And, like that, she nods and cuts back into the crowd.
Ivy bumps my shoulder. “You did a thing. A real thing. With paperwork.”
“Three binders’ worth.”
“Disgusting.” She grins. “I’ve never been prouder.”
We go back to people-watching, and the room fills as the evening deepens. Eventually I lose Ivy to a girl she knows from Sterling, dodge a booster’s wife who wants to tell me herniece also studies communications, and escape to the bar for a sparkling water and a minute to myself.
Only then do I look around again for Rowan, who arrived with me but vanished into Very Important Captain Business within ten seconds. But before I can find him in the crowd, someone steps beside me and puts a hand on my arm.
“Sloane,” he says.
I turn, and I know who it is instantly.
Patrick Cross is wearing a charcoal suit, white shirt, and a Halden tie that looks freshly pressed. In his hand, he’s holding a lowball of something amber with the ease of a man who has been comfortable in rooms like this his whole life.
I’ve never met him, but I Googled him plenty when he started giving Rowan grief, and Mason talked about his father enough that I feel as if I know him. And he’s alone, with me, which doesn’t feel like an accident.
“It’s been a difficult few weeks for my son,” he says, swirling the glass and taking a small sip. “The suspension.”
I don’t say anything.
“And it’s based on some serious claims by you.” He straightens his cuff. “Claims that made their way into institutional files.”
What he doesn’t know is that this stopped being a thing I can be talked out of weeks ago. Rowan filed the first report — my name, my story, set down without me — and when I found out, it cut deep.
So I went to the conduct office myself, on a gray Tuesday morning. I read every line Rowan had written, confirmed it in my own words, and signed it as my complaint, not his. The file that suspended Mason is mine now — and, for once, so is the record.
Cross also doesn’t know the truth about the photos — Mason never had them.
He let me believe he was holding the match and used the birthmark to prove it, and I believed him, because after you’ve been burned once, you stop asking whether the next fire is real. But it was all based on hearsay, and the photos were a bluff.
The story was the only weapon he ever truly had, and he already fired it, and I’m still standing. And now, whatever leverage Cross thinks he carried into this room, it doesn’t scare me. Because it was never real either.
“They’re not claims,” I say. “They’re facts.”
“They’re not facts.” He smiles like his son does and I want to slap it off his face. “They’re a version of events, and those get complicated for a young woman who felt hurt.”
“Iwashurt,” I say. “And while I appreciate that you’re looking out for your son, I’m not interested in walking any of it back.”
The smile doesn’t move. “That’s the complication.”
“I pride myself on being a complication, Mr. Cross,” I say.
And then I wait for the Halden Girl to chime in.
But she doesn’t.
“Here’s where we are.” He sets his glass on the bar. “You find whoever you need to tell and you tell them you made it up. You were upset. You exaggerated. It got out of hand.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You say the words, and all the stuff about your boyfriend will go away.” He lowers his voice further, and his pleasant face doesn’t change. “He’s chasing a contract, and the men who hand those out ask for my read on a kid first. The talent was never the question, but the judgment and the company he keeps are.”
My throat closes. And then the Halden Girl is right back there.
Unsay it.
