Chapter 76: Under

CHAPTER 6: UNDER THE TABLE

Richard picks the restaurant himself, white tablecloths, windows facing the street, angled just right for the photographer waiting across the road with a long lens.

The place doesn't put prices on the menu, which tells me everything I need to know before the waiter even arrives. I order the cheapest sounding thing on the list, some kind of soup, and try not to think about what it probably costs anyway.

Caleb pulls out my chair before I can do it myself. I let him. I've learned which battles are worth fighting and which ones are just choreography.

Richard doesn't bother with pleasantries once the waiter takes our order. He folds his napkin into a precise square on his lap.

"I've been thinking about our arrangement," he says. "Sixty thousand dollars. To make this official. A real engagement announcement, timed ahead of the draft combine."

I set my water glass down slower than I want to. "We already have an arrangement."

"Everyone's for sale, Miss Lin," he says. "People who claim otherwise simply haven't been offered the right number yet. I'm curious what yours is."

Under the table, Caleb's hand finds mine. Fingers lacing through. I don't pull away. I hold on harder than I mean to.

"Leave my mother out of your negotiations," I say. "She's not a bargaining chip. Neither am I."

Something flickers behind his eyes, gone fast, replaced by the same practiced calm he probably uses in every boardroom he's ever walked into. "Everything is a negotiation, whether we call it that or not."

"I understand plenty," I say. "I understand you're used to buying whatever gets in your way. I'm telling you I'm not for sale. Neither is my family."

He doesn't respond right away. He studies me the same way he did in his office. Caleb's grip on my hand tightens under the table.

Richard finally leans back and folds his hands. "Interesting," he says. That's all he says.

The rest of dinner passes in stilted talk about the draft, about scouts, about a season Caleb barely seems present for, his attention drifting to me every few minutes.

By the time we leave, my jaw aches from smiling for a camera I never once looked at, and my hand is sore from gripping his for two hours straight.

In the car, neither of us says anything for a long stretch. City lights blur past the window and I feel the adrenaline finally drain out of me.

"He does that," Caleb says, eyes on the road. "Puts a number on things. It's the only language he trusts."

"He's wrong about me."

"I know," he says. "I've known for a while now."

I turn toward the window instead of answering. Somewhere between the tenth and eleventh red light, exhaustion catches up with me the way it always does. My eyes get heavy despite myself.

I don't remember falling asleep. I remember waking just enough to register the car had stopped, engine off, streetlamp glow through the windshield. Caleb hasn't moved. Both hands still loose on the wheel, watching the front of my building like he's waiting for something.

I keep my eyes mostly closed. He doesn't do anything. Just sits there, glancing over every so often. Ten minutes pass before he finally reaches over, gentle, and shifts the strap of my bag where it slipped off my shoulder. Careful not to wake me.

I let him think I'm asleep a moment longer than I need to.

I stir eventually, blinking like I've only just woken. He straightens fast, clearing his throat like he's been caught at something.

"We're here," he says. "Didn't want to wake you."

"How long was I out?"

"Not long." A beat too quick to be honest. "You looked like you needed it."

I gather my bag, hand pausing on the door a second longer than necessary. "Thank you. For tonight. For not letting him get to me."

"He didn't get to you," he says. "You handled him better than I ever have."

I climb out before the moment can stretch into something neither of us knows what to do with. I walk up to my building without looking back, though I feel his eyes on me the whole way, headlights staying dark and steady in the driveway long after I've already locked the door behind me.

Upstairs, I stand at my window a second before pulling the curtain shut, watching his taillights finally pull away. I think about the number Richard threw across that tablecloth like it was nothing, and about the way Caleb's hand found mine before I even had to ask, and neither one of those two facts sits quiet in my chest the way I want it to before I finally fall asleep.

Mom's asleep when I check on her. Danny's door is shut, light off, homework abandoned mid page on his desk. I sit at the kitchen table alone a minute, still in my blazer, staring at nothing, before I finally drag myself to bed, sixty thousand dollars sitting somewhere down the road I haven't reached yet, waiting to see which one of us decides to pick it up first.