Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Marlowe pov

"She is my girlfriend!" Cole announced.

Well, that was it.

The universe had officially declared war on me.

Somewhere in the distance, I could practically hear a sad saxophone playing as my soul slowly left my body.

I let out a brief, disbelieving giggle and staggered backward, reaching for something to hold onto because I was literally about to fall.

"What the hell did you just call this... thing?" I asked, pointing at the silly girl Cole had just referred to as his girlfriend.

My face twisted in rage. My heart raced so hard it hurt, and I could barely breathe.

In all the years I had known Cole, he had never claimed anyone. Not once.

And now he was claiming Mae?

His girlfriend?

I rushed toward him and grabbed his arm, but he immediately shrugged me off.

"What's wrong with you, Marlowe?" he snapped.

He turned to Mae and pulled her closer to him.

"You're making her uncomfortable, and I don't like it."

His voice was harsh, and his eyes burned with anger.

I looked at Mae, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. My fists clenched at my sides. My mouth opened to speak, but the words died in my throat when I saw her staring back at me with a knowing look.

"Cole, let's get out of here. Students are already starting to gather," Mae muttered, still holding on to him.This version keeps Marlowe's jealousy, humor, and heartbreak while making the narration flow more naturally.

Cole walked away with Mae without looking back once.

I stood exactly where he had left me.

The corridor was still full. Students who had no business stopping had stopped anyway—pretending to check their phones, pretending to fix their bags, pretending they weren’t watching Marlowe Sinclair get walked away from like an inconvenience.

I turned slowly and looked at them.

“Is there something you’d like to see?”

Nobody answered.

“Because I promise you—” my voice dropped low, pleasant, in that specific register that had cleared hallways before “whatever you think just happened is going to feel very small compared to what happens next if I find out any of you are still standing here in ten seconds.”

They left.

Quickly. Quietly. The way Blackthorn students always left when they remembered who I was.

Good.

I straightened my blazer and exhaled once through my nose.

Then I turned and walked toward the library.

---

Mae Lawson’s file had mentioned it specifically.

Extracurricular interests: reading, independent research, library access.

I had read that line three weeks ago and filed it as irrelevant. Scholarship students often listed academic interests to strengthen their applications. It meant nothing.

It meant something now.

If Mae spent time anywhere at Blackthorn voluntarily, it was the library. Which meant the library might hold something,a checkout record, a research pattern, anything that could tell me more about what she was actually doing here beyond the convenient scholarship narrative.

Information was leveraged.

Leverage was everything.

I pushed the library doors open.

The smell hit me first, Old paper, wood polish, and the specific stillness of a room that took itself too seriously. Tall shelves stretched in long rows. Reading tables sat near the windows, afternoon light falling across them in clean rectangles.

I had not been inside this library since my first week at Blackthorn three years ago.

There had never been a reason.

“Miss Sinclair.”

I turned.

Mrs. Pembrook sat behind the circulation desk, her reading glasses pushed up onto her forehead and an expression of genuine surprise she didn’t bother hiding. Fifties. Grey cardigan. The kind of teacher who had been at Blackthorn long enough to remember when the hockey trophies in the entrance hall were smaller.

She was staring at me like I had walked into the wrong room.

“This is the library,” she said carefully, as if I might not have known.

“I’m aware.”

“You’ve never—” she stopped herself, adjusted her glasses, and tried again. “Is there something I can help you with?”

I smiled politely.

“I’m looking for something to read.”

Mrs. Pembrook’s expression suggested she found this about as believable as I intended it to sound.

“Of course,” she said slowly. “Any particular subject?”

“Not yet.” I moved toward the nearest shelf and ran one finger lightly along the spines, unhurried, casual. “I thought I’d browse.”

She watched me for a moment longer than was comfortable before returning to whatever she had been doing before I interrupted her afternoon.

I kept moving.

Past fiction. Past history. Toward the reading tables near the window where the afternoon light was best—and where, according to Mae’s file, she preferred to sit.

One of the chairs had a slight indentation in the cushion.

Recently used.

I looked at the table surface. Nothing was left behind. But on the shelf directly beside it, three books had been pulled slightly forward from the rest—the unconscious habit of someone repeatedly reaching for them.

I read the spines.

Criminal Law: Principles and Cases.

Forensic Evidence in Modern Prosecution.

Michigan State Statutes — Student Edition.

I stood very still.

Mae Lawson wasn’t reading for pleasure.

Mae Lawson was researching.

I heard Mrs. Pembrook’s chair shift behind me.

“Miss Sinclair.” Her voice had changed—less surprised now, more cautious. “Those books were requested by one of our scholarship students this week. They’re reserved.”

I turned.

“Reserved,” I repeated.

“Yes.” She held my gaze with the steady patience of someone who had spent thirty years managing wealthy teenagers and was not easily shaken. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I looked at the books once more.

Criminal law. Forensic evidence. State statutes.

Four days.

Mae Lawson had been at Blackthorn for four days, and she was already building something.

I smiled at Mrs. Pembrook.

“No,” I said pleasantly. “Thank you for your help.”

I walked back through the library doors and into the corridor.

I pulled out my phone.

Typed one message to my contact.

Add legal research history to what I need. Everything she’s accessed. Every database. Every record.

I locked the screen and put my phone away.

Somewhere in the building, Cole Hargrove was walking Mae Lawson to her next class with his hand on her back like she was something worth protecting.

Mae Lawson was researching criminal law in the Blackthorn library.

Neither of them knew I had just discovered both things in the same afternoon.

I smoothed my hair and started walking.

Four days.

She was good.

But I had three years. Does she know anything about the incident between Cole and the dead hockey teammate? 

“No!”