Chapter 013

Ivy Pov:

The world seemed to narrow down to the sound of my own heartbeat, loud and frantic in my ears, as every eye in that parking lot turned toward me.

"Ivy?" Noah's voice had gone quiet, careful, like he was almost afraid of the answer. "What acceptance letter?"

I opened my mouth, but the words caught somewhere in my throat. Morgan watched me with a satisfaction that made my skin crawl, clearly savoring every second of my hesitation.

"It's not what she's making it sound like," I finally managed.

"Then tell me what it actually is," Noah said, and there was no anger in his voice yet, just a raw, aching confusion that hurt worse than fury would have.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to meet his eyes. "The week before the accident, I got an email. A summer research fellowship, out of state, one of the most competitive biochemistry programs in the country. I'd applied months earlier, before we'd even gotten close, and honestly I never thought I'd hear back. When I did, I didn't know how to tell you."

"Why not?" His brow furrowed, some old hurt flickering behind the confusion. "Why would you hide something like that from me?"

"Because it felt like it didn't matter yet," I said, my voice cracking despite every effort to keep it steady.

"We'd only been together a few months. It was a summer program, not a permanent move. And you were so consumed with scouts and the championship and everything riding on that season, I didn't want to add one more thing to your plate before I even knew if I'd accept it."

"That's not your decision to make for me," he said quietly. "You don't get to decide what I can or can't handle."

"I know that now," I admitted. "I know it wasn't fair. But Noah, that's not what caused the fight. The fight was about going public, not about the letter."

"Maybe it was both," Morgan interjected sweetly, clearly enjoying every second of the tension unraveling in front of her.

"Maybe he found out about the letter that same night and that's actually why things got so heated, maybe that's the piece of the story neither of you actually remembers correctly."

"Stop," I snapped, rounding on her. "You don't know anything about that night. You weren't there."

"No," she agreed, her smile turning colder. "But I know Sarah wasn't the only person feeding me information, was she, Sarah?"

Sarah flinched violently, her face going pale.

"Morgan, don't…"

"Oh, I think it's time everyone knew everything," Morgan said, her voice dropping into something venomous. "Since we're all being so honest today."

My stomach twisted with dread. "What is she talking about?"

Sarah's hands trembled around her phone, her eyes darting between all of us like a trapped animal searching for an exit that didn't exist. "There's something else," she whispered. "Something I found when I was helping Morgan monitor Ivy's messages for her. I didn't say anything before because I didn't think it mattered, but now…"

"Sarah." My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. "What did you find?"

She hesitated, guilt and fear warring plainly across her face, before finally pulling something up on her phone and turning it toward me with shaking hands.

It was an email. My email, pulled from an account I hadn't checked in weeks because everything with Noah's recovery had consumed every spare second I had.

Subject line: Re: Fellowship Acceptance- Final Decision Deadline Extended.

My hands went cold as I scanned the preview visible on the screen. The fellowship committee, apparently, hadn't simply reached out once and moved on. They'd extended my deadline twice already, citing my exceptional application, practically begging me to reconsider given how rarely they made exceptions for late responses.

"They've been trying to reach you for weeks," Sarah said quietly. "The deadline's tomorrow. Final extension. If you don't respond by midnight, they're rescinding the offer completely."

The information landed like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs. Weeks. They'd been trying to reach me for weeks, and I'd been so consumed with Noah's memory loss, with tutoring sessions and hospital visits and anonymous threats, that I hadn't even noticed.

"Ivy." Noah's voice was quiet, careful, studying my face with an intensity that made me want to look away. "Is this true? Have they been reaching out this whole time?"

"I didn't know," I said honestly, my voice shaking. "I swear I didn't know. I haven't checked that email in weeks."

"But you knew about the original offer," he said slowly. "You knew, and you never told me, not even after everything we've been through the last three weeks trying to piece together the truth."

"Because it didn't matter," I said desperately. "Because none of this was supposed to matter until I actually had to make a decision, and I haven't made one yet."

"It matters now," Morgan said softly, entirely too pleased with herself. "Doesn't it? Because now he knows you've been keeping something from him this entire time, just like you accused me of doing."

"That's not the same thing," I snapped.

"Isn't it?" Her eyes glittered with something sharp and triumphant. "Secrets are secrets, Ivy. Doesn't matter how you dress them up."

I turned back to Noah, desperate to make him understand, but the expression on his face had shifted into something I hadn't seen since that very first night in my apartment when he'd looked at me like a stranger. No confusion this time. Something worse. Something like doubt.

"I need to think," he said quietly, stepping back from me, and the distance between us suddenly felt like miles instead of inches.

"Noah, please…"

"I just need space." His voice cracked slightly on the words, exhaustion and hurt tangled together in a way that made my chest ache.

"Everyone's been telling me different versions of the truth for weeks, and I don't even know which version of you I'm supposed to trust anymore."

He turned and walked away before I could stop him, his steps unsteady but determined, disappearing around the corner of the building before I could find the words to call him back.

Morgan's satisfied smile was the last thing I saw before Sarah grabbed my arm, her voice urgent and low.

"Ivy, there's more," she whispered. "Something else I found, buried in an old thread. Something about the night of the accident that doesn't match anything Coach Lockwood told the team."

My blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"

Sarah glanced nervously over her shoulder, lowering her voice even further. "The accident wasn't just a hit during the game," she said.

"There's a text thread on Morgan's phone from that same night, timestamped almost an hour before the game even started."

She turned her screen toward me, and my breath caught painfully in my throat as I read the first line of the message glowing there.

He already knew about the letter before the game. I made sure of it. My eyes shot up to find Morgan, who had gone very still, her composure finally cracking at the edges.

"What does that mean?" I demanded, my voice shaking. "You made sure of it? Make sure of what?"

Morgan's jaw tightened, and for the first time since I'd known her, genuine panic flickered behind her carefully maintained mask.

"Sarah, give me my phone."

"No." Sarah's grip tightened around the device, her voice trembling but resolute. "Not this time."

"Read the rest," I said, my heart hammering so hard I could barely breathe. "Sarah, please."

Her hands shook as she scrolled further down the thread, and the messages that followed made my stomach drop straight through the ground.

I told him she got into some fancy program out of state. Told him she'd probably leave without even mentioning it to him. He didn't believe me at first, but I showed him screenshots. He looked wrecked before he even stepped onto the ice.

The timestamp glowed beneath it, forty-three minutes before the championship game began.

"You told him," I whispered, the pieces slamming together with sickening clarity. "Before the game. Before the hit. You made sure he was distracted, upset, unfocused…"

"I didn't make him get hurt," Morgan snapped, but her voice had lost all its earlier confidence, cracking under the weight of what she'd just been caught doing. "That wasn't supposed to happen. I just wanted him to see you weren't being honest with him. I didn't think…"

"You didn't think he'd take a hit while his head was somewhere else entirely?" I cut in, fury and horror tangled together so tightly I could barely speak.

"You didn't think that maybe distracting a hockey player mid-game might get him seriously hurt?"

Morgan's face had gone white, and for the first time, she looked genuinely, deeply afraid.

Sarah's phone buzzed suddenly in her hand, another notification lighting up the screen, and her breath caught audibly.

"Ivy," she whispered, turning the phone toward me with trembling fingers. "It's already posted.

Someone just uploaded the entire thread publicly."