Chapter Thirteen Maren
Maren Brooks had once dropped an entire tray of lemonade cups in front of a youth soccer team, a local news photographer, and a woman who had called her outfit brave.
She had survived.
She had once accidentally sent a caption draft that said MAKE THIS SOUND LESS LIKE A CRY FOR HELP to a client instead of herself.
She had survived that too.
She had once gone on two dates with a man who referred to his acoustic guitar as his truth partner.
Barely, but still.
So, technically, Maren had experience with embarrassment.
What she did not have experience with was standing under trees at Lake Briar with Griffin Hayes’s kiss still warm on her mouth while her phone filled with notifications from people watching a video of that exact kiss from across the path.
Guess Truth Toss worked.
Her body went cold first.
Then hot.
Then strangely hollow, like every sound around her had moved underwater.
The bonfire crackled somewhere behind them. The crowd laughed at something Tyler said. Music drifted from the lawn. A kid shrieked near the snack shack, probably from sugar or glow sticks or both.
Normal night sounds.
Not for her.
Her night had split.
Before the video.
After the video.
Griffin stood in front of her, face pale in the firelight, jaw locked tight enough that a less reasonable woman might worry about his teeth.
Maren was not reasonable.
Not currently.
Currently, she was staring at the tiny looping clip on her screen, watching herself get kissed by a man who had asked permission like her answer mattered more than the entire waiting world.
Tell me to pass.
No.
She had said no.
She had chosen it.
Private.
Real.
Hers.
And now it was online with a caption that made it look like a punchline.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another tag.
Another comment.
Another person deciding.
A laugh scraped out of her.
Tiny.
Terrible.
“Wow,” she said. “That was fast.”
Griffin’s eyes lifted from the phone to her face.
“Maren.”
“No, it’s impressive. Honestly. Great turnaround time. Whoever filmed that had excellent reflexes and absolutely no soul.”
“I am going to find out who posted it.”
“Why?”
“So I can make them take it down.”
The words landed wrong.
Everything was landing wrong.
Maren looked at him.
His expression was fierce. Protective. Angry in that controlled way that made him look calmer than anyone else and more dangerous because of it.
Yesterday, maybe that would have made her chest ache.
This time, it made her feel boxed in.
“Do not,” she said.
His brow furrowed. “Do not?”
“Do not go storming off to handle this.”
“I am not storming.”
“You are spiritually storming.”
“Maren, someone filmed us without permission.”
“I know.”
“And posted it.”
“I know.”
“So I am going to deal with it.”
There it was.
Deal with it.
The phrase hit every bruise Paige had been poking all weekend.
Deal with it meant Griffin would step in, serious and solid and furious, and suddenly the story would become his anger. His protection. His choice. His correction.
Maren would be the girl in the middle again.
The one carried.
The one kissed.
The one rescued from a mess everyone thought she made because she smiled too brightly inside it.
Her hand tightened around her phone.
“No,” she said.
Griffin stopped.
Something in her voice must have reached him, because his expression changed. The anger did not leave, but it shifted back enough for him to actually see her.
Good.
Look.
For once, look before fixing.
“I don’t want you to deal with it,” she said.
His voice lowered. “Okay.”
The immediate agreement almost made her worse.
Because she wanted to be mad at him.
It would be easier.
But Griffin Hayes stood there, holding himself back because she had asked him to, and that made the whole thing hurt in a different direction.
Her phone buzzed again.
She flinched.
She hated that she flinched.
Griffin saw.
Of course he saw.
His hands curled once at his sides, like he wanted to reach for her and knew better.
“Maren,” he said carefully. “What do you want?”
She laughed again.
That awful tiny laugh.
“I want people to stop taking pieces of me and calling it engagement.”
The words came out before she could polish them.
Griffin went still.
Maren looked down at the video again.
The kiss looped.
Her face tilted up.
His hand in hers.
His head lowering.
Her whole body leaning into the answer she had not been brave enough to say with words.
No.
No pass.
No joke.
No camera.
Except there had been a camera.
There was always a camera. Sometimes hers. Sometimes someone else’s. Sometimes the imaginary one in Paige’s head, recording proof that Maren was too much or not enough or cute when she wanted to be excellent.
Her throat burned.
Absolutely not.
She would not cry.
Not here.
Not with a video of her mouth attached to Griffin’s running up views on the internet like a scoreboard.
Griffin’s voice was rougher when he spoke. “I am sorry.”
Maren looked at him quickly. “For what?”
“For kissing you where someone could film it.”
Her chest pulled tight.
Of all the things he could have said.
Of all the obvious wrong answers.
He found one that sounded like he regretted the thing she had not regretted until the world touched it.
“Oh,” she said.
His face changed. “That is not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I meant I should have protected the privacy of it.”
The privacy of it.
Her breath caught.
That was better.
Worse.
Both.
Because now she had to stand there and know he had not regretted the kiss. He had regretted losing what belonged to it.
Her anger flickered.
Not gone.
Confused.
That was inconvenient.
The phone buzzed again.
Maren looked down automatically.
A comment from the tagged video had been screenshotted into her messages by someone she barely knew.
Not her building a whole weekend around proving she’s professional and then kissing the hockey boy by the trees lol.
There it was.
There it was.
The bruise, pressed hard.
Maren went numb for half a second.
Then the numbness burned.
Griffin read it because it was right there, because the internet had apparently decided privacy was a quaint historic concept.
His expression went lethal.
Maren locked the phone.
“No,” she said again.
He looked at her.
“No,” she repeated, stronger this time. “You do not get to make that face and go handle it. You do not get to make me the girl you defend while everyone debates whether I asked for it by doing my job.”
“I was not going to make you anything.”
“I know you don’t mean to.”
That stopped him.
Good.
Because that was the part that mattered.
Griffin did not mean to make her smaller. That was what made it complicated. Paige meant to help. Denise meant to support. Strangers meant to joke. Tyler meant to create fun. Everyone meant something.
Impact did not care about intention.
Maren’s voice shook once, and she hated it. “But if you go after whoever posted it, the story becomes Griffin Hayes protects Maren Brooks from the thing everyone thinks she caused. Again.”
His jaw tightened.
Not defensively.
With effort.
She could see him taking it in. Could see him forcing himself not to answer too fast, not to correct, not to fix.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet.
“You are right.”
Oh.
Maren hated that too.
She wanted him to fight wrong so she could fight back.
Instead he listened.
Rude.
Deeply rude.
He took one slow breath. “I am angry.”
“I noticed.”
“Not at you.”
“I know.”
“Not at the kiss.”
Her eyes lifted.
His held hers.
The trees around them seemed to stop breathing.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“I am angry that someone took it before we knew what it was.”
Maren’s hand tightened around her phone.
The sentence slid into her chest and stayed.
Before we knew what it was.
They had not known.
That was the terrible, beautiful truth.
The kiss had been a question. An answer. A dare. A soft, reckless yes in the dark.
And now people had already named it.
A storyline.
A strategy.
A joke.
Proof.
Griffin stepped half a pace closer, then stopped, like even closeness needed permission now.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Maren looked at him.
Really looked.
At the tight line of his mouth. The hands he kept carefully at his sides. The anger he had leashed because she asked. The man who kept learning, in real time, that standing beside her was not the same as standing in front of her.
Her heart hurt.
She wished that meant she wanted him less.
“I want,” she said slowly, “to think.”
He nodded immediately.
“Okay.”
“And I want you not to look at me like I’m breakable.”
His face softened.
Damn him.
“I do not think you are breakable.”
“You look like you want to wrap me in caution tape.”
“I want to wrap everyone else in caution tape.”
That pulled a laugh out of her.
Not bright.
Not polished.
Real, and a little broken at the edges.
Griffin’s mouth moved, almost a smile and almost not.
Then voices approached from the path.
Ava first.
“Maren?”
Nate with her. “Hayes?”
Maren straightened immediately.
The armor came back fast.
Too fast.
She felt Griffin notice, but he did not say anything.
Ava appeared between the trees, Nate beside her. Behind them, the bonfire glow flickered around the clearing, and the game continued because of course it did. Public chaos had never once respected private collapse.
Ava’s eyes went straight to Maren’s face.
Then to Griffin.
Then to the phone in Maren’s hand.
“I saw,” Ava said.
Maren smiled. “Everyone did. Very efficient distribution model.”
Ava did not laugh.
That made the smile feel worse.
Nate looked at Griffin, then at Maren. “Denise is working on getting the post reported and removed from the tagged feed.”
Maren’s head snapped up. “I did not ask her to do that.”
Ava stepped closer. “She is not making a statement. She is just using the account settings. Someone posted you in a private moment without permission.”
“It was at a public event.”
“Behind trees,” Ava said.
Maren swallowed.
Behind trees.
The phrase should not have helped.
It did.
A little.
Ava’s voice stayed gentle. “You get to be upset.”
Maren laughed once. “I am so tired of people telling me what I get to be.”
Ava’s face softened. “Fair.”