Chapter 26
twenty-six
ROWAN
The movie ends, and I don’t remember any of it.
I picked a showing of some thriller I’d never heard of, bought a ticket, turned my phone off, and sat in the dark. I don’t remember the plot or the character names, and while I think somebody died at the end, I couldn’t tell you who or why or whether I was supposed to care.
It was perfect.
It was what I needed.
When I head out, the lobby is bright, and I squint as I walk through the doors and into the cold. Only then do I turn my phone on. The screen lights up, and notifications start rolling in, one after another, the vibration acting like one continuous shudder in my palm.
Forty-seven unread messages in the team group chat. Three missed calls from Theo. One from Sebastian. A missed call from Ivy. A voicemail from Luca. And underneath all of it, the Ravens chat is scrolling so fast the preview text is a blur of names.
Nothing from Sloane.
I open the group chat and scroll back to where it started.
The first message is a link that Theo sent with a comment:
Theo: What the fuck is this?
I tap it. It’s @HaldenGoss, the account I’ve seen around but never followed because I don’t care about campus gossip. The post has Sloane’s full name, her old school, and a photo of her.
It’s all there.
Harrison Tisdale. The senator’s son. The version of the story where she’s the scandal and he’s the footnote. It mentions the photos, and in a reply thread someone brings up the birthmark, almost offhand, like this is some kind of chat about a TV show.
Two thousand shares.
I read it once, my eyes sliding over Sloane’s name like it can’t actually be there. I read it again, slower this time, and my hands close around the phone and stay closed, my breath coming short and my fists locked hard enough that my knuckles ache.
I scroll back to the group chat.
The first ten messages are confusion. There’s Theo asking what the account is, Luca saying he saw it trending, a bunch of the other guys talking shit about the post or the poster, and Sebastian typing one word.
Seb: Who?
And then Luca finds out, twenty minutes later.
Luca: Talked to Jake from Pi Sig. Mason did it.
Seb: You’re sure?
Luca: Yeah.
I lower the phone, stunned. Not just by the news — what’s been done to Sloane, for the second time in a year — but by what it means for me and for us, because it means she wasn’t cheating on me.
My knees go soft. I have to widen my stance and lock my knees because the pavement feels like it’s dropped an inch. I put my free hand on the brick of the theater wall because I need to put it somewhere, and that helps a little, but only a little.
I let that fear eat at me because something had happened in that kitchen with Mason, and he knew about the birthmark, and I jumped to conclusions. And when she pulled away, that confirmed something in my head.
Wrongly.
She wasn’t cheating or getting back with Mason. She was being threatened. I don’t know why she wouldn’t trust me with that, but I saw the Halden Girl mask go back on and misread the threat as something else.
Something she carried alone.
And I know why.
She carried it to keep it off me, because she could see I was already under too much — the team, the captaincy, all the weight I wouldn’t set down — and the gossip still got out and got passed around.
Because that’s the part that’s mine. I went at Mason in front of the guys, loud, the way I do — and he told me I’d pushed, and that now he’d press the button and blow up something I’d rather keep. This is him pressing it.
I call Sloane.
It rings four times, then hits voicemail. Her recorded message is the one she made in September when she was still wearing the mask, bright and a little too fast: Hi, you’ve reached Sloane, leave a message and I’ll call you back!
I hang up and call again.
Voicemail.
So I call Luca.
He picks up on the second ring. “Ro—”
“Where is he?”
“Murphy’s.” A pause. “What do you need?”
I hang up and text Seb.
Rowan: Murphy’s. Don’t let Mason leave.
The reply comes in four seconds.
Seb: Done.
I start walking. Murphy’s is twelve minutes from the theater, but I cover it in eight. Every step rearranges another detail — one morning, after the kitchen incident, when Sloane asked me, out of nowhere, if I ever felt like the team was too much for one person to carry.
I’d shrugged and said somebody’s got to, then watched her face close up, and I didn’t bother to read it because I was late for practice. But she was checking whether I could carry one more thing, and when she decided I couldn’t, she carried it alone.
When I get there, Murphy’s is in full Friday-night mode: loud music, sticky floors, neon beer signs throwing blue and red across the ceiling. The bouncer nods me through because he knows I wear the jersey, and the heat and noise hit me the second I push inside.
I spot them from the door, and whatever was happening at that table before I got here is already over. The Pi Sig guys Mason usually drinks with are gone, scattered to the bar or the door.
In their place are my guys, arranged around Mason. Luca has his back to the wall, jaw set. Theo is beside him. Niko and some of the other guys are at the far end, and they’re giving off a don’t-even-think-about-it vibe.
Mason sees me before I’m halfway across the room. He stands — fast, instinctive, already reaching for his jacket on the back of the booth — and Seb’s hand lands on his shoulder and pushes him back down.
Mason hits the seat and looks up at Seb. For a quarter of a second, the confidence slips, and what he flashes isn’t cool or bored or amused. It’s the look of a man who knows exactly why everyone in this booth is looking at him and that the bill has come due.
Then the grin slides back into place. “Captain, pull up a chair. I just ordered a round.”
I don’t sit down. “Why?” I say.
The grin holds. “Why what?”
“The post. Sloane. Why?”
He tilts his head. “Bro, I don’t know what you’re—”
“Don’t.” My voice is flat. “A Pi Sig guy confirmed it.”
The grin flickers. Most people would miss it, but I’ve been watching Mason Cross for three years. I know what it looks like when he recalculates, and as he looks around at every one of the guys, none of them gives him a hook to grab.
“Look,” he says. “I don’t control what people post online. If someone—”
“You gave them the story. You gave them details nobody else had.”
“What details?” Still smiling. “I heard the same rumors everyone else—”
“The birthmark,” I say. “She told me about the kitchen at Ironwood, Mason.”
She didn’t.
But his face changes, and that tells me everything I need to know.
“This is — are you seriously doing this?” He snorts. “In front of the guys? In front of half the student body?”
“Yeah.”
His voice goes softer, almost gentle. “I think you’re a little tilted right now, Ro. I think you should go home, sleep it off, and we’ll talk later.”
I swing.
It’s not a hockey fight where you grab the jersey, square up, and wait for the ref. It’s my fist closing, my arm going, and the impact of his jaw under my knuckles, hard enough that his head snaps sideways and his beer goes off the table and shatters on the floor.
Then Mason comes off the seat.
He swings wildly and catches my shoulder. Luca and Theo grab him from behind in half a second, but Mason fights them, twisting against Luca’s grip with both arms. The words come out ugly and fast, nothing like the voice I’ve heard all season.
“Fuck you! The captaincy should’ve been mine—”
Theo has one arm, and Luca has the other, but they’re struggling with his anger and strength until Niko helps by hooking an arm across his chest. Mason is still fighting, his face red and eyes wide, and there’s blood on his lower lip.
“Mason—” Luca is straining.
“You took the C, and then you took my girl, you piece of shit.” His eyes are wide, and his chest is heaving. “So I did my homework. I found a guy from her old school who saw the photos and learned all about her, right down to the birthmark.”
Seb is between us now, one hand flat on my chest, firm but not pushing.
“I never had them, though. Not for lack of trying, because I’d love to see that little sweet bitch in all her glory.” Mason’s voice cracks. “But it didn’t matter, because if you tell someone there’s a photo, they believe you.”
“I’m taking this to Franklin, and you’ll be suspended by tomorrow,” I say. “Now go.”
Luca lets go of his arm, and Theo lets go of the other, and Mason stands there, wiping the blood off his chin with the back of his hand. Then he reaches past Niko for his jacket without looking at anyone. He puts it on and heads for the door.
Seb catches my eye from across the table. He nods once, slow, then follows Mason.
I look down at my knuckles, split across the first two knuckles, blood welling in the creases. The pain catches up late. I flex my fingers and they work, but the skin pulls and stings and my hand is already starting to swell.
I pull out my phone and walk toward the back hallway where the bathrooms are, past the pool tables, the dartboard, and a table of girls who are watching, and lean against the wall and call Sloane again.
Four rings, then voicemail, then the beep.
I almost hang up, then don’t, because avoiding the hard conversation is what I’ve been doing for days.
“It’s me,” I say. “I should’ve seen it. I should’ve just asked you, and I didn’t, because I was afraid of the answer. And you carried it alone because I made you think you had to.” I pause with my forehead against the wall. “I’m sorry I didn’t fix it.”