Chapter 8 Her move
Wade's POV
She walked past me with that unbothered posture that made something twist in my stomach and I stood in the middle of the sitting room holding two halves of a pen and watched her go.
Fine.
I grabbed my football from beside the door and headed to the field.
Chris saw me coming from halfway across the pitch and threw his arms wide.
"The Diamond High quarterback graces us with his presence. What an honour."
"Save it," I said, dropping onto the bench to lace my boots. "I just need to clear my head."
"Clear your head?" He sat down beside me. "From what?"
"From her." The words were out before I could stop them.
I felt the shift immediately. The other boys drifting closer, the sharpened interest, the way a group of teenage boys collectively scents something worth knowing.
"Her?" Chris said. "Who is she?"
"Nobody." I shook my head. "Forget it."
"Wade." Frank appeared on my other side. "We can see it all over your face. Talk."
I needed a redirect. Fast.
"Clara," I said. "She is getting in my head. Breaking up with her has been more complicated than I expected."
The group accepted this immediately with the enthusiasm of people given something to work with.
"Breaking up with the head cheerleader will do that," Frank said sagely.
"She has been messaging him constantly," someone added, as though they knew.
"I heard the fat scholarship girl slept with Mr. Ken just to get above Wade on the list," Henry said, to nobody in particular, and the group's energy shifted the way it always did when a new target came up. Loud, easy, automatic. "Imagine thinking that would get his attention. Someone like Wade."
The laughter came on cue.
I said nothing.
That in itself was unusual. Normally I would have had something ready. A line, a look, the small performance of agreement that kept everything comfortable. But I sat there and the laughter moved around me and I could not locate the version of myself that found it funny.
How would they react if they knew she was living in my house right now? That my father had doubled her salary and handed her authority over my schedule? That she had poured a bucket of cold water over me this morning and snapped my pen in half and walked away like she owned the corridor?
That my heart did something inconvenient every single time she looked at me?
"You coming or not?" someone called from the pitch.
I stood up and pulled on my boots.
Chris stayed seated. He looked up at me with that quiet, particular attention he had that I had never successfully fooled.
"Is it really about Clara?" he asked.
"Family stuff," I said. "Mia. Dad's travel. Everything piling up."
He held my gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then he stood.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Then stop sulking." He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the pitch. "Run it off."
I was almost there when he spoke again, casual, almost an afterthought.
"Do you actually think she slept with him?"
I slowed. "What?"
"Lily Johnson." He kept walking, eyes on the pitch. "Do you actually believe it? Because she is genuinely one of the smartest people in our year. I am not sure she needed anyone's help to get where she got." He glanced back at me briefly. "The bullying has just been a lot, that is all I am saying."
He jogged ahead to join the others.
I stood there for three full seconds before I followed.
We played until the light changed.
By the time we dispersed I was starving in the particular complete way that comes after hours of running, the kind of hunger that makes everything else feel distant and unimportant. I said goodbye to the boys and walked home at a pace that was nearly a jog, already thinking about the leftovers from breakfast.
I went straight to the kitchen. Opened the fridge.
Or tried to.
It did not open.
I looked down and saw a small padlock through the handle, neat and deliberate, new enough that the metal still caught the light cleanly.
"What—"
"I did mention," Lily said from the kitchen doorway, "that I had the right punishment in mind."
She was leaning against the frame with the key held loosely between two fingers, watching me with an expression of complete composure.
"Lily." I turned around. "I am genuinely hungry. I have been running for three hours."
"Is this how you treat Mia?" she asked. "Does she run too? Or does she stay home alone when you go to play with your friends?"
The question landed differently than I expected.
Because the honest answer was that Mia stays at home. And the further honest answer, the one I did not particularly want to look at directly, was that I had gone without a second thought because Lily was here and for the first time in longer than I could remember I had not had to think about it.
I had just left.
"That is none of your business," I said.
She nodded slowly, like she had expected exactly that answer. "Fine." She pushed off the doorframe and turned to leave, the key disappearing into her pocket.
"Lily. Open the fridge."
"Your father gave me authority to punish you accordingly." She did not look back. "I am just following instructions. Your words, I believe, were I would love to see you try."
She disappeared down the hall.
I stood in front of the locked fridge for a moment and considered my options. There were not many. I could go out again and buy food, which required money I had not thought to bring. I could try to find where she had gotten the padlock and source a duplicate key, which would take longer than my hunger could manage. I could demand she open it, which had already proven pointless.
Or I could wait her out.
I went to my room and picked up my controller but it was not there.
I checked under the pillow. Behind the console, on the desk, under the desk. I stood in the middle of my room and looked at the space where it always sat and understood with a slow, dawning clarity that I had deeply underestimated her.
"Lily!" I called from the doorway.
"Punishment!" came back from down the hall.
I walked to Mia's room. The door was half open. Lily was sitting on the edge of Mia's bed in the low afternoon light, a book open across her knees, Mia asleep beside her with one hand tucked under her cheek.
It was such a quiet, ordinary scene that I stood in the doorway for a second without saying anything.
"Come out," I said, keeping my voice low.
"No."
"Lily,Please."
Something in her expression shifted almost imperceptibly. She closed her book, set it down carefully so as not to disturb Mia, and slipped off the bed with practised quiet. She stepped into the hallway and pulled the door to behind her.
We stood in the dim corridor facing each other.
"Please," I said again, and the word cost me more than I wanted to show. "I have learned my lesson."
She studied me for a moment with those steady eyes. Then the corner of her mouth moved.
"Redo the assignment," she said. "All of it. Submit it to me when you are done."
I stared at her.
She waited.
I went back to my room.
I sat at my desk and opened my textbook and did the entire assignment again from the beginning, properly this time, showing every step, checking every answer. It took forty minutes. It was, objectively, better work than I had submitted the first time and I was not going to tell her that.
I walked back to her and held it out without a word.
She took it and read through it slowly, page by page, while I stood there. Then she reached into her pocket and produced the fridge key and placed it in my palm.
I ate standing at the kitchen counter, too hungry to bother with a plate, and thought about the fact that she had won every single round today without raising her voice once.
I thought about Chris's words on the pitch.
I thought about Mia asleep in that soft pink room with Lily's hand resting near hers.
I chewed and swallowed and looked at nothing in particular.
Something was going to have to change. I just had not yet decided what.