Chapter 23 #3
We leave before anyone can corner us. He drives. I watch the snow start to fall, slow and heavy, blurring the streetlights into soft halos. My gown feels surreal now, like a costume from another life. All that build-up. All that spectacle.
“I didn’t even get a dance,” I say quietly, not realizing I’ve said it out loud.
Leo doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he turns the wheel.
We’re climbing the road before I fully realize where we’re going. The cliffs. Our cliffs. The place where everything started before it broke.
He parks at the overlook, shuts off the engine. The wind howls the second the doors open, icy and sharp. Snow swirls sideways, sticking to my lashes.
“You sure?” I ask.
He smiles. Soft. Real. “Yeah.”
He rolls down all the windows anyway, like he used to. The cold floods the car. Then music. Slow. Familiar in the way it feels rather than sounds. Piano first. A low, steady beat. A song about timing and almosts and loving someone even when you’re afraid.
“Come here,” he says.
We don’t talk about how ridiculous we look. Evening clothes. Snow. Wind screaming off the ocean.
He takes my hands.
And suddenly it is just the two of us.
No phones. No cameras. No audience.
We sway, barely moving, my forehead resting against his chest. His hands are warm. Steady. Like they’ve always been meant to be right there.
“This feels like…” I start, then stop.
“Like what?” he asks.
I swallow. “Like it used to. Just us.”
The words hang between us.
Then he kisses me.
It’s not gentle. It’s not cautious. It’s everything we never said. Every fight. Every voicemail. Every night I pretended I didn’t still want him. His hands are in my hair. Mine are gripping his coat like if I let go I’ll fall off the edge of the world.
It devastates me how much it still fits.
I pull back first, breath shaking.
“Just because I feel this,” I say, pressing my hand to my chest, “and just because I still love you… doesn’t mean I think we should get back together. That I should be your girlfriend again.”
The words hurt coming out.
They hurt him too. I see it. He inhales like he’s bracing himself.
“I know,” he says quietly.
“It almost hurts more saying it out loud,” I whisper.
“Is this the real breakup?” he asks.
I shake my head, tears freezing on my cheeks. “I don’t know what this is. I just know I still love you. And I still want you. And everything’s changed.”
“I know,” he says again, and this time it sounds like acceptance, not surrender. “Let me take you home.”
But first we take a picture of us.
A selfie that’s honest. Raw. Unfiltered. Us.
I add a hashtag #thistimeshedanced #wintergala #cliffsatmidnight
I’m standing beside Leo when I hit post.
The comments explode instantly. Fire emojis. Question marks. Hearts. Conspiracy theories already spinning themselves into knots.
Are the king and queen back together??
Leo glances at the screen, then at me.
“Well,” he says lightly, but his voice isn’t light at all. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
I don’t answer.
We drive back in silence.
Before I get out, he reaches for my hand.
“Don’t close the door on us,” he says. “Just don’t. Let’s start over. Like normal people.”
I laugh wetly. “Normal?”
“I’m serious,” he says. “I’m going to text you tomorrow. Ask you out. You’re going to say yes. We’ll go to the movies and it’ll take me twenty minutes to work up the nerve to put my arm around your seat. We’ll go to the arcade and waste fifty bucks on stupid games and eat stale popcorn.”
I sniff, smiling despite myself.
“That actually sounds perfect,” I say.
He smiles back. Hopeful. Careful.
“I think,” I add softly, “I like the sound of that, Leo Holt.”
“I already sent extra security to Aunt Susan’s house,” he added. “These families? They don’t take humiliation lightly. Or punishment.”
My heart kicked hard. But I didn’t flinch.
Let them come. Let them try.
They already lost.
Because this time?
I wasn’t alone.
And I wasn’t afraid.
He pulled up to Aunt Susan’s house and didn’t even hesitate. Got out, came around to my side, opened the door. Gentle. Steady. Still him.
When we reached the porch, I turned to face him, expecting the usual awkward goodbye—an apology, a check-in, something to break the tension.
Instead, he handed me a folded letter.
“What’s this?” I asked, the paper soft and worn in my hand.
He didn’t look away. “My college essay.”
My brows drew together. “The one that got you into—?”
“Yeah. Every school. But it wasn’t about basketball. Or my last name. It was about you.”
I stared at him. My throat tightened, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and aching.
“You,” he said again, voice rough like he’d been holding it in forever. “How you earned everything without favors. How you stood up when they expected you to break. You made me want to be better, Jade. I’ve been watching you—silently—trying to be someone who could earn you back.”
I swallowed hard.
“I don’t expect anything tonight,” he added, eyes soft. “Just… read it.”
I nodded, numb all over, and stepped inside.
“Is that Leo Holt’s car?”
I freeze with my coat half off.
Susan’s voice drifts in from the kitchen, casual but sharp enough to let me know she clocked it immediately.
“…Yeah,” I admit. “It was.”
Susan didn’t ask questions. She just handed me a mug of tea and pointed to the chair by the woodstove. I curled into it, velvet and silk pooling around me like the night’s last illusion of royalty.
The flames crackled quietly while I unfolded the letter.
It started like an application essay. But every paragraph felt like a confession. He wrote about me. About my resilience. My grit. About the fire I’ve had to keep stoking when the whole world kept pouring water on me.
He wrote about early mornings and lifting weights and running through slush because, as he said, "I wanted to earn something without my last name attached to it—for the first time in my life."
He said I was his reason.
His muse.
His home.
By the time I reached the last line, my fingers were trembling.
“They say home is where the heart is.
If you’ll have me back, mine’s wherever you are.”
The fire's almost down to embers now. Just a soft flicker lighting up the old wood stove and the velvet folds of my ruined dress. Aunt Susan went to bed an hour ago after trying—twice—to make me eat something. I couldn’t.
My stomach’s still knotted from the gala, the whispers, the police, the paint on priceless wallpaper.
From the way Blair’s mother had to be pulled away before she lunged at me.
From the way Leo never flinched. Never let go.
I pull his coat tighter around me and stare down at the letter in my hands. His handwriting is neat, practiced. Like he rewrote it a dozen times before he sent it. His college essay—about me.
The girl no one believed.
Until now.
She leans around the corner, eyebrow raised, mug in hand. “Huh. Didn’t think you’d be home this early. Was that a love letter?”
I shrug, toeing off my shoes. “Didn’t think you would be either. Yes it was. He changed. For me. For him.”
“Oh. That’s good. Are you back together? My boyfriend’s sick.”
I blink. “Your boyfriend.”
She waves her hand. “One of them.”
I stare. “Aunt Susan.”
“What?” she says defensively. “He had a cold. Or a man flu. Hard to tell.”
“When was I going to meet this mystery man?” I ask.
“Well,” she hesitates. “I was going to introduce you, but then I met this other guy.”
I gasp. “Aunt Susan. Are you becoming a player?”
Her cheeks flush. “Absolutely not.”
I just look at her.
“…Okay, maybe a little,” she mutters.
I laugh despite myself, the sound surprising me. It feels good. Normal.
I drop onto the couch, suddenly exhausted.
“Christmas Eve,” I say. “What am I going to do?”
Susan turns serious instantly. “What do you mean?”
“Leo’s mom invited me,” I say quietly. “She literally said I’d be his Christmas gift.”
Susan grimaces. “Subtle.”
“I love him,” I admit, staring at the twinkle lights reflected in the window. “But I don’t know if I’m ready to step back into that world. The girls just got expelled. I finally get to experience Royal Oaks without… all of that hanging over me.”
I rub my arms. “I just want things to be normal for a second.”
She sits beside me.
“I know what you mean,” she says gently. “And whatever you decide is okay. Truly.”
Then she pauses. “But… he’s been hurting too, Jade. You weren’t the only one who got burned.”
Guilt twists in my chest.
“I’ve been so selfish,” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “No. You’ve been surviving. Big difference.”
I swallow. “Do you think I want to get back together with him?”
Susan considers me carefully. “I think you don’t know yet.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
She brightens suddenly. “We need to call Irene.”
Of course we do.
Ten minutes later, Irene’s face fills the screen, wrapped in a shawl, glass of wine already in hand.
“Alright,” she says immediately. “Lay it on me.”
I explain everything. The cliffs. The kiss. The not-a-breakup breakup. The letter.
She listens, nodding, eyes sharp.
Then she smiles.
“You need to do the test.”
“The what test?”
“The what-if-he-gets-with-someone-else test.”
My stomach drops.
I picture it instantly. Leo laughing with another girl. Holding her waist. Kissing someone else under Christmas lights.
My hands clench so hard my nails bite into my palms.
“I want to scratch her eyes out,” I say flatly.
Irene grins. “There’s your answer.”
“He won’t wait forever,” she continues. “Even if he says he will. He’s eighteen. He’s going to college. And let’s be real, Jade, the man is a catch.”
Susan nods vigorously. “Unfortunately.”
“And now,” Irene adds, “he’s an internet sensation. Do you really want to let a man like that go?”
I stare at the floor.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But he’s going to have to earn me back.”
“Of course,” Irene agrees. “But you can show up for him too. The way he’s been showing up for you.”
Susan sighs. “Please don’t leave him alone on Christmas with that woman.”
I snort. “You really don’t like his mom.”
“I do not,” she says firmly. “And the boy has no siblings, no pets, and no emotional support objects. It’s tragic.”
I smile despite the ache in my chest.
“Christmas Eve,” I say slowly. “I can do that. I can give him that.”
Susan claps her hands. “It’s settled then.”
I look up. “Settled?”
She grins. “Let his mother send the car.”
I lean back against the couch, heart racing again, but softer this time.
Not fear.
Possibility.
For the first time, loving him doesn’t feel like losing myself.
It feels like choosing.
My phone buzzes on the hearth.
Dr. Bauer: “Emergency session?”
I almost text back yes.
But before I can type it, there's a knock at the side door. Not the front. The one that faces the woods. Only a few people even know it exists.
I tuck the letter into the folds of Leo’s coat and get up slowly, limbs aching. When I open the door, Tristan’s standing there, cheeks red from the cold, his hair messy like he ran a hand through it a hundred times on the walk over.
“Too late?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Too everything.”
He steps inside, not bothering to shake the snow off his boots, and just… looks at me.
“Leo texted me,” he says, voice low. “Said you were safe. I needed to see that for myself.”
I nod, my throat thick. “I don’t think I’m okay. I don’t know if I ever will be again.”
He looks at the couch, but I lead him to the two chairs by the fire. I sit, the coat still wrapped around me, his presence strangely comforting in a non-romantic, bone-deep kind of way.
“I set them up,” Tristan says, breaking the silence.
I blink. “What?”
“Not directly,” he admits. “But I knew. I knew what Nadia, Rosalie and her crew were planning. I figured they’d hang themselves if we just gave them enough rope.
So I didn’t stop them. I planted a few ideas, maybe.
Asked the right questions at the right time.
Pretended to be neutral. Rosalie was pissed as fuck when Leo bagged as her date. ”
“You used them.”
“I learned from the best,” he says with a sad smile. “You think people like me stay out of the line of fire by being sweet? Nah. We survive by being smarter than the game.”
I study him, the angles of his jaw, the guilt under his eyes.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” he adds. “I came to tell you about someone. Freshman year, I met a girl. Scholarship student. Brilliant. Played cello like she was born in a concert hall. I fell hard. She was… good. Too good for this place.”
I don’t speak. I let him get it out.
“They ruined her. The same group. Whispers, rumors, planted notes, messed with her locker. Drove her out by spring break. I tried to play both sides. I didn’t protect her. And by the time I realized I loved her… she was gone.”
“What happened to her?” I ask softly.
He pulls out his phone, shows me a photo of a girl in a field hockey uniform, smiling at the camera, messy braid over one shoulder.
“She’s back in the Midwest. Public school. New boyfriend. I check in sometimes… through a PI.”
“Tristan…”
“I know. Creepy, right? But I needed to know she was okay. And I swore if I ever got the chance to do it differently—I would.”
My eyes blur with tears again, but not from pain this time. From the unexpected grace of it.
“That’s why I’m fighting for you now, Jade,” he says, voice breaking. “I won’t screw it up again. I’m not Leo. I know that. I never will be. But I can be your friend. A good one.”
I reach for his hand and squeeze it. “Thank you.”
He squeezes back. “He’s a lucky bastard, you know.”
I smile through the tears. “I think he knows.”
We sit there for a few minutes more, until the fire sighs its last and my phone buzzes again.
Leo: “Security’s outside. Just in case. You don’t have to be scared anymore. I’ve got you.”
I lean back in the chair, Leo’s coat still around me, Tristan beside me like a brother I didn’t know I needed. And for the first time in forever, I let myself believe I might survive this.
Maybe even thrive.
It’s over.
No more whispers in hallways.
No more fake apologies.
No more power games disguised as tradition.
They got expelled.
Not suspended. Not quietly transferred. Gone.
For the first time since Ohio, since Royal Oaks, since all of it, the story ends the way it should have ended in the first place.