Chapter 32: The Secrets Between Us

Daisy

He looked at Chloe, sleeping peacefully on the bench with all the self-possession of someone who had arranged exactly this situation and then absolved herself of it by falling asleep.

Beside him, Tiffany had gone very still. Her eyes moved from Liam to me to Chloe and back to Liam with the precise attention of someone doing rapid social calculations.

"I'll take them home," Liam said.

"That's fine," I started, reaching for my phone. "I can get an Uber. It's not—"

"I said I'll take you home."

"And I said I can get an Uber. Chloe can go with you and I'll—"

"Daisy." His voice was even and final in the way it got when he had decided something. "Get your bag."

Tiffany's jaw tightened by a fraction. It was a very small fraction, and she had excellent control, but I caught it because I was very good at watching things I was pretending not to watch.

"You're coming to Dev's party," she said to Liam. Not a question. The smooth certainty of someone reclaiming a narrative. "You said you'd be there by ten."

"I'll be there." He looked at Chloe. "I just need to drop them off first."

"It's fine," I said again, pulling up the Uber app. "Seriously. You should go to your party. I've got this." I turned the phone toward him briefly to show him the app was open. "Four minutes away."

Something moved across his expression. Not frustration exactly. Something more like the look he got when he was being contradicted about something he'd already decided.

Then Chloe stirred.

Her eyes came open slowly, found Liam, and brightened with the immediate full-watt clarity of someone who had been more awake than she was letting on.

"Liam!" She sat up, pretzels sliding off her lap. "You won!"

"Twenty-eight fourteen," he said. The software was fully operational now, and he wasn't managing it at all.

Chloe scrambled up from the bench and crossed the corridor and put both arms around him, and Liam's hand came up automatically and rested on the back of her head the way it clearly always had.

"I saw the forty-two play," she said into his jacket. "I called it before you ran it."

"Did you?"

"Daisy witnessed it." She pulled back and looked up at him. "Can we go home? I want snickerdoodles."

"I have a party—"

Chloe's face fell. Not dramatically. Just a quiet rearrangement that was somehow more effective than anything dramatic would have been.

Liam looked at her face. Then at the ceiling. Then at me, which accomplished nothing helpful for either of us.

"I'll drop you first," he said. "Then the party."

Chloe's expression reversed itself so completely and so immediately that the performance was almost impressive. Her whole face lit up like the stadium lights had followed her indoors.

"Yes!" She grabbed her bag from the bench with sudden full-energy efficiency.

"Come on, Daisy, let's go." She was already moving toward the main corridor, scarf trailing.

I looked at Liam. He looked at me. Between us was the specific shared awareness of two people who had just been maneuvered by a twelve-year-old, and both knew it.

I pressed cancel on the Uber.

"Congratulations on the game," I said.

"Thanks," he said.

I looked past him at where Tiffany was still standing, watching this exchange with the controlled expression I had been trying to read all evening.

Her eyes met mine and held them, and the warning from this morning was still there, sharper now and wrapped in something new, something that looked less like cruelty and more like a person who knew something and was deciding how much longer to keep knowing it alone.

I held the look for three seconds. Then I picked up my bag and followed Chloe down the corridor.

Liam's car smelled like cedar and the same clean leather as always. Chloe installed herself in the back seat immediately, wrapped herself in the emergency blanket she apparently knew was stored under the seat, and was asleep again before he had finished pulling out of the parking lot.

The drive was quiet. The California night moved past the windows, streetlights making brief appearances and disappearing. The radio was off. The only sounds were the engine and the distant murmur of Chloe's breathing from the back.

After four minutes Liam said, "You were going to take an Uber."

"It was a practical solution," I said.

"You didn't have to wait."

"Chloe didn't want to wait alone."

He was quiet for a moment. His hand moved on the steering wheel three taps, the rhythm I recognized. Running something.

"Tiffany was just—" he started.

"You don't have to explain Tiffany to me," I said.

"I know I don't have to."

"Then don't."

The streetlights moved across the dashboard in slow intervals. From the back seat Chloe made a small sound in her sleep and resettled.

Liam tapped the steering wheel once more. Then he reached forward and turned the radio on low, the same station as this morning, the same warm frequency, and left it there, not loud enough to be a statement, just enough to fill the silence with something easier than conversation.

I looked out my window.

Down the road the Martinez mansion lights were visible on the hill, warm and large against the dark.

In my lap, my phone screen was dark. The Uber app was closed.

I thought about Tiffany's face in the corridor. About what she knew and when she had decided to keep it.

I thought about the one-second pause.

The radio played something soft and unhurried, and beside me, Liam drove with one hand on the wheel, easy and certain, the way he did everything, and I sat with my integration notes unopened on my phone and told myself I was still thinking about the secret.

Which I was.

I was also thinking about other things.

I looked back out the window and let the California night do what it did: make everything feel slightly more significant than you were prepared for, and said nothing at all the rest of the way home.