Chapter 19 #2
The contrast hits me in the chest. Beatrice is standing on me, her hand already reaching to brush lint off my shoulder, claiming the asset. Cole is standing for Maya.
My father sees the notebook in Maya's back pocket. He sees the press lanyard.
His expression instantly smooths. The anger vanishes behind a polished, political mask. He isn’t going to argue in front of a witness. He isn’t going to let a student journalist see the strings.
“We’ll discuss the schedule later, Declan,” he says, his voice suddenly warm, loud enough for them to hear. “Excellent game, son.”
The switch is terrifying. It’s effortless.
Maya nods politely as she passes, but her eyes linger on me. She knows. She was the one who killed the photo.
When they’re out of earshot, the warmth drops off my father’s face like sloughed skin. The silence he leaves in its wake is heavier than the yelling.
“The photo,” he repeats, his voice barely a whisper now. “Why wasn't it run?”
This is the part where the old version of me backs down. Where I apologize for an error I didn’t make, promise it won’t happen again.
My jaw locks. Talia’s voice threads into the moment, uninvited.
If you cared, you’d choose me in the light, not the dark.
I meet my father’s eyes. “I asked them not to run it.”
Beatrice inhales sharply.
“You did what?” my father says softly.
“I know the photo desk,” I say. My voice is steady. It surprises me. “I made a request. It’s not that deep.”
There’s a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch at the edge of his mouth. He hates that phrase. Not that deep. It’s what people say when things are out of his control.
“We discussed the optics,” he says, the threat vibrating under the calm. “You understood your role. You understood what you owe this family.”
“I also understand I don’t want pictures of people I hate kissing me on the front page,” I say. My voice is too calm. It scares me a little, how easy it is to say. “So I stopped it.”
Silence stretches, thin and brittle.
Alistair glances toward the door where Maya and Cole exited. He won’t make a scene here. Not now. He’s too calculated for that.
“We’ll talk later,” he says. “Privately.”
He turns, hand already closing around Beatrice’s elbow to steer her away. She goes with him, but her eyes stay on me, burning.
I don’t watch them leave. I turn back to the locker room.
For the first time in a long time, I walked away from my father in a hallway and didn’t feel like I left pieces of myself scattered on the floor.
The locker room smells like half-washed gear and victory when I get back inside. I shower fast, letting the hot water beat into the knots in my shoulders, then shove my clothes on.
By the time I sling my bag over my shoulder and duck out into the hall, most of the team is headed toward the bus.
Of course he’s waiting.
Alistair stands near the arena’s side exit. Beatrice is gone—sent to the car, probably. This is just him.
“Declan.” He doesn’t raise his voice. “We’re parked out back. You’ll ride home with us.”
There it is. Not a request. A summons.
I stop a few feet away. The cold from the open door behind him creeps in.
“I’m riding with the team,” I say.
He tilts his head a fraction. “That wasn’t a question.”
The old script moves through my body on instinct—step forward, adjust, obey. My weight shifts toward him before I catch myself.
Talia’s face flashes through my mind. The way she looked up at me on the path, furious and hurt.
You don’t get to stalk my walk home when you’re letting someone else kiss you in front of cameras.
If she saw me now, folding myself back into the role he wrote for me, she wouldn’t be wrong about me. She’d just be done.
“I’m riding with the team,” I repeat, voice flatter. “Coach expects me on the bus.”
Alistair takes a step closer. “You’re behaving like a child,” he says quietly. “You embarrassed us tonight. You embarrassed Beatrice. You’ve already cost this program enough.”
“By keeping a photo out of the paper?”
“By making me look like I can’t control my own son,” he snarls, the veneer cracking for half a second.
I almost laugh. Leverage. That’s all this is to him.
“You shouldn’t need a picture for people to know you’re in charge,” I say. “You’ve spent my whole life making sure they do.”
His eyes narrow. “You will get in the car. And we will discuss your future.”
He steps just enough into my space that my bag brushes his coat.
I see it, frame by frame. Contact. His surprise. The satisfying give of his balance breaking.
And I see something else layered over it—Talia flinching on a sidewalk. Talia’s voice, brittle and hoarse.
If I lay my father out in this hallway, it won’t just cost me the team. It will prove every worst thing she’s afraid of about me.
My muscles lock. I don’t move.
I take one small step to the side instead.
“I’m not getting in the car,” I say. “We don’t have anything to talk about that we haven’t already said.”
His gaze goes cold. “This defiance is becoming a pattern. And patterns have consequences.”
There it is. The real threat. Not to me. To everything around me.
My jaw clenches hard enough to make my teeth ache. “I know,” I say. “I’m the one who has to live with them.”
I walk around him.
He doesn’t follow. He doesn’t call my name. He just lets me go.
That scares me more than if he’d yelled.
The bus is half-full when I climb on. The windows are fogged near the edges. I drop into an empty seat near the back, bag at my feet, head thunking gently against the window.
Adrian is across the aisle, headphones around his neck. He catches my eye, gives a short, solid nod. You’re here. Then he leans back and closes his eyes.
My phone buzzes as the driver starts the engine.
Father: There will be consequences.
I stare at the screen. My heart doesn’t spike. It sinks. Heavy. Familiar.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe there will be consequences.
The question is: who pays for them?
I think of Coach’s hand on my shoulder tonight, the pride in his eyes.
I think of Talia’s last look at me on that path—anger and grief knotted together.
My thumb hovers over my father’s message.
I don’t respond.
Instead, I back out of the thread and scroll to a different name.
Her bubble is there: In. Sent hours ago, before the game. The anchor that held me down while everything else tried to blow away.
I tap the text field before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: We won tonight.
My thumb hesitates for half a second. Then I add:
It’s your fault.
It’s the closest I can get to flirting right now. A half-joke, half-truth. She steadied me. She shouldn’t have to, but she did.
I stare at the line. My pulse ticks in my throat.
It’s not enough.
My thumb moves again.
Me: I’m sorry I stood still.
I hit send before I can revise it into something weaker.
I lean my head against the window again, phone resting in my palm.
Sorry for the gala. Sorry for not moving. Sorry for letting her see me as tame in a cage I built for myself.
If she doesn’t answer, I deserve it. If she does, I’ll owe her more than an apology typed on a bus in the dark.
Either way, this is the first real thing I’ve chosen over him.
She doesn’t belong to my father’s world. Neither do I.
And if there are consequences for that…
I’ll take them.