Chapter 10 Sam
Sam
We don't talk on the walk back to Devan's room.
There's nothing to say. Or maybe there's too much to say and neither of us knows where to start. Either way, we walk in silence, hands clasped so tight my fingers are going numb.
The campus is offensively normal. Students lounging on the quad, someone playing frisbee, a group laughing outside the coffee cart. Don't they know the world just ended? Don't they feel the crater where my future used to be?
Apparently not.
My legs feel like they belong to someone else. Each step is mechanical, automatic. Twenty-four hours. That's what Sterling gave us. Twenty-four hours to decide which one of us gets sacrificed on the altar of his power play.
I keep seeing his face. That cold smile. One winner. One loser. That's the game.
Devan's hand tightens around mine, and I realize I'm shaking.
He unlocks his door and we slip inside. The room still smells like us—like this morning, like sex and sleep and safety. The sheets are still tangled from when we stumbled out of bed to answer Sterling's summons. My coffee mug is still on the nightstand, half-empty and cold.
That was four hours ago. It feels like a thousand years.
Devan sits on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched. He looks smaller than usual, which shouldn't be possible—he's six-foot-three and built like a wall. But right now he looks like someone carved him hollow.
I pace. I can't sit. If I sit, I'll shatter.
"Okay," I say, because someone has to start. "Okay. Let's think about this logically."
Devan laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Logically. Sure."
"What are our options?" I tick them off on my fingers. "One: you sign the non-compete. I take the internship."
"No."
"Two: I sign the non-compete. You take the internship."
"Absolutely not."
"Three: we both refuse. Neither of us gets anything, Sterling picks someone else, and we're both locked out anyway."
Devan is quiet for a moment. "What about a coin flip?"
"Are you serious?"
"No." He drags a hand through his hair. "I don't know. Maybe."
"I'm not flipping a coin for your future, Devan."
"Then what?" He looks up at me, and the exhaustion in his eyes makes my chest hurt. "What's the play here, Sam? Because I don't see one."
I don't either. That's the problem.
I keep pacing. The room is too small. The walls are closing in.
"Maybe we're thinking about this wrong," I say. "Maybe there's an angle we're not seeing."
"Like what?"
"I don't know!" The words come out sharper than I intended. "I don't know, okay? I'm trying to—I'm trying to find a way out of this, and every door I look at is bricked shut."
"Sam." Devan stands, reaching for me. "Hey. Stop."
"I can't stop." I shake him off, still pacing. "If I stop moving, I'm going to start screaming, and I don't think I'll be able to stop."
"Then scream."
I whirl on him. "This isn't funny."
"I'm not laughing." He's not. His face is serious, open, raw. "Scream. Cry. Throw something. Whatever you need. But stop trying to solve this like it's a problem set."
"It IS a problem set! It's a zero-sum game with no winning outcome, and I can't—" My voice cracks. I hate it. "I can't find the answer."
"Maybe there isn't one."
The words land like a punch.
"Don't say that," I whisper.
"Why not? It might be true." Devan's voice is steady, but I can see what it's costing him. "Sterling designed this to be unwinnable. Maybe we just have to accept that."
"Accept what? That one of us has to lose everything?"
"Accept that we can't control this." He steps closer. "Accept that sometimes the world is just... cruel. And unfair. And there's nothing we can do about it."
"No." I shake my head. "No. I refuse to accept that."
"Sam—"
"Maybe Sterling's right."
The words fall out of me before I can stop them. Devan goes still.
"What?"
"Maybe he's right," I repeat, and god, it hurts to say it. "Maybe we are a liability. Maybe wanting you this much makes me weak. Maybe I can't hack it in that world because I'm too—"
"Don't." Devan's voice is sharp. "Don't you dare finish that sentence."
"Why not? It's true, isn't it?" I can feel the tears burning behind my eyes, but I force them back.
"I've spent my whole life trying to prove I deserve to be in the room.
Trying to be good enough for my family, for this school, for this field.
And now I'm looking at the biggest opportunity of my career, and all I can think is—"
I stop. Swallow hard.
"All I can think is that I don't care," I whisper. "About any of it. The only thing I care about is you."
Devan's breath catches.
"Is that pathetic?" I ask, my voice breaking. "That I'd throw away everything I've worked for just to keep you? That I don't even want the stupid internship if you're not there?"
"Sam." He closes the distance between us, cupping my face in his hands. His palms are warm, steady. "That's not pathetic."
"It feels pathetic."
"It's not." He presses his forehead to mine. "You want to know a secret? I never cared about the internship."
I blink. "What?"
"I applied because you applied," he admits. "Because it was another way to be near you. Another way to compete with you. The prestige, the career path—none of it mattered. You were the only variable I was solving for."
"Devan..."
"I've been so focused on not losing you," he says quietly, "that I forgot to ask myself what I actually want."
We're both quiet for a moment. His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, gentle and grounding.
"What do you want?" I ask.
He's silent for a long time. I watch him think—watch him actually consider the question, maybe for the first time.
"Everything," he finally says.
"Everything?"
"I want the career. I want the internship. I want to build something that matters." His grey eyes lock onto mine. "And I want you. I want mornings like this morning. I want to fight with you about methodology and fall asleep with you and wake up arguing about whose turn it is to make coffee."
His jaw tightens.
"I'm done pretending those things are in conflict," he says. "I'm done accepting that I have to choose."
Something shifts in my chest. A crack in the wall I didn't know I'd built.
"But Sterling said—"
"Fuck what Sterling said." The venom in Devan's voice surprises us both. "He doesn't get to decide what's possible for us. He doesn't get to put us in a box and tell us to fight over who gets to suffocate."
I stare at him. In two years of knowing Devan Morse—two years of debates and arguments and watching him dissect people with cold logic—I have never heard him sound like this.
Angry. Defiant.
Alive.
"Who are you right now?" I ask, a little dazed.
"I don't know," he admits. "Someone who's tired of being careful. Someone who's tired of playing by other people's rules."
He drops his hands from my face, starts pacing now. I watch him wear a track into his own carpet.
Then he stops. Goes quiet. The defiant energy drains out of him, and what's left is just... tired.
"But it doesn't matter, does it?" he says, his voice hollow. "Being angry doesn't change the math. We still have to choose."
The fight goes out of me too. He's right. Righteous fury doesn't rewrite the terms of Sterling's ultimatum.
I sink onto the edge of the bed. After a moment, Devan sits beside me. We don't speak. There's nothing left to say.
His hand finds mine. I lean into his shoulder. He's warm and solid and here, and in twenty-three hours one of us is going to have to sign away our future so the other can have one.
"I don't know what to do," I whisper.
"Me neither."
We sit in the silence. The clock on his desk ticks. Somewhere outside, someone laughs—bright and careless, the sound of a person whose world isn't ending.
I close my eyes and try to imagine signing that non-compete. Watching Devan walk into the Johnston offices without me. Building a life in some other field, some other path, while he becomes everything he's capable of being.
I can't. The image won't form. It's like trying to picture a color that doesn't exist.
"Sterling said something," Devan murmurs. "In the interview. Remember?"
"He said a lot of things."
"He said we'd make quite the team." Devan's voice is strange—slow, like he's working something out. "He said it like it was a weakness. Like our connection was the thing holding us back."
"It was an insult," I say. "He was mocking us."
"Was he? Or was he telling us exactly what he's afraid of?"
I lift my head, frowning. "What do you mean?"
"Think about it." Devan's eyes are brighter now, that big brain finally finding traction.
"He put us in a room and told us to tear each other apart.
We didn't. He gave us an impossible choice designed to force one of us to betray the other.
We refused. Everything he's done has been about splitting us up. "
"Because together we're a liability," I say, echoing Sterling's words.
"Or because together we're a threat."
The words hang in the air between us.
"He gave us twenty-four hours to choose who loses," Devan says slowly. "But what if we don't choose? What if we use those twenty-four hours to give him a third option?"
My heart is beating faster. "A third option?"
"A joint pitch. Both of us or neither of us. We show him what we can do together and make him choose: take us both, or lose us both."
"That's insane," I breathe. "He'll never go for it."
"Maybe not. But at least we'll go down swinging."
"Together."
"Together."
I look at him—really look at him. This man who spent two years watching me from across lecture halls. Who channeled every ounce of longing into rivalry because he didn't know how else to reach me. Who has spent our entire relationship trying to protect me, shelter me, keep me safe.
He's not trying to protect me now.
He's asking me to fight alongside him.
"It's crazy," I say again, but I'm smiling. I can feel it spreading across my face, unstoppable. "It's absolutely insane. Sterling will laugh us out of his office."
"Probably."
"We could lose everything."
"We could."
"Our entire careers. Both of us. Gone."
"Yes."
I take a breath. "Okay."
Devan blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay. Let's do it." I grab his hands, squeezing tight. "Let's write the craziest, most audacious joint proposal anyone's ever seen and walk into that shark's office and tell him to take it or leave it."
"You're sure?"
"No," I admit. "I'm terrified. But I'd rather fail with you than win without you."
Something breaks open in Devan's expression. Not the marble cracking—something softer. Something like hope.
"I love you," he says. "Have I mentioned that?"
"Once or twice. I love you too."
I pull him into a kiss. Not desperate this time, not frantic. Slow. Deep. A promise sealed with lips and breath and the press of his hand against the small of my back.
When we break apart, I keep my forehead against his. We breathe together in the quiet room.
"We're really doing this," I whisper.
"We're really doing this."
"We might crash and burn spectacularly."
"We might."
"Sterling might blacklist us from every institution on the East Coast."
"Also possible."
I laugh—a shaky, wet sound. "God. We're idiots."
"Brave idiots," Devan corrects. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek. "The bravest idiots I know."
"Flatterer."
"Realist."
I steal one more kiss—quick and fierce—then pull back. "Okay. We've got twenty-two hours and a lot of work to do."
"Then let's get started."
***
The next twelve hours are a blur.
We order pizza. We make coffee. We pull out laptops and notebooks and the whiteboard Devan keeps in his closet for "emergencies" (of course he has an emergency whiteboard, he's Devan).
I don't remember the details. I remember the feeling—frantic and terrifying and alive. I remember Devan's hand on my back at 2 AM when my eyes started burning. I remember laughing at something at 4 AM, delirious and exhausted, and not being able to stop.
I remember looking at him across the cluttered desk at 6 AM, both of us running on caffeine and adrenaline, and thinking: this is it. This is what I want. Not the internship, not the career, not the validation.
This. Him. Us, building something together.
By 7 AM, we have a proposal. Whether it's genius or suicide, I can't tell anymore.
By 8 AM, we're showered and dressed and standing at Devan's door, ready to walk into the lion's den.
"Hey," Devan says, catching my hand before I can reach for the handle. "Whatever happens in there—"
"I know." I squeeze his fingers. "Together."
"Together," he echoes.
We open the door.
Time to find out if we're brilliant or just really, really stupid.