By the time I reached Silverline Club, Landon's varsity jacket was soaked through to my skin.

Rain slid from the navy shoulders in cold streams. The white NORTHLAKE letters clung to my back, heavy as a confession. Three weeks ago, Landon had kissed rain off my mouth and said, "Keep it, Renee. I like knowing my name gets you home."

Now his name was the only thing getting me past the line.

"Students only tonight," the bouncer said, blocking the door. Music thudded behind him like the world had not ended.

I pushed wet hair out of my eyes. "I go to Northlake."

"Everybody goes to Northlake when QB1 is inside."

QB1. Tonight every girl in line whispered it like a prayer.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Harper: Renee, please tell me you did not go there.

He just got cleared. He is not himself yet.

Not himself. That was what everyone kept saying. Coach MacKenna. Dale Porter. The athletic department statement. The team doctor I had not been allowed to speak to because I was not family, not an authorized contact, not anyone the hospital had permission to update.

Not himself did not explain why Landon's private phone had been off for twelve days.

Not himself did not explain why the man who used to call me from that phone at 2:17 a.m. had walked into Silverline tonight like he was searching for something he couldn't name.

Someone shoved behind me. I stumbled, one sneaker splashing into a gutter puddle.

"Hey." A broad hand caught my elbow before I hit the curb. "Careful."

I turned and found David Cole blinking at me through the rain, his Tigers hoodie dark at the shoulders, his smile loose and unfocused.

"David," I said, grabbing the chance before it could vanish. "You know me."

His brow furrowed. "Renee, right? Joni's friend? Harper's girl from the paper?"

Close enough. Not the truth. Never the truth.

"I need to get inside."

"You with Joni?"

"I need to see Landon."

At his name, David's expression shifted into caution. "He's in VIP. Dale's trying to keep fans off him."

"I'm not a fan."

I looked at David. "Please."

Maybe he was too drunk to think better of it. Maybe the jacket fooled him. He slung an arm around my shoulders and told the bouncer, "She's with us."

Inside, Silverline was all heat and blue light.

Music slammed into my chest. Screens over the bar looped last Saturday's hit: Landon going down, helmet striking turf, the stadium sound cutting into a terrible gasp. Then the feed changed to him walking through Silverline's side entrance tonight, alive under flashing cameras.

Alive should have been enough.

It wasn't.

The VIP section sat behind a rope and two security guards. Tigers players filled the black leather booths, laughing too loudly and pretending not to watch the quarterback in the corner.

Landon sat apart from them.

My entire body stopped.

He wore a black shirt open at the throat and the silver watch I had once teased him for checking whenever he waited on my text. A faint shadow lingered near his temple. I saw it because I knew every inch of his face.

He looked tired.

He looked bored.

He looked like a stranger.

Dale Porter stood near him, speaking quietly into a phone. Dennis Blake and Craig Morris argued at the end of the booth. A couple of girls hovered near the rope, phones angled for proof they had breathed the same air as Landon Dalton.

Then Landon lifted his head.

For one impossible second, his eyes locked on mine.

My lungs forgot how to work.

There you are, I thought wildly.

His gaze dropped to the jacket.

Then to my face.

Nothing changed.

No heat. No recognition. No private smile he used only when he was trying not to touch me in public.

Just a cool, assessing stare.

I moved before fear could pin me there. "Landon."

Dale stepped in front of me so quickly I almost walked into his suit jacket. "Miss Carter."

Miss Carter. Polite. Careful. A door closing softly in my face.

"I need to talk to him."

"This is not a good time."

"Then tell me when was a good time." My voice shook, but it carried over the bass. "When I called the hospital? When I called you? When his private phone went straight to voicemail for twelve days?"

Dale's eyes flicked, just once, toward Landon. "I understand you're upset."

"Do you?"

"I can't discuss Mr. Dalton's medical situation."

"I'm not asking for his chart." I pushed past him because if I stopped, I would break in front of all of them. "I'm asking him why he won't answer me."

The booth quieted.

Dennis looked up first. "Renee?"

Craig's grin faded. David swayed behind me, suddenly aware he had delivered a lit match into a room full of gasoline.

Landon leaned back against the leather seat, his eyes on me like I was an unexpected reporter with a bad question. "Do I know you?"

The words were not loud. They didn't need to be. Every sound in the club bent around them.

My hand tightened around my phone until the edges bit into my palm. "Don't do that."

His expression didn't move. "I'm asking."

"You know me."

"A lot of people think I know them."

Someone at the rope whispered, "Oh my God."

I felt the first phone rise.

Dale saw it too. "Put that down," he said sharply to the girl filming, but she only lowered it a few inches.

I should have left. Harper would have told me to leave. The version of me who had survived my mother's investor dinners and Julian's polished lies would have left with her spine straight.

But that version of me had not slept in Landon's bed with his hand over her heart.

She had not been loved in secret so thoroughly that losing it in public felt like being skinned alive.

"I'm Renee," I said. "Renee Carter."

Landon's gaze stayed on my face. "Should that mean something to me?"

Dennis muttered, "Dalton, maybe take this outside."

"Why?" Landon asked, still looking at me. "She came to my table."

My table.

Not the back row of the campus theater where he had held my hand under my coat. Not the driver's seat of his car where he had rested his forehead against mine and said he was tired of pretending I was nothing.

Just his table.

I unlocked my wet phone with numb fingers. My gallery opened to the private album Harper had helped me hide.

There were hundreds of proofs. Landon asleep on my lap after film review. Landon wearing my cheap reading glasses. Landon kissing the inside of my wrist in the golden dark of his lake house bedroom.

I could end this in three swipes.

I could lift my phone and make every person in VIP see what he had made me promise to protect: the private face he had trusted me with because I had sworn I would never turn love into evidence unless he asked me to.

My thumb hovered over the album.

Landon watched me with detached impatience.

"Well?" he said.

The word cut worse than any insult.

I locked the screen.

Craig shifted in his seat. "Is this about an interview? Because the paper stuff goes through media relations."

A laugh broke near the rope.

My face burned.

"You told me you loved me," I said.

The laughter stopped.

For the first time, something moved across Landon's expression. Not recognition. Not tenderness. A flicker behind the eyes, gone before I could name it.

Then his mouth hardened.

"I don't say that to fans."

Pain went white and clean through me.

Dennis stood. "Hey. That's enough."

"Sit down," Landon said.

Dennis didn't sit, but he didn't defend me either. How could he? He had seen me near the team. He had not seen Landon love me.

That had been the point.

I had agreed to be kept safe.

I had not understood safe could turn into invisible.

"I'm not a fan," I whispered.

Landon's eyes dropped again to the jacket. His jacket. The one with his number stitched on the sleeve. "Then why are you wearing my name?"

Because you gave it to me.

Because I was cold.

Because you said you liked seeing me in proof no one else understood.

I said none of it.

"Your private phone," I said instead. "Turn it on."

Dale's posture sharpened.

Landon's brows drew together. "My what?"

"The phone in your locker. The one no one else has."

A murmur ran through the booth. Craig looked at Dennis. David muttered, "Private phone?"

Landon's stare cooled another degree. "You keep track of my devices?"

"No. I call the one you gave me."

"I didn't give you anything."

I flinched.

That told me how much of him was gone. Landon Dalton could be arrogant, possessive, cruel when cornered. But he remembered what belonged to him. He remembered every object with a story.

The Call Me vote slip tucked behind my student ID. The mint chocolate wrapper in his glove compartment. The private phone. Me.

"Landon," Dale said quietly, "we should go."

But Landon was still looking at me, and all those watching eyes made his pride rise like armor. I saw the public mask seal over the confused man underneath.

"Let's make this simple," he said. "If we were together and I forgot, then I guess that answers the question."

My throat closed.

"What question?"

His voice was flat enough for strangers, sharp enough for me. "Whether it mattered."

The phone in my hand slipped. I caught it against my chest.

Dennis swore under his breath. "Dalton."

Landon didn't look away. "So if you need to hear it from me, here it is. We're done."

For a second, I honestly thought I had misheard him.

The bass kept pounding. Rain tapped against the dark windows. Someone near the rope made a tiny delighted sound, already imagining the caption.

Delusional girl gets dumped by QB1.

I looked at the man I loved. The man who had once traced my lower lip with his thumb and asked if I knew how hard it was not to tell the whole world.

"You can't break up with a fan," I said.

There it was.

The flicker again.

Small. Buried. Almost pain.

Then gone.

"Then we don't have a problem," he said.

Something inside me went very still. Half the VIP section was watching me drown, and Landon had handed them the water.

I pulled off his jacket.

Cold air hit my wet arms. The club lights turned the soaked fabric nearly black as I folded it once, carefully, because some stupid broken part of me still couldn't throw it at him.

I set it on the table between us.

"You're right," I said. "We don't."

Dale stepped aside. Maybe he saw my face and knew there was nothing left to manage.

I walked out before anyone could stop me.

The rain had softened to a mist by the time I reached the sidewalk. My legs shook so badly I had to brace one hand against the brick wall beside the entrance. Behind me, the club swallowed its own noise, already turning my humiliation into a story.

My phone buzzed again.

I thought it was Harper.

It wasn't.

A memory notification lit the screen, bright against my wet palm.

Three months ago today.

The photo opened before I could breathe.

Landon sat on the edge of my dorm bed, my hand held between both of his. His mouth was pressed to my knuckles. His eyes were lifted to mine, so openly in love that the picture felt obscene now.

Under it, my phone displayed the caption I had typed that night and never posted.

The world doesn't know, but I do.

The screen blurred.

This time, I let the tears fall.

Three months before Landon Dalton forgot me, I did not even know what his voice sounded like up close.

I knew the name, of course.

Everyone at Northlake knew the name.

It was painted across stadium banners, printed on limited-edition hoodies, screamed from student section bleachers, and whispered by girls who had never watched a full football game in their lives. Landon Dalton was not just the Tigers' quarterback. He was the reason Northlake Stadium had sold out before classes even started.

He was also the reason Harper Bell dragged me through a freezing January crowd while confetti still clung to the concrete from the championship parade.

"Walk faster," Harper said, fingers wrapped around my sleeve. "If we miss him coming out, I will never emotionally recover."

"You said we were here for student journalism."

"We are." She glanced back, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes bright with shameless excitement. "I am observing the campus ecosystem."

"You're observing his jawline."

"That too. It has cultural impact."

I laughed despite myself.

Northlake Stadium rose over us in steel, glass, and light. The championship celebration had turned the whole campus into a winter carnival: food trucks along the curb, alumni in fur-lined coats, little kids wearing plastic helmets, donors standing in clusters that smelled like expensive wool and old money. I tucked my hands deeper into the sleeves of my thrift-store coat and tried not to look as impressed as I felt.

Scholarship students learned early not to stare at things they could not afford.

But Northlake made that hard.

The stadium screens flashed highlights from the title game. Landon in a white jersey, number seven, stepping back under pressure. Landon throwing a pass so clean the whole crowd gasped before the receiver even caught it. Landon lifting the trophy while gold confetti rained over his dark hair.

Every time his face appeared, the stadium erupted again.

"That," Harper said, pointing with her hot chocolate, "is why half the campus would sell their meal plan to breathe near him."

"Half?"

"The other half already tried."

I shook my head. "He looks exhausting."

"He looks rich."

"That too."

Harper bumped my shoulder. "Careful. Your West Coast donor-circle trauma is showing."

"It's not trauma. It's pattern recognition."

She softened at once, because Harper could joke hard but never cruelly. "I know. Sorry."

"Don't be." I looked back at the field. "It's just... guys like him usually know exactly how much space the world will make for them."

On the screen, Landon was smiling for a reporter with the controlled patience of someone who had learned not to give cameras anything unapproved.

I recognized that kind of smile.

Victor King wore it at investor dinners when he introduced me as Elaine's daughter instead of his stepdaughter. Julian Chase wore it when he apologized in public for things he had done on purpose in private. Men with money often smiled like politeness was a contract everyone else had to sign.

"You haven't even met him," Harper said.

"I don't need to meet gravity to know it drops things."

"Okay, professor."

I grinned into my scarf.

Then the crowd surged.

A side gate opened near the lower tunnel, and the Tigers began filing out in waves of navy jackets and championship caps. The noise hit like weather. Students screamed player names. Cameras lifted. Security tried to keep a path open, but the path dissolved the moment Landon stepped into view.

For one second, I understood.

Not the hysteria. Not the girls clawing for selfies or the guys chanting QB1 like they owned a piece of him.

I understood the stillness at the center of it.

Landon Dalton moved through the chaos as if he had been built for pressure. Tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered under his team jacket, he accepted a Sharpie from a kid without breaking stride and signed the brim of a tiny Tigers cap. A reporter shouted a question about his last drive. He answered with a few clipped words, mouth almost serious, then looked down when the kid tugged his sleeve.

The smile he gave that child was nothing like the one on the screen.

It was quick. Private. Real enough that I forgot to be cynical for two whole breaths.

Harper made a strangled sound beside me. "Tell me you saw that."

"I saw it."

"That man is a problem."

He was.

But not for the reason she meant.

Across the walkway, Caroline Vale appeared in a white cheer jacket, glossy ponytail swinging as she slipped past security with the kind of ease that said she belonged near the field. A few girls around us groaned with envy. Caroline touched Landon's arm to get his attention, and he turned toward her, polite but distracted.

I waited for the flirtation. The easy athlete-and-cheerleader movie scene.

Instead, he shifted half a step so the kid with the signed cap would not be crushed by the crowd.

It was a tiny thing.

I noticed tiny things. Journalism was mostly tiny things arranged until they told the truth.

"You are staring," Harper said.

"I'm working."

"On what?"

I did not answer right away.

Because while everyone else shouted for Landon, the stadium screen behind him changed to a short promotional clip for the university's championship documentary series. The credit flashed so quickly most people missed it.

Archival Photography: Erica Winterberg Dalton.

My heart gave a strange little kick.

When I was sixteen, trapped in Elaine and Victor's glass-walled house while Julian's parents talked about internships like they were birthrights, I had watched an Erica Winterberg Dalton documentary on late-night public television. It was about female photojournalists in war zones, but what I remembered most was Erica's voice saying a camera was not a weapon unless you used it like one.

It was the first time I thought reporting could be a way out instead of just a way to look in.

I had not known then that Erica was married to Robert Dalton. I had not known she had a son who would become Northlake's untouchable quarterback.

Now that son stood fifty feet away, framed by cameras, money, football, and noise.

And I felt the old want rise in me.

Not for him.

For the story.

"Harper," I said slowly.

She knew that tone. Her grin sharpened. "Oh no."

"The student paper needs a spring sports feature."

"The student paper needs permission to breathe near the athletic department."

"Kelsey Hart," I said, because I had done my reading even before I admitted I cared. "The Tigers' strength coach. First woman in that role here. Everyone writes about Landon. Nobody writes about the woman helping build the team around him."

Harper blinked. "That is annoyingly good."

"I could pitch it."

"You're a freshman."

"I'm a freshman with clips."

"From high school."

"Good clips."

She laughed, then sobered when she saw my face. "You really want this."

I looked at Landon again. He had stopped near the tunnel, head bent as a staff member spoke into his ear. Caroline laughed at something beside him, but his eyes were on the stadium turf, thoughtful and distant, like even in victory part of him was somewhere private.

Maybe he was exactly what I thought he was: another rich boy trained to make the world move.

Maybe he wasn't.

Either way, the story was bigger than a jawline.

"I want a byline that matters," I said. "And I want one thing on this campus that I earned before someone decides I only got it because of who my mother married."

Harper's expression softened. "Then pitch it."

So I did.

That night, in the student newspaper office, I sat under fluorescent lights with my laptop balanced on a scratched conference table and wrote until my fingers cramped. I linked Kelsey Hart's career stats, Northlake's championship training profile, the university's women-in-sports initiative, and Erica Winterberg Dalton's documentary influence without making it sound like a fangirl confession.

Harper read over my shoulder and occasionally muttered, "Less desperate," or "More confident," or "That sentence has cheekbones."

At 11:48 p.m., I sent the pitch to our section editor.

At 11:51 p.m., I regretted every word.

At 12:06 a.m., the reply came.

Freshmen do not usually get Tigers access, the editor wrote. Athletic department credentials are tight, and Landon Dalton does not do student interviews.

My stomach sank.

Then I read the next line.

But Kelsey Hart is a strong angle. Draft formal questions and a media request. You can try.

Harper screamed so loudly the copy desk told us to shut up.

I stared at the email until the words blurred.

You can try.

It was not a yes.

But it was not a no.

And for a girl used to doors closing before she reached the handle, that felt dangerously close to hope.

Noah King called me at 11:37 p.m. and opened with the four words every older sister figure learns to fear.

"Don't freak out, okay?"

I sat up in bed so fast my laptop slid off my knees. "Where are you?"

"That is the freaking out tone."

"Noah."

There was shouting behind him. Music. A girl's high laugh. Something breaking.

Then my seventeen-year-old stepbrother lowered his voice and said, "I'm at a party."

I closed my eyes. "Tell me it is a high school party."

Silence.

"Noah."

"It's not my fault. Mason said his cousin could get us in, and I didn't know it was going to be like this."

"Like what?"

Another crash. A male voice yelled, "Who touched the trophy case?"

Noah swore under his breath. "Like Tigers guys. Like rich guys. Like maybe Landon Dalton's lake house."

For a second, all I heard was the blood rushing in my ears.

Three weeks had passed since the championship celebration. Three weeks since I had pitched the Kelsey Hart feature and started checking my email like my future might crawl out of it. Three weeks of telling Harper that Landon Dalton was just a subject-adjacent athlete with too much campus gravity.

Now my underage stepbrother was inside his house.

"Did you drink?" I asked.

"No."

"Do not lie to me."

"I had half a beer."

"Noah."

"Okay, one beer, but I stopped because some girl started filming me and saying I was cute for a prep-school kid, which was weird, and then Mason knocked into this glass thing, and now these players think we came here to trash the place."

I was already pulling on jeans. "Send me your location. Now."

"Renee, don't call Mom."

"Then make it possible for me not to."

The location ping landed two seconds later.

The Dalton lake house sat twenty minutes outside Northlake, past the nicer student rentals and winter-dark roads where every mailbox looked expensive. I drove Harper's old sedan because my car had chosen finals week to sound like loose change in a blender. My phone kept buzzing with Noah's updates.

They're saying fake ID.

Mason bailed.

Girl is still live.

Someone named Craig is mad.

By the time I reached the gated drive, I had built a list in my head: get Noah out, stop the livestream, document any damage, do not let drunk adults scare a minor into doing something stupid.

The gate was open.

Of course.

The lake house was less a house than a magazine spread with windows: stone, glass, three levels of warm light spilling toward the black water. Cars lined the drive. Music pulsed from inside.

A guy at the door looked me up and down. "Party's full."

"I'm here for my brother."

"Everybody is."

I stepped closer, making my voice flat. "He's seventeen. If you keep me out, I call campus police and Northlake student conduct, and then we all get to explain why minors are inside an athlete party with alcohol."

The guy moved.

I found Noah in the great room near a wall of framed jerseys and glass shelves. His face was flushed with humiliation, his prep-school jacket half off one shoulder. Two Tigers players stood in front of him: Dennis Blake, whose name I knew from the roster, and Craig Morris, whose expression said he had already decided my brother was guilty of every bad thing that had happened tonight.

On the floor between them lay the broken remains of some blue-and-silver art piece. A girl in a sparkly top held her phone up, livestream comments racing across the screen.

"There she is," the girl sang. "Prep boy called backup."

I walked straight to her. "Turn it off."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"He's a minor, and you are filming him at a private party where alcohol is present. Turn it off."

The room quieted just enough for people to hear.

Her smile faltered. She looked around for someone to defend her.

"Do it," Dennis said, sounding tired.

She ended the stream with a dramatic eye roll.

Noah started toward me. "Renee, I can explain."

"Later." I caught the front of his jacket and smelled beer. "Did anyone make you drink?"

"No."

"Did you use a fake ID?"

His silence answered.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Give it to me."

"What?"

"The ID, Noah."

He dug into his pocket and slapped the plastic into my palm. It had his real face and a name that belonged to a twenty-two-year-old named Andrew from Wisconsin.

"You are so lucky Mom is asleep on the West Coast," I said.

"Please don't tell her."

"Don't make promises you can't afford me."

Craig laughed without humor. "That's sweet. Are we done pretending this was an innocent accident?"

I turned. "I never said innocent. I said minor."

"He and his friend came in with fake IDs, acted like idiots, and broke a piece that costs more than your car."

"Then send me the invoice."

Craig's eyes dropped to my coat, my old sneakers, Harper's car keys in my hand. "You?"

The word landed exactly where he meant it to.

Noah bristled. "Don't talk to her like that."

"You don't get to defend me while holding a fake ID," I said, then looked back at Craig. "Send the invoice to me. If the amount is legitimate, I'll set up payment. If you try to turn a broken decoration into a shakedown because he's scared, I will ask for receipts, photos, and the security footage."

Dennis's mouth twitched like he was trying not to respect that.

Craig only looked past me. "Dalton, you hearing this?"

The room shifted.

I knew before I turned.

Some people enter a room and ask for attention. Landon Dalton did not have to ask. The party rearranged around him.

He stood near the stairs in black sweats and a Northlake T-shirt, hair damp as if he had just come from the shower. Barefoot, he looked less like a celebrity and more like a man whose home had been invaded.

His eyes moved from the broken art to Noah to me.

No smile for a kid this time.

"Who are you?" he asked.

It was not the same question he would ask me months later under blue club lights.

This one had memory behind it.

Judgment, too.

"Renee Carter," I said. "Noah's stepsister. I'm taking him home."

"Your brother broke into my house."

"He used an open party invite and a fake ID. That is stupid, not burglary."

Noah whispered, "Renee."

I ignored him. "He'll pay for the damage he caused. He'll delete anything he posted. He'll leave now."

Landon came down the last few steps. The crowd gave him room. "You sound prepared."

"I had twenty minutes in a car to become prepared."

His gaze sharpened, and for one dangerous second I thought he might laugh.

Craig stepped in. "She knew exactly where this place was, man. She knew who owned it. I heard her outside telling the kid this was Dalton money and Tigers access like it meant something."

I stared at him. "I said this was exactly the kind of wealthy athlete party where a minor getting filmed could ruin him."

"Convenient."

Understanding clicked coldly into place. "You think I sent him here."

Craig shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first girl trying to get near Landon."

The heat that climbed my neck was not embarrassment. It was fury.

Landon watched me, unreadable.

"I came here to remove my stepbrother from a bad situation," I said. "Not to get near anyone."

"Wearing that?" Craig asked.

I looked down at my sweater, jeans, winter coat, and rain-stained sneakers. "This is the first time anyone has accused me of seduction by fleece."

Dennis coughed.

Noah made a choked noise that might have been terror or laughter.

Landon did not smile. "You know a lot about what kind of party this is for someone who just arrived."

"I know alcohol, athletes, minors, phones, and rich people who assume consequences are negotiable."

The room went still again.

His jaw tightened. "Careful."

"I am being careful." I held up the fake ID. "This is me being careful before someone posts a seventeen-year-old online and your family assistant has to bury it by morning."

At the edge of the room, Dale Porter appeared like my words had summoned him. Suit jacket, calm face, eyes already assessing damage.

Landon noticed him too.

That should have been the end. Dale could take photos, send invoices, make everyone sign whatever quiet forms rich people used to keep parties from becoming headlines.

But Craig, apparently committed to being the least useful man in the room, said, "Or she pays now. Since she's so ready."

"I said send me the invoice."

"People like you always say that."

Noah lunged half a step. I caught him by the arm.

Landon's eyes dropped to my hand on Noah's sleeve, then rose to my face. "People like you?"

For half a heartbeat, I thought he was questioning Craig.

Then he added, "The ones who walk in already knowing the camera angles."

The words hit clean.

He did think it.

Maybe not all of it. Maybe not as crudely as Craig. But enough.

"Landon," Dennis said quietly.

"No," Landon said. His eyes stayed on mine. "If she wants receipts, give her receipts. If she wants security footage, Dale can pull it. And if she or the kid posts one second from inside this house, I'll make sure Northlake knows exactly how they got here."

Noah went pale.

I stepped in front of him.

That movement changed Landon's face for the first time. Something flickered there, quick and irritated, like he had expected me to fold and disliked that I hadn't.

"He will not post anything," I said. "Because unlike some people in this room, he still has an adult willing to tell him no."

A few players muttered.

Dale said, "Miss Carter, perhaps we should document contact information and let everyone leave."

"Gladly."

Craig reached for a tablet on the side table. "Name, number, address."

"Email," I said. "Phone number. No home address unless your attorney asks for it properly."

Landon's brow moved. "You always this suspicious?"

"Only when strangers ask where I sleep."

This time Dennis did laugh.

It lasted one second.

Craig shoved the tablet toward me. As I took it, Noah shifted beside me and knocked his elbow into a red plastic cup abandoned on the table. It tipped, splashing beer across Landon's bare foot and the edge of the broken display.

The whole room inhaled.

Noah whispered, "Oh my God."

I looked at the beer, then at Landon, then at my stepbrother's horrified face.

The night had already gone so badly that something inside me snapped clean instead of bending.

I picked up the half-full cup beside the spill.

Dennis said, "Renee, maybe don't."

Too late.

I threw the beer in Landon Dalton's face.

Gasps cracked across the room.

For one perfect second, the great, untouchable quarterback stood there with beer dripping from his hair, his lashes, his arrogant mouth.

I set the empty cup down.

"Now the wet part is my fault," I said. "Invoice me for that too."

Landon did not move.

Dale closed his eyes like a man seeing six separate PR disasters bloom at once.

I grabbed Noah's sleeve and pulled him toward the door. At the threshold, I turned back because fury made me reckless and because every phone in the room had gone very still.

"If anyone forces, dares, or films a minor drinking at another one of these parties, I will call campus police before I call his parents. Try me."

Then I walked out with Noah stumbling beside me.

The cold hit my face.

Behind us, through the glass wall, Landon Dalton lifted one hand and wiped beer slowly from his cheek.

For the first time all night, he looked at me like he actually saw me.