Chapter 88: All the Facts

Daniel

For several seconds after Chloe finished speaking, I could only stare at her.

Every memory I had of Chloe seemed to be shifting beneath my feet.

Our first meeting had not been an accident.

She had placed herself in my path because I lived in the Hockey House. She had looked at me and seen access to the people she wanted to expose, while I had walked away from that first conversation thinking I had met someone different from anyone else I knew.

That hurt more than the podcast itself.

I believed her reason for creating it. I remembered what had happened to her friend, and I remembered how quickly the team had protected the player responsible. I had been eighteen, new to the house, and too intimidated by the older guys to challenge them. At the time, I had called my silence helplessness. Standing in front of Chloe now, I could admit that fear had played a larger role than I wanted to remember.

She had taken that failure and turned it into a weapon.

Then she had aimed it at all of us.

I looked toward the laptop on my desk. The entire campus had spent weeks wondering who controlled the anonymous voice airing people’s secrets, while the answer had been sleeping beside me, eating at our table, and listening to every theory we offered. The deception was enormous, but so was the difference between what she had intended and what she had actually done.

Those were not the same thing. Intent mattered. Actions mattered more.

She had planned to use me, yet she had not exposed anything she learned through our relationship.

Then she had confessed without being caught.

None of that erased the manipulation, but it belonged on the scale with everything else.

“I need a minute,” I said.

The fear that crossed her face made the words feel harsher than I had intended, so I forced myself to slow down before continuing. “Just a quick break to get a grasp on everything. I’m not disappearing, and I’m not leaving the house. I will be right back.”

Chloe searched my expression as though she were trying to decide whether she could trust that promise. Her eyes were already wet, and her fingers had twisted so tightly into the comforter that her knuckles had gone pale.

Finally, she nodded. “Okay.”

I crossed to the dresser and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, aware of her gaze following every movement. Part of me wanted to reassure her before I left, but I did not know what reassurance I could honestly give yet. I loved her. That remained true. I was also hurt, angry, and confused, and pretending otherwise would only turn the next conversation into another performance.

I left the bedroom and closed the door gently behind me.

I went straight to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and reached for the orange juice.

I poured a glass out of habit.

The color was too bright against the countertop, almost absurdly cheerful for how I felt. I wrapped my hand around it, lifted it halfway toward my mouth, then set it back down without taking a drink.

I needed air more than I needed breakfast.

The back door opened with a soft scrape, letting in a cool breeze that carried the smell of damp grass. I stepped onto the deck and began pacing between the railing and the old patio table, forcing myself to examine the situation the same way I would examine anything else that could change my life.

The facts were ugly.

Chloe had created the podcast to punish people she did not know individually because she believed the team was collectively guilty. She had used the fallout as research without anyone’s consent. She had orchestrated our first meeting because she wanted access to my friends and the house.

Those choices were manipulative. Some of them were cruel.

But there were other facts too.

She had watched her best friend be destroyed while the person responsible faced no consequences. She had built the podcast from anger and helplessness, then continued after the power of it began feeding something less defensible. Somewhere along the way, she had recognized what she was becoming. She had told me the truth even though remaining silent would have been easier.

And she loved me.

The confession had not sounded calculated. I knew Chloe well enough now to recognize when fear stripped away every defense she had. She had looked at me as though those words were the most vulnerable thing she had ever offered anyone.

The beginning of our relationship had been engineered.

That did not mean the entire relationship had been false.

I thought about the nights she had stayed awake while I studied, correcting flash cards even when she could barely keep her eyes open. I remembered the way she listened when I spoke about my family, how she had learned which practices left me sore and kept pain relievers in her bag without announcing it. I remembered laughter, arguments, lazy mornings, and the quiet moments when there had been nothing for her to gain from being beside me.

Those memories still belonged to us.

I paced once more to the end of the deck, then stopped.

Taking space was reasonable. Making her sit upstairs wondering whether I was coming back would not be. She had asked me to hear everything, and I had promised I would. I could be hurt without punishing her. I could disagree with what she had done without pretending she was incapable of change.

By the time I walked back into the kitchen, the untouched glass of orange juice had left a ring of condensation on the counter. I abandoned it there and headed upstairs.

I had been gone less than five minutes.

It had apparently been long enough for Chloe to fall apart.

The moment I opened the bedroom door, I found her curled near the center of the bed with both hands covering her face. Her shoulders shook with every sob she tried and failed to contain, and the sound went straight through the anger I had carefully organized downstairs.

“Chloe.”

She looked up, her face wet and crumpled, then tried to wipe away the tears as though being caught crying were another thing she needed to apologize for.

Whatever distance I had planned to maintain disappeared.

I crossed the room, sat beside her, and pulled her into my arms. She folded against me immediately, pressing her face into my bare chest while her fingers clutched the waistband of my sweatpants as if she were afraid I might leave again.

“Shh. Hey, hey.” I tightened my arms around her and rubbed a slow hand over her back. “Why all these tears?”

Her next breath broke apart before she managed to answer.

“Because I’m a horrible person,” she sobbed. “And now you’re going to break up with me.”