Page 16 of Hostile

He smiled at that—the quiet one, the real one, not the social version—and fell into step beside me as I moved deeper into the party. We’d been doing this for six weeks. The Thursday coffees, which had stretched past an hour in defiance of my own stated boundary every single time. The walks back from class that somehow covered twice the necessary distance. The habit he’d developed of finding me in the library, sitting across from me without speaking, and working in the same focused silence I’d established alone, as though silence were something you could share if both people were fluent in it.

I hadn’t named what it was. Naming things made them real, and real things could be lost.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said. “Caldwell—he’s pursuing his MBA and knows more about derivative markets than anyone I’ve ever talked to. I think you two will⁠—”

“Wyatt.”

The voice came from behind us, and I sensed him still beside me for a moment—subtle and hidden from afar, yet close enough for me to detect. That quiet stillness that develops when someone has spent years conditioning themselves to listen for a particular sound.

I turned around.

Blair Aldridge looked exactly like her brother, as fraternal twins sometimes do—same coloring, same structure, same blond hair and pale Aldridge blue eyes—and absolutely nothing like him in any way that mattered. Where Wyatt’s face in repose was simply still, Blair’s was arranged, every expression precisely calibrated. She wore a cream-colored blazer over a silk blouse that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget, and she looked at me with the exact same expression she’d been perfecting since we were six years old.

Polite contempt. The kind that required an audience to fully appreciate.

She had one. Three girls stood behind her, drinks in hand, their expressions interested, watching the way people watch something they’ve been told to watch.

“Blair.” Wyatt’s voice had gone careful. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“Tatum invited me.” She gestured vaguely behind her without breaking eye contact with me. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you. You don’t call.” Her tone carried the practiced injury of someone who knew exactly which notes to play and in what order. Then, as though noticing me for the first time despite having looked directly at me for the past ten seconds, she said, “And you brought company.”

“You remember Megan,” Wyatt said. Not a question. Flat and deliberate.

“Of course.” Blair’s smile arrived and never reached her eyes. “Megan Hale. My God, you haven’t changed at all. Still very—” she paused, giving my outfit a slow, thorough once-over, then looked back up with an inspection-like look—”natural.”

Behind her, one of her girls smiled into her drink.

Natural. In Blair’s vocabulary, it meant the same thing it always had—insufficient. She’d been finding new containers for that word since we were children, and she’d perfected the art of making it sound like a compliment in front of anyone who might be watching.

I looked at her with the expression I’d developed over years of exactly this—not cool, not cold, not the flushed and flustered reaction she was shopping for, but something more like indifference worn so comfortably it almost passed for warmth. “Blair. You look exactly the same.”

It wasn’t a compliment. She knew it wasn’t a compliment. The girls behind her didn’t know it wasn’t a compliment, which was the point.

“What brings you to Harvard, of all places? Wyatt mentioned you were here, but I have to say I was surprised.” Her smile didn’t falter. “A long way from Savannah.”

“Full academic scholarship,” I said with a pleasant tone. “I imagine that’s how most people get here.”

Wyatt made a sound beside me that he converted, smoothly, into a cough.

Blair’s smile thinned by about two millimeters. “Of course.” Blair’s expression didn’t change. “I only hope the transition hasn’t been too taxing. Acclimating to changes of this scale can be… consuming. It’s easy to lose perspective when something becomes personal.” A brief, perfectly timed pause. “I say that with genuine concern, Megan. I’ve always thought you were exceptionally capable. I’d hate to see that clouded by old history.”

She reached out and touched Wyatt’s arm with the easy familiarity of someone reminding the room of a prior claim. “Wyatt, I need to borrow you for just a moment. Family thing.” Her eyes flicked back to me with the same practiced pleasantness. “You don’t mind, do you, Megan? I’m sure you can find someone to talk to.”

The implication was so precisely constructed—you are alone here, you don’t belong here, and I am removing the one person who vouches for your presence—that I almost had to admire the engineering of it.

Almost.

“Not at all,” I said pleasantly. “Take your time.”

I turned away from them both before Wyatt could say anything and headed toward the kitchen, keeping my pace unhurried and my spine perfectly straight. Behind me, I heard the low murmur of Blair’s voice, not the words, just the tone—the musical lilt of someone accustomed to getting the last word by simply continuing to speak after the other person has stopped listening.

In the kitchen, I found a spot at the counter by a window that looked out onto the back alley and stood there with my sparkling water and my composed expression, my pulse doing something considerably less composed beneath it.

Natural.

I took a slow breath. Held it. Let it out.

It was fine. This was fine. Blair Aldridge was predictable—I had been watching her tactics since I was in first grade, and she hadn’t shown me anything new. I didn’t need Wyatt’s help; I was managing it on my own. I’ve always managed it, with or without anyone beside me. What was pressing in my chest now wasn’t that pattern but something heavier and sharper.