LOGINTrevor's POVThe only person I wanted to talk to right now was Nadine. That was the clearest thought I had coming out of the Sean conversation. Although not a plan, and not a next step either, it was just the simple fact that I needed to be near the one person in this school who had never once made me feel stupid for being exactly who I was.I found her still working — gathering items from the floor and stacking them with the efficient, and cheerful energy she maintained even at the end of an evening that had been objectively chaotic."Hey, Trevor." She looked up the moment she heard me coming, that brightness already on her face. "This place looks great." She gestured around the hall, taking in the visible improvement from where the lock-in had been an hour ago. "I mean, considering."I looked around with her. She wasn't wrong after all. The decorations were back up, the floor was clear, the students who had been visibly impaired earlier were now operating at something much closer to
Trevor's POVThe moment I walked away from Sean, something in my chest went very quiet in the specific way that happened when you had been carrying a lot of noise for a long time and then the thing generating the noise just … stopped.Although, not necessarily because the pain was gone. But because you had run out of the energy required to feel it actively and your body had moved it somewhere lower and quieter where it could sit without demanding your immediate attention.I had never felt like this in my life. Not this specific combination of things. I had felt embarrassed before … deeply, publicly, in front of entire classrooms. You know, I had felt lonely before, the particular kind that came from being the most visible person in a room and still feeling like nobody actually saw you. I had felt angry before, the hot kind that moved fast and the cold kind that stayed.But this — I mean standing in the middle of a lock-in I had organised, tying things that needed tying, trying to make
Sean's POVAnna moved away from my side at some point and I let her go without marking the exact moment she left because my attention had already gone somewhere else. I found Trevor on the other side of the hall, bent over a pile of items that had shifted out of place during the chaos of the evening. So, he was working through them methodically the way he worked through everything … quiet, focused, doing what needed doing without making a production of it.I crossed the hall toward him.Honestly, I didn't have a plan for what I was going to say to him. I just needed to be close to him for a minute. You know, that was the most honest version of why I was walking in that direction."Do you need help?" I asked, getting close enough that I was speaking to him specifically and not the room.He raised his face the moment he registered my voice. The look that came with it was not the blank professionalism he used with people he was simply coordinating with. It was something more specific and
Trevor's POVWhen they pulled apart, Sean raised his face and the expression on it was something I could not read clearly from where I was standing, which was maybe the most unsettling part of all of it. I had gotten reasonably good at reading Sean over the last few months. I had learned the difference between his performed expressions and his real ones, had learned which version of his face showed up in private versus public, had learned to find the thing underneath whatever he was presenting.Right now I couldn't find any of it. He just looked at me with something that was contained and unreadable, and then said nothing.Which meant I was going to have to ask.I needed to hear it from him directly. Even though everything that had just happened in front of me was already an answer, I still needed the words. I needed him to say it to my face so I couldn't spend the next 24 hours telling myself I had misread the situation or jumped to a conclusion or maybe had missed something important
Trevor's POVSomething moved through me that I could not fully explain the origin of. It was not courage exactly … courage was something you chose deliberately, something you picked up and carried.This was different. This arrived on its own and my body was already moving before my head had finished processing the decision.I'm taking control of this party. Because if I don't do something fast, this is going to turn into a disaster that lands directly on my record and on my name and on everything I have been building toward since I set foot in this school.I climbed up onto one of the tables.The room shifted. People turned … some of them slowly, some of them with that delayed, blinking attention of people who were operating at significantly reduced capacity. I had their eyes and I used them."Listen up, folks." I said it loud enough to carry across the hall. "I know everyone is fully blasted right now, but I need you all to get it together." I looked around the room … at the decoratio
Trevor's POVI got back to the hall faster than I had left it, moving with the specific energy of someone who needed to look normal but was carrying about five things that were not normal at all.The room Sean and I had been in was somewhere behind me and Anna Parkhill was somewhere in this building with everything she needed to burn both of our lives down. Even though Sean had told me he would handle it, and I had left because he asked me to, and now I was standing in the corridor outside the lock-in hall trying to assemble my face into something that did not broadcast any of the above……Honestly, I didn't believe it. Not all the way. Anna handling anything the way you needed it to be handled required Anna to have a reason to, and I had spent enough time in this school watching Anna operate to know that her reasons were always about herself and never about anyone else. Whatever Sean said to her in that room was going to cost something. I just didn't know what yet.I pushed through th
Trevor's POVI worked slowly and deliberately — starting with his lower lip, pressing into it gently, while holding it just long enough before moving to the upper, giving each one its own full moment. Taking my time with it felt right, like the pace itself was saying something that neither of us ha
Trevor's POVThe shower was the only place I could think to go and I got there fast.I turned the water on, stepped under it and just stood there for a moment, letting it run over my neck and down my back. My whole body was still running hot from whatever had just happened on that sideline — the ma
Trevor's POVI slowly stepped into the bathroom where I could already hear the shower running. Honestly, I was still going back and forth in my head about whether this counted as part of the waterboy package or whether Sean was simply taking advantage of the situation. But th
Trevor's POV"I like the way you look in this…I mean in this waterboy outfit."He said it and just let it sit there, like he was fully prepared to wait out whatever reaction it produced.I was not giving him one this time. Not the one he was fishing for, anyway.I rolled my neck slowly…to the right







