Chapter 23 Game Plan

Chapter 23 Game Plan

Daisy

No permanent damage to your reputation. You were the wronged girlfriend who handled herself with class. "I met her eyes. "That's a better story than anything else available to you right now."

Tiffany considered this with the serious attention she gave to things that actually mattered to her.

"She argued back today," she said. "In the cafeteria. She said I was scared of her. " Her voice was neutral. Clinical.

"She's good with words," I said. "She's good with most things. That's what makes this interesting."

"Interesting," Tiffany repeated. "You actually think this is interesting."

"I think she's the most complicated opponent I've run against," I said, which was true and was also the kind of honest that I generally didn't say out loud.

"She's got a plan of her own. I can see it in the way she watches me. She thinks she's running the situation."

Tiffany's eyes sharpened. "What kind of plan?"

"I don't know yet," I said. "That's the interesting part."

"Liam," Tiffany's voice went careful. "If she's running her own play—"

"Then I stay a step ahead of it," I said. "Same as always." I stood up, rolling my shoulders back.

"She's smart. I'll give her that. But she's also never had anyone actually pay attention to her before, and that's a gap I know exactly how to use."

Tiffany looked up at me from the bench. "You really don't feel anything," she said. Not an accusation. More like she was confirming a calculation.

I looked at her. "It's a bet, Tiff."

"She went to dinner with you."

"She went to dinner with the version of me I showed her. "I picked up my bag. "There's a difference."

"And the hoodie?"

I paused.

"She was cold," I said. "It was practical."

Tiffany held my gaze for a moment with the particular attention of someone who had known me long enough to hear the spaces between what I said.

"Right," she said.

"By the time I'm done with her," I said, moving toward the door,

"Daisy Henrico won't know what hit her. She'll be completely gone for me. She'll have forgotten every reason she had to be careful. And then the three months will be up and I will have the cleanest win of my life." I pushed the door open.

"And your reputation will be intact, and the scholarship conversation will be clean, and everyone goes home."

"Everyone goes home," Tiffany echoed. Her voice had gone flat in a way I noted and set aside.

"Keep your phone on," I said. "I'll let you know if I need anything."

I walked out into the hallway.



The walk back to the main building took four minutes, and I used all four of them running the day's plays in my head the way I ran film after a game. Identifying what worked. Identifying what needed adjustment.

The cafeteria moment had been better than planned. I hadn't planned it; I'd come out of practice and heard from Jace in approximately thirty seconds that something was happening in the cafeteria involving Tiffany and Daisy, and I had moved fast because fast was the right move. Spontaneity was readable. Calculated, it was not.

The hoodie had been good. The look on her face when I handed it to her, the resistance, the pride, the moment she put it on anyway because she was cold and practical and being cold and practical was more important to her than the point she was trying to make. That was useful information.

The argument had been useful too. She was angry, genuinely, and angry people told you things they wouldn't tell you in the careful, measured exchanges she usually gave me. She had told me about her mother. About what the rumors had cost her this morning.

I filed all of it.

My phone buzzed. Marcus.

Marcus: I heard about the cafeteria. Smooth move. Is she buying it?

I typed back, "More than yesterday." Less than tomorrow.

Marcus: Good. Keep it moving. The championship is six weeks out, and I need this wrapped clean before then.

I looked at that last message for a moment.

I need this wrapped cleanly.

Not we. Not you. I.

I locked the phone without responding and pushed through the doors into the main building.



The library was on the second floor. I wasn't going to the library. I had no reason to go to the library. The study session wasn't until tonight.

I went to the library anyway.

I told myself I was checking on the session schedule. I told myself it was practical. I told myself it had nothing to do with the image of Daisy sitting in that cafeteria with her hands flat on the table and milk in her hair and her spine completely straight, not breaking, not flinching, just breathing through it like she had been breathing through things her whole life and had gotten very good at it.

I pushed the library door open quietly.

She was at her table in the back corner. Maya and Sarah were with her. Her notebooks were out. She was not writing.

She was staring at a page with the specific stillness of someone who was thinking very hard about something that wasn't in any textbook.

She didn't see me. I stayed in the doorway for three seconds, long enough to confirm she was okay, which was the practical reason I had come, and then I let the door close and walked back down the hall.

She's fine, I told myself. She's always fine. That's what she does.

I made it halfway down the corridor before I stopped and stood there for a moment with my bag over my shoulder and the afternoon light coming through the high windows and the distant sound of the school settling into its after-hours quiet.

By the time I'm done with her, she won't know what hit her.