropped lower, brushing everything gold. When she was younger, she used to think Westbridge looked magical at this hour. Like the whole campus had been built to glow.
Now she knew better.
Some things looked warmest right before they burned you.
“Nobody believed the campaign until tonight,” she said. “Now they do.”
“That is exactly what concerns me.”
The words hit too close to where her own panic lived.
Lena smiled.
Small.
Controlled.
The kind of smile that said she was mature enough to handle this conversation and absolutely not thinking about Nico’s hand at her back.
“Dad, you approved this.”
“I approved a temporary public strategy.”
“And now you’re upset because the public strategy is public?”
His jaw tightened.
A tiny flare of satisfaction moved through her, then guilt followed immediately because she loved him and hated hurting him and hated even more that disagreeing with him still felt like hurting him.
“I am upset,” he said, “because I know the difference between a performance and a girl starting to believe in one.”
Lena’s breath caught.
For half a second, she was twelve again, standing in the hallway outside his office, listening to him tell an assistant coach that she was handling her mother’s death beautifully.
Beautifully.
As if grief had been a routine she performed well enough to win points.
She had learned then that if she smiled calmly, people stopped worrying.
She had also learned that once people stopped worrying, they stopped looking.
“You don’t get to decide what I believe,” she said.
Her father’s face changed.
Not anger.
Pain.
That was worse.
“Lena.”
There it was again.
Her name as a plea.
Her name as a warning.
Her name as a leash.
“No,” she said quietly. “Not like that.”
His brows pulled together. “Like what?”
“Like I’m five seconds away from ruining my life because I smiled at a boy you don’t trust.”
“This is not about a smile.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It is about judgment.”
The word landed hard.
Lena felt it in the hollow beneath her ribs.
Judgment.
As if hers was questionable because Nico made her pulse trip.
As if wanting something made her stupid.
As if she had not spent years watching men in this program make reckless choices and still be called passionate, competitive, complicated.
But she smiled too much, so if she stepped out of line, it became poor judgment.
“I have judgment,” she said.
“I know you do.”
“Do you?”
Her father went quiet.
Good.
She was glad.
No, she was not.
Yes, she was.
The feelings tangled inside her until she could barely tell which one was daughter and which one was woman.
From across the garden, someone laughed loudly. Glass clinked. A camera flashed.
Lena’s phone buzzed in her hand.
She glanced down before she could stop herself.
A new post.
Not from the gossip account this time.
Savannah.
Of course.
A soft, golden-hour photo filled the screen. It showed Lena and Nico from earlier, his hand at her back, his head tipped toward her, the two of them looking disgustingly like a couple with secrets worth keeping.
Savannah’s caption was sweet enough to rot teeth.
Some love stories arrive right on schedule. Especially when the PR team needs them most.
Lena’s stomach dropped.
Her father saw her face change. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Lena.”
She turned the screen toward him.
He read it.
His expression went still.
The comments were already moving.
Omg she said what everyone’s thinking.
Wait is it fake??
I knew this was damage control.
Nico using Coach’s daughter to save his scholarship is insane.
Or maybe she’s using him to build her resume.
That one hit differently.
Lena stared at it for one second too long.
Her father’s voice lowered. “This is why I warned you.”
She looked up.
The words should have comforted her.
They did not.
Because beneath them was the part he did not say.
I told you so.
You should have listened.
You were not ready.
Something inside Lena straightened.
“No,” she said.
Her father blinked. “No?”
“No. This is why the campaign matters.”
“This is why the campaign should be paused.”
“And let Savannah’s version become the truth?”
“You are too close to this.”
“I am exactly close enough to see what everyone else is missing.”
Her father’s face hardened. “Which is?”
Lena looked toward Nico.
She did not mean to.
It just happened.
He was standing near the edge of the tent, half-shadowed, half-gold. Jace was talking beside him, probably making some joke Nico refused to enjoy. But Nico was not listening.
He was looking at his phone.
His jaw had gone tight.
He had seen the post.
Then, as if he felt her watching, his eyes lifted.
Across the garden, through all that distance and noise and pretty public ruin, he found her.
Lena’s heart hurt.
Not fluttered.
Not skipped.
Hurt.
Because she knew exactly what that post would feel like to him.
Not embarrassment.
Confirmation.
That he was a tool. A scandal. A problem being softened by a girl whose world had always had more protection than his.
“That he’s not using me,” Lena said.
Her father followed her gaze.
His silence sharpened.
Lena looked back at him. “And I’m not using him.”
Even as she said it, guilt scraped through her.
Because at the beginning, she had been.
Maybe not cruelly.
Maybe not entirely.
But she had looked at Nico Reyes and seen a crisis with legs. A headline to fix. A career-making challenge wrapped in black athletic tape and bad temper.
She had not seen the freshman’s grip.
The strings.
The phone call to his mother.
The way his hand had hovered at her back like he wanted to protect without claiming permission.
Her father studied her face. “You need to step away for tonight.”
Lena slid her phone into her small purse. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No.” Her voice steadied. “I won’t.”
Then she walked away before he could tell her to stop.
Her pulse hammered with every step back across the lawn. Students and donors glanced at her as she passed. Smiled. Whispered. Lifted phones. Pretended not to.
Nico watched her come.
His expression was unreadable, but his shoulders had gone stiff beneath the black shirt.
Jace saw her first and wisely stepped back.
“Good luck,” he muttered to Nico.
Nico did not look away from Lena. “Coward.”
“Alive coward,” Jace said, and vanished toward the dessert table.
Lena stopped in front of Nico.
For a second, neither of them spoke.
The party moved around them, glittering and hungry.
“You saw it,” she said.
His mouth curved without humor. “Hard to miss when half the garden looked at me like I stole something.”
“I’m handling it.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
She knew it as soon as his face closed.
“I’m sure you are,” he said.
“Nico.”
“No, really. This is your part, right? Bad post. Worse comments. Smile, spin, fix.”
The words stung because they sounded like the version of her she was trying not to be.
She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Savannah wants a reaction.”
“Then maybe don’t give her one.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You walked over here like you were about to commit murder in pastel.”
Despite herself, Lena almost laughed.
Almost.
Then another comment appeared in her mind.
Or maybe she’s using him to build her resume.
The laughter disappeared.
Nico saw it.
Because of course he did.
His eyes narrowed. “What did they say?”
“Nothing important.”
“That’s your liar voice.”
“I don’t have a liar voice.”
“You have a whole collection.”
She should have snapped back.
Instead, she looked at him and felt tired in a way smiling had never fixed.
“They said you were using me,” she said.
Something dark flickered in his face.
Then she added, quieter, “And that I was using you.”
His gaze shifted away.
That one landed.
Of course it did.
Because it was too close to the bruise.
Lena hated Savannah for knowing where to press.
She hated herself more for giving her the opening.
“I’ll take care of it,” Lena said.
Nico’s eyes came back to hers. “How?”
“By changing the conversation.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I’m going to post something people can’t twist as easily.”
His face tightened. “Of me.”
“Of us.”
“No.”
“Nico—”
“No.” His voice stayed low, but the word had steel in it. “I’m not giving her more.”
“You won’t be giving her anything. You’ll be giving me two minutes.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is if the whole point is making me look better standing next to you.”
Lena flinched.
Barely.
But he saw it.
His expression shifted, frustration breaking around the edges. “I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did.”
He looked away, jaw working.
Lena took a breath.