Chapter 33 The Argument

Chapter 33 The Argument


I waited until we were in the basement room.

The door closed behind us. Harrison turned on the small lamp. The room was cold and quiet and completely ours in the way it had been since the beginning of all of this.

I pulled out my phone and held it out.

Harrison took it. He read both messages without speaking. His expression did the same thing it always did when he was keeping something still by force. Controlled. Deliberate. Too careful to be natural.

He handed the phone back.

"October 3rd," I said. "Three years ago. Tell me."

"Sophie—"

"Don't," I said. "Don't tell me you were going to tell me when the time was right. Don't give me that again Harrison. Just tell me."

Harrison sat on the crate across from me. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He looked at the floor for a moment.

"Three years ago I broke into the school archive," he said. "It was late October. I had found a reference in my grandfather's files to a patent transfer from 1990. I needed to see the original records." He paused. "I went at night. I got into the restricted section. And I found everything. Your mother's scholarship contract. The transfer documents. The Dean's signature."

"You found everything three years ago," I said.

"Yes."

"And my name?"

Harrison looked up. "The patent transfer included a next of kin clause. Standard legal language. It named your mother's living heir as a potential claimant in the event of a future dispute." He held my gaze. "Your name was in the document Sophie. Full name. Date of birth. Current address at the time. My grandfather's lawyers had been tracking your family for years as part of the inheritance case."

"So you knew who I was," I said. "Before I ever applied."

"Yes."

"You arranged the scholarship," I said. "You used your grandfather's hidden money to fund it. You put my name forward. You built the entire path that led me here." I stood up. "And you never told me."

"I was going to—"

"When Harrison?" My voice was sharper than I intended. "When was the right time? After the boiler room? After the Gala? After I spent weeks thinking Daniel was the one who brought me here? After I trusted you with everything?" I stopped. "Do you understand what it feels like to find out the ground you're standing on was built by someone else without your knowledge?"

"I didn't want you to feel like a project," Harrison said. He stood up too. "I didn't want you to look at everything that happened between us and wonder if it was real or if it was just me managing the situation I created."

"So you decided for me," I said. "You decided I couldn't handle knowing. You decided the right time was never apparently. Just like the file. Just like your grandfather's money. Just like everything else you keep tucked away until someone else drags it into the light."

"That is not what I did," Harrison said. His voice had an edge now too.

"Then what did you do?" I asked. "Because from where I'm standing you have been three steps ahead of me this entire time. You knew who I was before I walked through the door. You built the door. You were waiting on the other side of it." I looked at him. "Was any of it real? Or was I always just the piece you needed to finish your father?"

Harrison crossed the room in three steps.

"Don't," he said. His voice was low and very serious. "Don't ask me that."

"I just did," I said.

"You want to know if it was real?" Harrison said. "The drawings. Were those strategy? The clinic floor. Was that calculated? Every time I put myself between you and this school was that me managing my investment?" His jaw was tight. "I am standing here right now having just watched you dismantle every move Daniel and Serena made and I am telling you that no version of me could have planned for you Sophie. I chose you from a document. And then you walked into that room and you were nothing like a document. You were loud and sharp and furious and completely unmanageable and I didn't know what to do with any of it."

"Then why didn't you just tell me?" I said. My voice broke slightly on the last word. Not from sadness. From the exhaustion of it. "Why does everything have to be a secret with you? Why do I always find out from someone else?"

"Because I was afraid," Harrison said.

The room went quiet.

Harrison looked at me. The controlled stillness was completely gone. Just his face. Raw and honest and tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

"I was afraid that if you knew I chose you first you would spend every moment after that wondering if I only stayed because I felt responsible for bringing you here," he said quietly. "I wanted you to choose me without that weight. I wanted one thing in my life that wasn't complicated by what my family did."

I looked at him for a long moment.

The lamp hummed between us. The basement room was cold and still and full of thirty years of other people's secrets and somewhere in the middle of all of it two people standing close enough to feel each other breathing.

"You are the most frustrating person I have ever met," I said.

"I know," Harrison said.

"You make everything harder than it needs to be," I said.

"I know," he said again.

"And you should have told me," I said. "From the beginning. You should have just told me."

"Yes," he said. "I should have."

We looked at each other.

The argument had gone somewhere. I wasn't sure when. Somewhere between his voice breaking on the word afraid and the way he was looking at me right now like I was the only fixed point in a room that had been spinning for three years.

Neither of us moved.

Then Harrison reached out slowly and pushed a strand of hair away from my face. His fingers stayed at my temple. Warm against the cold air of the basement room.

I didn't pull away.

He looked at me for one long deliberate moment. A question without words.

I answered it the same way.

I closed the distance between us.

The kiss was nothing like the stadium.

No steel pillars. No cold night air. No hunger that came from anger. This was slow and quiet and completely intentional. His hand moved from my temple to my jaw. My hands found the front of his jacket. The lamp hummed. The basement room held its breath.

When we finally pulled back Harrison's forehead dropped against mine.

Neither of us said anything.

Because there was nothing left to argue about.