Episode 2

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.

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