“I have those sometimes.”
“Rare, but devastating.”
“Put it on my scouting report.”
Her eyes softened, and that softness was so new between us now I almost didn’t know what to do with it.
I reached for her hand again, palm up this time. She looked at it before she put hers in mine.
“I’m sorry you had to watch it,” I said.
Her fingers tightened. “I needed to know.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You needed proof because everyone around you made your own body feel unreliable. That’s different.”
She stared at me.
The words had come before I thought too hard about them, but I knew they were right by the way her face changed. A little break. A little relief. A little horror at being seen.
“That’s what it felt like,” she whispered.
I pulled her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Then that’s what it was.”
Her eyes filled. “No one ever says it that simply.”
“People are stupid.”
“That is your healing thesis?”
“Working title.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, and she laughed beneath it. “You are so emotionally underqualified.”
“Wildly.” I kissed her knuckles again. “Still here.”
She looked at our hands. “I pieced together what I could. I heard enough names afterward. Saw enough reactions. Maddox was too comfortable. Iver used phrases from the video. Darian told people I liked attention before anyone outside that party should have known anything happened. Jerod laughed every time someone said my name in class. They were the guys. I couldn’t prove all of them were even in the room, but they were.”
“The law failed you.”
“Maddox’s dad failed me. He was a governor at the time and threatened my dad’s job, my scholarship…”
“The law failed you,” I repeated.
Her mouth trembled.
I leaned forward. “Don’t lawyer me out of that.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were preparing an objection.”
“I have a face for that?”
“You have several.”
A faint smile curved her mouth. “Name three.”
“Dismissive pre-law princess. Murderous cross-examiner. Hot girl about to cite precedent while emotionally unstable.”
