Chapter 30 Silver Tongue （Wren）
SILVER TONGUE (WREN)
The library doors swing shut behind me, trading fluorescent hum for cold spring sunlight. The quad smells of wet grass and too-early flowers.
It’s my first real hour alone on campus since the party, the hospital, the white-out edges of my vision. The weekend after shrank to my dorm room—Aubrey’s documentaries, Theo’s notes, Kieran’s hoodie and his too-big body folded into my tiny desk chair like he could physically anchor the room.
He left only for hockey. The game after was a one-goal loss. I didn’t care about the score.
My phone is warm in my pocket—three texts from him this morning, each one stretching my mouth a little wider. The last is just:
KIERAN
Missing you already
I’m about to text back when the notifications start.
One. Two. Five. A dozen.
My phone doesn’t buzz. It convulses.
The first post loads in a slow, cruel fade:
THE PUCKING BET — FINAL SCORE
Remember when Isabelle Merteuil dared O’Connor to make the nerdy girl fall for him? Mission accomplished.
The Setup (Week 1): Engineering 204. He sits next to her. “Coincidence.”
The Hook (Week 2): Tutoring begins. He “needs help.” She says no five times. He doesn’t quit.
The Strategy (Week 3): “I’ll help you get the guy you want. Just fake date me.” She thinks it’s HER getting the advantage.
The Execution (Week 4): Jersey. Game night. He dedicates the goal. She’s falling.
The Close (Week 5): Cabin weekend. First kiss. First time.
The Prize: One night with Isabelle Merteuil. Any way he wants.
Status: BET WON
Photos cascade below: Kieran and Isabelle at a party I’ve never seen: her hand on his chest, his eyes on her mouth.
Him sitting beside me in class, that first day.
Us walking across the quad, hands linked.
Me in his jersey, hands over my mouth as he scores.
One more, grainy, dawn-lit: two figures leaving his house. My walk of shame, immortalized.
The guitar across the quad flips from warm gold to acid yellow. Metallic. Wrong.
Comments pour in faster than I can process.
She really didn’t know?
He made HER think fake dating was HER idea
Damn he really collected the whole set
She actually thought he was into her
Bro that’s cold even for O’Connor
I stare at the screen, trying to make the words reorganize into something that makes sense.
A bet.
Week one.
Before the tutoring. Before he offered to “help me get Theo.”
A massive rupture opens up in my chest.
He didn’t offer to help me.
He set me up.
Every memory reframes in sickening clarity.
Him sitting next to me in Engineering 204. Not chance, but targeted selection.
The tutoring offer. Not genuine need, but his opening move.
“If you fake date me, Theo will look your way.”
Oh God.
My no’s weren’t obstacles. They were foreplay. They were what made the game interesting for him.
The fake dating wasn’t helping me. It was the framework for breaking me.
And the cabin—
My vision whites out.
The cabin weekend. When the Defenders crew left and we stayed. When he kissed me, looked at me like I was special.
When I gave him my first kiss.
My first time.
My first everything.
That wasn’t us becoming real.
That was him winning a bet.
Another post loads—Isabelle’s handle.
Never underestimate what boys will do for a dare. Or how easily some girls believe they’re the exception.
The photo attached: Kieran and Isabelle, recent, her lips at his ear. The time stamp: yesterday.
Yesterday, when he texted me between his classes. When he said he couldn’t wait to see me tonight.
Him, collecting his prize.
The guitar cuts to metal scraping bone. Color spikes wrong—aggressive orange, blistering white.
My phone buzzes with a direct message:
UNKNOWN:
How does it feel to be a checkbox? Did he make it good? Or were you a quick finish? xx
Sound shears to a single white thread. The quad tilts.
I lift my head.
Across the lawn, by the statue, Kieran and Isabelle stand in a strip of clean light.
She’s all polish, designer jacket, perfect hair, the smile of someone who just won. He’s angled toward her, jaw tight, hands open like he wants to argue but already lost.
It reads intimate. Not scandal, brunch. Two beautiful people resolving their private negotiations while the world watches.
My legs move without permission. One step, then another. The crowd parts, phones rising like a forest of eyes.
“Is it true?”
Isabelle’s smile widens, delighted. “Oh, ma chérie. You tell me. You were there.”
Kieran turns. Dread floods his face, color draining. “Wren, don’t listen to her. Don’t—”
“Everyone loves a love story,” Isabelle purrs, playing to the crowd. “Boy meets girl. Girl says no. Boy makes a bet.” She pauses, savoring it. “And then girl gives him everything. How sweet.”
Laughter scrapes. Orange-red flashes behind my eyes.
“Stop,” Kieran says, voice low and dangerous.
She doesn’t. “Come on, you can brag. You scored. You won the bet—” Her eyes rake over me. “—and now you get to collect.”
Air leaves my chest, neat as a drawer pulled shut.
“I didn’t.” His voice cracks into hard teal—the one that used to steady me. “I didn’t score anything. We didn’t—I didn’t touch her.”
The world stops.
He’s trying to protect me. Trying to make them think it didn’t work.
The voice that leaves my throat is stilted. Distant. Not mine.
“That’s not true, Kieran.”
The silence is immediate, absolute.
Every phone lifts higher. The crowd leans in, hungry.
He goes white. “Wren, don’t—”
“That’s the thing with you,” I say clearly. “You lie so easily. Even now. Even when it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Sweetheart, please—” He takes a step forward.
“Don’t call me that.”
My voice breaks on the last word, and I hate myself for it.
Isabelle circles closer, a shark smelling blood. “This is even better than I imagined. You really thought he was into you.” She turns to the crowd. “She actually believed the golden boy wanted the scholarship girl.”
Laughter ripples—ugly, delighted, feeding on itself.
“Tell her, Kieran,” Isabelle continues, dripping poison. “Tell her what you told me. How it wasn’t even a challenge—”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” His voice is deadly.
But the damage is done. The words paint pictures I can’t unsee.
I stare at him and try to find something real in his face. Anything I can hold onto.
“When?” The word comes out broken. “When did it stop being a bet? Before you kissed me?” I can’t say the rest. Can’t name what we did in that cabin while the bet ticked toward completion.
“It was never—” His voice cracks. “Wren, I swear, it wasn’t like that—”
“When did it become real?” I’m shaking now, vibrating with something too big for my body. “Before you fucked me to win a bet? Or after?”
He flinches like I slapped him.
“Because from where I’m standing, you completed your objective.” My voice drops to something cold and dead. “You won.”
“No. Wren, listen to me—” He’s moving closer, hands reaching. “I’m in love with you. I love you, Wren.”
“You were my first.” The confession rips out of me, raw and bleeding. “My first kiss. My first everything.” My voice shatters completely. “And it was all just a sick game to you.”
“It wasn’t.” He’s close now, too close. “It stopped being a game the second I—”
“Liar.” The word is a knife. “You made me believe—”
I can’t finish. The nausea rises fast, bile burning my throat.
His hand reaches for my arm—the same hand that held me, that felt safe, that traced patterns on my skin while he whispered things I thought were promises.
“Don’t touch me.”
But his fingers close around my wrist anyway—warm, familiar, pleading.
And my body moves before my brain catches up. Fifteen years of training—when grabbed, defend. Parry, pivot, break the grip. Sweep the supporting leg.
He goes down hard, one knee hitting stone with a sound that makes people gasp.
For a heartbeat, we’re frozen—him on his knees, me standing over him, the small girl who just dropped the cocky hockey star in front of a hundred witnesses.
Laughter explodes, phones capturing the scene.
“Damn!” someone trills. “She just—”
“Did you see that? Jesus.”
Kieran looks up at me from his knees—shock and hurt and something desperate I can’t let myself see.
“You wanted me to fall,” I say, voice shaking. “Congratulations. I did.” I take a breath, force the next words out even though they’re killing me. “I fell for you.”
His face crumbles.
“God, I’m so stupid. I thought you felt the same way.” The confession tastes like blood. “I thought we were real. I thought—”
The nausea wins. I turn, stumble to the hedge, and my body rebels. Quick. Quiet. My stomach giving up everything while the crowd watches my humiliation.
He’s there in a heartbeat, hand hovering near my back.
“Don’t.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist. “Don’t touch me. Don’t—”
I straighten, throat raw, the world spinning in corrosive yellow and white.
“You were just trying to win a bet.”
“No.” He’s standing now, hands shaking. “At first, maybe, but then—”
“Then what?” The laugh that escapes me sounds broken. “Do you even believe yourself?”
“I didn’t—” His voice drops, desperate. “Isabelle—I didn’t—”
“Oh, don’t bring me into this,” Isabelle says lightly. She’s examining her nails, bored now that the show is over. “You knew the terms. You agreed. You delivered. The rest is just—” She waves a hand. “Conscience. Tedious.”
Kieran whirls on her, and his voice when it comes is pure rage—steel blue gone sickly green, the color of lies.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You ruin people and call it fun? You post this garbage and think it makes you powerful? It just makes you empty.”
He’s shaking. “You don’t have anything on me anymore, Isabelle. Not the bet, not my time, not one second of space in my head. We’re done. Go fuck yourself.”
Her smile doesn’t move. “Such fire. Pity it’s too late.” Her eyes slide to me. “You think the Defenders GM will love this look, chéri? Star player exposed as a predator who targets virgins for sport?”
“I don’t give a shit,” Kieran spits.