12. Chapter 12
Darius
The team plane hums around me, low and steady, but I can't settle into the first class seat the way I usually do.
The leather is soft, the cabin dim, the flight attendants quiet, and still my shoulders won't relax.
Three rows ahead, Claire hasn't looked back once. Not during boarding. Not during takeoff. Not during the forty-five minutes we've been suspended between Charlotte and Houston.
She is angled toward the window with her notebook open, pen moving in quick, precise strokes. Her hair is tucked behind one ear.
She looks completely absorbed in her work, like I am not even a thought in her mind.
And it should be fine.
It is fine.
We are colleagues. A business arrangement. She told me last night, gently but clearly, that I am not her type.
But that is the part I can't shake.
Not the kiss. Not Camille's threat sitting in my phone like a live wire. Not even the fact that I told Claire more truth in ten minutes than I have told anyone in years.
It is the way her distance hits something old in me. Something I thought I buried a long time ago.
The same feeling I had when Savannah came to interview Nick and treated me like I wasn't even in the room. The same feeling I had in foster care when I learned that being seen and being valued were two different things.
I don't think about it in neat sentences.
I just feel it.
That tight, familiar pressure in my chest. That instinct to get louder, brighter, bigger. To make myself impossible to ignore.
But for the first time, it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel useful.
It feels tired.
Why is it always the people who see me clearly that want me least?
The women who like the highlight reel are easy. They show up already impressed. They never question me. They never challenge me. They never expect anything deeper than the surface I give them.
And I have never lost a minute of sleep over any of them.
But Claire tells me I am talented and then tells me my attitude is the problem. She says it like both things can be true at the same time. Like I can be worth something and still have work to do.
And instead of wanting to charm my way out of it, the way I always do, I want to actually fix it.
That is new.
That is unsettling.
That is maybe the first real sign that something in me is shifting.
Jaylen is asleep beside me, mouth open, headphones crooked. The only reason I am not saying any of this out loud is because he would wake up and never let me forget it.
So I sit there, staring at the back of Claire's head, feeling something unfamiliar settle in my chest.
Hope. Fear. Possibility.
And the quiet realization that maybe I am finally ready to stop running from the parts of myself I don't want to look at.
***
Evan calls the second we land.
"Big news," he says before I can speak. "The Charlotte win moved the needle. The Next Play Foundation liaison wants a meeting next week. Ring-shopping story is still circulating, all positive. Claire is doing her job perfectly."
"I know," I say.
"You should tell her that."
"I did."
"Then why do you look like somebody just ran over your dog?"
I don't answer that.
"Darius."
"She doesn't care, Evan. She's doing a job. That's it."
A pause on his end.
"Right. Okay. So—"
"We're not on that level. Don't make it something it's not."
Evan goes quiet for half a second, which for Evan is basically a full emotional response. Then he clears his throat and goes back to the numbers, and I let him talk because it's easier than finishing that thought.
My phone buzzes again. Not the team group chat. Not a flight update.
Something heavier. Something that makes the back of my neck go tight.
Camille.
For a second, I just stare at the notification, hoping I read it wrong.
I didn't.
I open it on the jetway, the air stale and warm, passengers brushing past me with rolling bags and tired faces.
Her message is long. Too long. The kind of long that means she drafted it, edited it, rehearsed it.
Saw the photos of you and your fiancée. Cute. Here’s what happens next: you release a statement, my words, saying you pursued me, and nothing physical ever happened. If you don’t, other women will tell their stories. A pattern becomes a headline fast. Don’t make me start it.
A cold rush hits my stomach. My palms go damp.
The jetway feels too narrow, too bright, too loud.
I grip the railing just to steady myself.
She wants me to say that. She wants me to confess to something that never happened. She wants to twist my past into something she can weaponize.
And the mention of women ready to speak hits a place I don't like. Not because I ever crossed a line — I didn't, and I know that — but because I've been careless. I've been reckless. I've been the guy who didn't think twice about who he let close.
For the right incentive, I'm sure there are people who would say whatever she needs them to.
A few hours ago I was sitting on a plane trying to figure out how to be a better man. Trying to understand why Claire's words hit me so hard. Trying to believe I could actually change.
And now this.
Life doesn't just test you. Sometimes it stacks the tests on top of each other until you can barely breathe.
But I'm not the kid in the foster waiting room anymore. I'm not the man who hides behind charm and noise.
I'm not running this time.
I take one slow breath. Then another.
I text Claire:
We need to talk. Not over the phone.
She replies in under a minute:
My apartment. One hour.
The panic doesn't disappear.
But it has somewhere to go now.
And so do I.
***
Her River Oaks building has a doorman who recognizes me now. He nods. I nod back.
Forty days ago that would have felt like something. Right now it barely registers.
She opens the door in a cream cardigan and bare feet, and she takes one look at my face and steps back to let me in without a word.
"Tell me," she says.
I hand her my phone.
She reads Camille's message once. Then again. Her expression doesn't change — not a flicker, not a flinch — and that steadiness is the first thing that loosens the pressure in my chest.
"She's setting up a pattern narrative," Claire says, handing the phone back. "She doesn't have proof of anything real. So she's manufacturing volume. Enough accusers, enough noise, and the story becomes the evidence."
"She's going to ruin me."
"She's going to try." Claire moves to the kitchen and fills the kettle. "There's a difference."
I sit on her counter because I can't make myself sit at the table.
The apartment is quiet. It smells like something baked recently — lemon, sugar — and the familiarity of being in her space knocks something loose in me that I wasn't expecting.
"The summit is in three weeks," she says, measuring loose tea into a strainer. "That's her stage. That's where she wants to land the story. So we need to be so undeniable by the time we walk through that door that Camille's version sounds like fiction."
"And if she finds the women? If she actually—"
"Then we deal with it." She turns from the kettle. "Have you ever made a woman genuinely uncomfortable? Not the Atlanta situation. Not whatever Camille is framing. Actually, honestly — yes or no."
The question lands hard because she means it. She's not performing due diligence. She actually wants the answer.
"No," I say.
And I mean it.
She holds my eyes for a long moment, then nods once.
"Then we're not afraid of this."
She slices a piece of lemon loaf from a plate on the counter and sets it on a napkin beside my hand without being asked, and I don't know why that simple thing is the one that does it — why a piece of cake undoes more than the whole conversation — but I feel the panic in my chest ease for the first time since the jetway.
"I didn't come here because I doubted you," I say. "I came because I didn't know what else to do."
She looks at me then. Really looks.
"I know," she says.
She sets two mugs on the table and we sit down across from each other, and the room narrows, and for a while we're just two people drinking tea while the city hums fourteen floors below us.
She's quiet for a moment, turning her mug in her hands.
Then she says, "I know you're stressed. I am too, honestly. My mom called right before you got here. The proposal for my dad's surgery came back with a number that's — it's a lot."
"I meant what I said. I can cover it."
"I know you did." She gives me a small, tired smile. "And I appreciate it more than you know. But I think I've got it. It's just — thinking about it does a number on me."
I nod. I don't push.
She looks down at her mug.
"You know what's funny? I was with someone for three years who could have guaranteed I'd never stress about a number like that again. Investment banker. Stable. Respectable. My parents loved him."
A short exhale.
"I left anyway."
"Why?"
"Because I was disappearing." She sets the mug down. "I was turning into this perfectly polished version of what my life was supposed to look like. And it was so clean. So predictable. No mess, no surprises."
She glances toward the counter, at the flour still dusted along the edge from her baking.
"I like a little mess, actually. I just forgot that for a while."
She says it lightly, like it's nothing. But then her eyes drift to me — really land on me — and I watch her register something she wasn't expecting. Like she followed a thought somewhere she didn't plan to go.
She looks away first.
"You said you like a little mess." I set my mug down. "Let me show you something."
I pull my shirt over my head before she can respond.
She goes very still.
I hold up my left arm and turn it slowly so the full sleeve catches the kitchen light.
"Every time I have something I can't say out loud, I put it on my skin instead. This one—" I point to the cross high on my shoulder "—my coach from the community center. The man who kept me from becoming something I can't take back."
I move down the arm.
"This is the date I got drafted. This one's a quote from Jay-Z. This is my brother's name."