Chapter 95
Emily's POV
The car still felt surreal beneath my hands. Smooth leather steering wheel. Clean smell of new upholstery. Dashboard controls that responded with precision I'd never experienced before.
I'd driven it off the lot yesterday with Alex beside me. His satisfaction had been evident in the way he'd leaned back in the passenger seat, like he'd just completed some important acquisition. Which, I supposed, he had. Another thing tied to him now. Another thread in the web.
But I wasn't thinking about that this morning as I navigated through mid-morning traffic toward the Echelon House. Alex sat in the passenger seat, scrolling through something on his phone. The sunlight caught the grey paint in a way that made the car look almost silver. I had to admit—silently, grudgingly—that I liked it.
Liked the way it handled corners. The way other drivers actually gave me space instead of cutting me off. The way the backup camera showed me exactly what I needed to see without straining.
"You're smiling," Alex observed without looking up from his screen.
I was. I hadn't realized. "It's a good car."
"Told you." His tone was smug but not grating, the kind of satisfaction that came from being right about something that actually mattered. "You would have picked something that fell apart in six months just to prove a point."
"I would have picked something I could afford to maintain," I corrected, but there was no heat in it. We'd had this argument already, and I'd lost. Or won. I still wasn't entirely sure which.
Alex finally looked up, his gaze sliding over to me with that assessing quality he had—like he was constantly recalculating variables, measuring outcomes, deciding what move came next. "Ethan gets out of practice at three-thirty. You planning to pick him up?"
I hadn't been, actually. Ethan's semester had started three days before mine—some quirk of the athletic schedule that had him reporting back early for pre-season training. Today was his first official day back on campus.
He had his own truck. He didn't need me to pick him up. But the question sparked something in my chest anyway.
A sudden, irrational desire to show him this car. To let him see that things were changing. That I was letting good things happen without fighting them every step of the way.
And maybe—though I barely wanted to admit this even to myself—I wanted to surprise him on his first day back. Show up when he wasn't expecting it, break the pattern we'd established, prove that I could be spontaneous and thoughtful instead of just grimly consistent.
"Maybe," I said carefully, not wanting to commit to the impulse until I'd thought it through properly. "Would that be weird?"
"Why would it be weird?" Alex's tone suggested he genuinely didn't understand the question, which probably meant he'd already considered every angle and determined it was the logical choice. "You have a car now. You can do this. It's practical."
Practical. Right. Because nothing about our situation was remotely practical, but we were all pretending it was, pretending this whole arrangement made perfect sense instead of being completely insane.
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It was just past three when I headed toward Ethan's campus, Alex beside me in the passenger seat, the afternoon sun cutting sharp angles across the windshield. Twenty minutes later I was following signs toward the athletics complex, navigating roads I'd never actually driven before. I'd visited Ethan here a few times, but he'd always met me at the main gate. I'd never gone in to find him.
The athletics complex rose ahead—massive concrete and glass, banners and flags proclaiming championships and records. The parking lot was half-full, a mix of beat-up student vehicles and newer models I assumed belonged to coaches, strategically clustered near the main entrance. I found a spot with a clear view of the doors and killed the engine, suddenly uncertain about what I was doing here.
"You're overthinking it," Alex said, reading my hesitation with the same ease he read everything else about me. "He'll be happy to see you."
"I know that." I did know that. Ethan was always happy to see me, stupidly so, like I was something worth celebrating just by existing. It was one of the things that simultaneously comforted me and made me want to run in the opposite direction. "I just—"
"You just what?" Alex had shifted to face me fully now, his phone forgotten in his lap, his attention focused entirely on me in that intense way that made it impossible to deflect.
I gripped the steering wheel harder, trying to articulate something I barely understood myself. "I don't know how to do this. The normal girlfriend thing. Showing up to pick him up from practice like it's not a big deal."
"So do it like it's not a big deal," Alex said, as if it were that simple. "You're here. The car is here. When he comes out, you wave, he gets in, you drive away. That's it."
"What if—" I stopped myself, aware of how ridiculous the question would sound but unable to help asking it anyway. "What if people see? What if they start asking questions about who I am or why I'm here or—"
"Then they'll figure out Ethan has a girlfriend who picks him up from practice." Alex's expression was unreadable, but his voice carried something that might have been amusement. "Which everyone already knows, by the way. You're not exactly a secret."
I wasn't. I knew that intellectually. But knowing it and actually experiencing the visibility of being connected to someone like Ethan—someone who drew attention everywhere he went, who had fans and followers and people who tracked his every move—were two very different things.
The main doors swung open, and a cluster of players emerged in sweats and team gear, hauling duffel bags and talking loudly enough that I could hear the rumble of their voices even through the closed windows. I recognized a few faces from the games I'd attended, including Ethan's friend Connor, who was gesturing animatedly about something while another guy laughed and shoved his shoulder.
And then Ethan appeared.
He looked tired in the way athletes did after a hard practice—hair damp at the edges, shirt clinging slightly to his shoulders, that particular looseness in his posture that came from muscles pushed past their comfortable range. But he was smiling at something Connor said, his whole face lighting up with genuine amusement.
"There he is," Alex murmured beside me, and I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or just observing out loud.