24. Sunshine Doesnt Mean Soft
Chapter twenty-four
Sunshine Doesn't Mean Soft
Sienna POV
The thing about being told to stay out of somewhere is that it only works if you have a reason to listen.
Atticus said stay out of the arena with his eyes flat and his voice already done arguing and I nodded in a way that was technically an acknowledgment and not technically a promise.
He knows the difference. He just couldn't stop me without making it a fight, and we're already holding too many of those on too many fronts.
So I park two blocks over and I walk in through the staff entrance, which Mason showed me two years ago when I used to drop off lunch for him after practice, and I smile at the security guard like I belong here, and I swipe through the door that still has me on the authorized list because Delia added me weeks ago and nobody has pulled it yet.
I belong here.
That's the thing Atticus doesn't understand. This stopped being a transaction a long time ago.
I find a quiet corner near the media room, sit on a plastic bench that's probably older than the franchise, and I pull up my messages.
The conversation is archived. I'd buried it. Not deleted. I'm not the kind of person who deletes things she might need later. Just folded away in a folder labeled don't, which is where I keep things I need to stop thinking about.
I scroll back three months. The timestamps bloom in gray against white. My message first:
He did it. Pike. Atticus was there. Someone needs to know.
Hands shaking when I typed it. I remember the shake.
I remember standing in the parking lot outside O'Malley's with my coat half-on and adrenaline kicking through my ribs because I'd just watched a twenty-one-year-old kid get humiliated and I'd watched Atticus Knox step into the middle of it and say stop like it cost him something and actually make them stop.
His reply came back in under four minutes.
No. This stops here. I'm handling it.
One hour and seventeen minutes later: a message to the league reporting hotline. I have his number memorized now without meaning to, and I recognize the last four digits from contact lists Delia circulated.
Timestamped before the footage. Before any of this went viral. Before the cameras caught anything.
He reported it first.
I take screenshots. Seven of them. My hands are steady this time.
Then I pull up the conversation I've had going with team legal, the one Delia looped me into three weeks ago because she needed me to sign a media consent form and forgot to loop me out after. I have the thread. I have the contact. I know exactly where I'm going.
PR's office is on the second floor, east wing. I've been there four times. I know the route.
The fastest way is through the parking structure and up the east stairwell. Delia showed me on my first day, impatient and moving too fast, flinging the route over her shoulder like I was supposed to memorize it in real time.
I did.
I push through the door.
He's standing at the third pillar.
Not pacing. Not leaning. Standing with his hands in the pockets of a jacket that looks like it came from somewhere expensive, once, and hasn't been to the dry cleaner in a while. He's looking directly at the door I just came through like he knew which one I'd use.
My father has always been good at waiting.
I stop.
He doesn't move. Just watches me with that patient, calibrated expression I learned to read before I learned to read a clock. The one that means he's already decided something and he's waiting to see if I have the sense to cooperate.
"Sienna."
One word. My name in his mouth still lands like a hand on my shoulder.
"No," I say.
He blinks. Not surprised. He knew I'd push back, he always knows. Just adjusting his approach. Flipping through the mental catalog of things that work on me.
"I'm not here to fight." He takes one step toward me. Stops when I don't close the distance. "I just want to talk. Five minutes."
"You said five minutes in a restaurant parking lot when I was nineteen. We were there for two hours and you took my rent money."
Something flickers across his face. Not shame. Calvin Hart doesn't do shame. Just the slight recalibration of a man whose script isn't landing.
"I made mistakes," he says. "I know that. I've had time to—"
"I have your texts." I hold up my phone. "I have your voicemails. I have the recording Atticus made. I have all of it."
His expression tightens. The patience thins at the edges.
He's still my father. That's the part that never gets easier.
Somewhere behind the catalog of harms and the practiced charm and the cold math of his leverage, there is a man who taught me how to ride a bike and made pancakes on Sunday mornings and cried at my middle school graduation.
I don't let myself look for him anymore.
It's not that he's gone. It's that he only surfaces when it's useful to him.
I made my peace with that. Mostly.
"You're making a mistake," he says. Low now. The warmth fully gone. "That man does not care about you the way you think he does. When this campaign is over—"
"I filed the harassment report this morning."
Silence.
The parking structure hums around us. Somewhere above, tires squeal on concrete. Calvin Hart looks at me for a long moment and I watch him calculate.
Then he moves.
His hand closes around my wrist.
Not violent. Firm. The grip of a man who believes he still has claim to things he surrendered a long time ago.
"You're going to ruin everything." His voice is quiet, certain, almost gentle. "Get in the car."
I look down at his hand on my wrist.
I look up at his face.
I think about a twenty-one-year-old kid who was scared into silence and decided to stop.
I think about Atticus on a penalty box bench, lip split, reading a text about his own arena turning on him.
I think about a parking lot years ago and my own shaking hands and a voice that said you're safe, you don't have to explain.
I think about a recording already in the hands of team legal. I think about seven screenshots on my phone.
I think about the fact that I am standing in a parking structure with my father's hand on my arm and I am not scared.
That's new.
"Take your hand off me," I say.
His grip tightens.
"Sienna—"
"I'm going to say it once more." My voice is steady. Completely steady, which surprises both of us. "Take your hand off me. And then you're going to get in your car and drive away, and the next time you contact me, it will be through a lawyer."
The fluorescent light buzzes overhead.
Calvin Hart looks at me like I'm someone he doesn't recognize.
Good.
His hand drops.
I don't exhale. I don't give him the satisfaction of watching me exhale. I hold his gaze for three more seconds, long enough to mean it, not long enough to be a dare, and then I turn and I walk toward the east stairwell door on the far side of the structure.
Away from him. Forward.
My heart is going like a drumline again.
This time I let it.