Chapter 22 Chapter 22

Chapter 22 Chapter 22


I had a spot not many people knew about it. Not even Chloe, which was saying something because Chloe knew most things about me. It was on the east side of the school building, a narrow strip between the back of the gymnasium wall and the old iron fence that marked where the school grounds ended. There was a wooden bench there that nobody used because you had to know where to turn to find it. The maintenance guys kept the area clean but otherwise left it alone.

I went there when I needed to think.

I had been going there more often lately.

It was Friday. Lunch break. I had told Chloe I had to return a library book which was true, technically, I did have a library book and then I had come here instead and sat on the bench with my back against the gymnasium wall and my eyes on the gap in the fence where you could see a thin strip of the street below the school hill.

The air was cold. Sharp. The kind that cleared your head whether you wanted it cleared or not.

I was thinking about the video on my phone.

Specifically I was thinking about when. I had the what. I had the how. The timing was the part that kept moving every time I reached for it, because timing was everything and the wrong moment would waste the whole thing.

I heard footsteps on the gravel path.

I looked up.

Jax.

He stopped when he saw me. Looked at the space. Looked at me.

"How did you know about this spot?" I said.

"I found it first week," he said. "I come here when the cafeteria gets too loud."

I stared at him.

"You've been coming here since the first week," I said.

"Yeah."

"And I've been coming here for two years."

"I know. I've seen you here twice." He said it without apology. Just information. "You never noticed me because you were always too inside your own head."

I could not decide whether to be annoyed by that or unsettled by it.

I was both.

He walked over and dropped onto the bench on the other side of me not close, one full person of space between us and looked at the same strip of street I had been looking at.

"What are you thinking about?" he said.

"The timing," I said, because we had stopped pretending in the library and I wasn't going back to full pretending now.

"For the video."

"Yes."

"You want maximum impact," he said. Not a question.

"I want it to land where it can't be recovered from." I looked at my hands. "One chance. I don't get to try again."

"Assembly," he said.

I turned to look at him.

"The Monday morning all-school assembly," he said. " Before exam period. Every student, every teacher, the screens at the front." He tilted his head. "You set it to autopost. You're already in the room when it goes up. Nobody can connect it to you in the moment and everyone sees it at the same time."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"That's specific," I said.

"You said you wanted maximum impact."

"I did."

"That's maximum impact."

I turned back to the fence.

The strip of street below was quiet. A car passed slowly. A woman walking a dog stopped to check her phone.

Everything normal out there. Everything completely ordinary.

"Why are you helping me burn him down?" I said.

"Because he's been walking on the wrong things." Simple. Flat. Like it required no further explanation.

I turned to look at him again.

And then I understood, really understood, in that specific way that came when you stopped looking at the surface of something and saw what was underneath that Jax had known about Liam long before the Valentine's dance. Maybe not the full picture. But enough. He had been watching the group from the moment he arrived and he had filed Liam's easy cruelty under noted without ever saying a word.

"You knew," I said.

"Not everything."

"But something."

His jaw moved slightly. The closest he came to uncomfortable. "I saw enough."

"And you said nothing."

"To who?" His eyes stayed level. "To you? You weren't ready to hear it. To Chloe?" He paused. "What would I have said to Chloe."

I didn't answer that. Because there was no clean answer and we both knew it.

The wind moved between us.

I stood up.

I don't know why I stood up. Maybe because sitting felt too settled for what the air around us felt like right now. Maybe because I needed to move.

I walked to the fence and put my hand on the cold iron and looked through it at the street below.

"I keep thinking." I stopped.

"What?"

"I keep thinking about how long I was that person." The words came out quieter than I meant them to. "The one he described in the garden. Easy to manage. Boring." I pressed my palm flat against the iron. "And the thing is, I wasn't boring. I wasn't easy. I just made myself small because small felt safe." I stopped again. "That's the part I can't get past."

Silence behind me.

Then footsteps on the gravel.

He was close before I heard how close. The warmth of him behind me, the same warmth from the garden, from the dance floor, that specific presence that my body had apparently memorized without asking my permission and I turned.

He was right there.

One step away. Maybe less.

The fence was at my back.

His hand came up and pressed flat against the iron beside my head, one arm, not caging, just placed, the gesture of someone who had moved close and decided not to pretend otherwise. His eyes were direct and dark and doing the reading thing except the reading thing felt different from twelve inches away than it did from across a table.

Different in a way that had no safe word for it.

"You made yourself small," he said quietly, "because you were surrounded by people who needed you small to feel big."

My back was against the fence.

My heart was being extremely inconvenient.

"Jax.."

"I know," he said.

"We can't"

"I know that too."

He didn't move. The arm beside my head stayed exactly where it was. His face was close enough that I could see the detail of him , the line of his jaw, the slight scar near his left eyebrow I had never been close enough to notice before, the steady certainty in his eyes that never quite went away.

The cedarwood smell was absolutely everywhere.

"You're using me for revenge," he said. "I'm using you for entertainment." His eyes stayed on mine. "Let's not pretend this is something simple. Like it's just about getting back at Liam."

The iron fence was cold through my blazer.

"Is that what this is?" I said.

"I don't know," he said.

Which was the most honest thing either of us had said.

The wind moved through the gap in the fence.

Neither of us moved.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket. Once. Twice. He held my gaze for two more seconds before he looked down at the screen.

Chloe.

He looked at her name on his screen. Then at me.

Then he stepped back.

One step. Then twom

The cold air rushed into the space between us immediately, sharp and definite, like a door closing.

He looked at his phone.

He looked at me.

"Same time Thursday," he said. Quiet. Steady. Like none of the last five minutes had existed.

He turned and walked back up the gravel path.

I stood at the fence with my hand still on the iron and my heart still doing the thing I had no name for.

The street below was still ordinary.

Everything down there completely fine.

Up here was a different story entirely.