Chapter Two: Terms

LENA

The game was on Friday night, and I stood outside the gymnasium in Landon's jacket.

Priya stopped dead in her tracks the moment she saw me, her eyes moving slowly from the jacket to my face and back again like she was trying to solve a puzzle that didn't have enough pieces yet.

"When did that happen," she asked, pointing directly at the jacket.

"Recently," I replied, adjusting the collar.

"How recently."

"This week."

"Lena." She stepped close, dropping her voice low. "Three days ago you called him the single greatest threat to the arts program budget. You used the word irredeemable. I remember because I wrote it down."

"People change their minds," I told her simply.

"In three days." She folded her arms across her chest. "Try again."

"Priya." I met her eyes directly. "I need you to trust me right now. I can't explain everything yet. Just let it look like what it is for a little while."

She studied my face carefully, hunting for the gap in whatever I was telling her. She found it. She decided to leave it alone for now, but her jaw was tight and her knuckles were white around the strap of her bag.

"Is this about Leo," she asked quietly.

I didn't answer.

That silence said everything we both already knew.

She exhaled slowly through her nose, then linked her arm through mine without another word. "If he hurts you," she told me in a perfectly calm voice, "I will be genuinely creative about consequences."

"He won't hurt me," I replied.

I said it with all the confidence of someone who had a signed contract and a clear plan. Whether I actually believed it was a completely different matter.

The game was everything Westbrook football games always were. Loud and electric and belonging entirely to people who had never once had to wonder if they were allowed to take up space somewhere. I sat in the third row with Priya on my left and told myself the only reason I was watching the field was because visibility was the job tonight. The jacket was the job. Being seen in it was the job, and I was doing it.

Before the opening whistle, Landon found me in the stands.

Not a wave. Not a smile for the crowd watching him. He simply looked at exactly where I was sitting, held it for two steady seconds, then turned back to the field like nothing had happened.

Something stirred in my chest that I immediately pushed back down.

Westbrook won on a third quarter pass that the person sitting behind me called the most precise throw of the entire season. I understood exactly why. The precision with which Landon released the ball made it look like he had calculated the geometry of it before anyone else in the stadium had even registered the play was happening.

The corridor flooded after the final whistle.

He came straight to me.

Not to his teammates calling his name from every direction. Not to the coaches waiting at the sideline. Not to the cameras or the reporters or the crowd pressing in from every angle. He walked through all of it and stopped right in front of me, looking at me the way someone looked at the exact person they had come specifically to find in a room full of people.

I knew it was the performance. I kept reminding myself I knew.

"You came," he said, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

"It's in the contract," I replied, keeping my voice flat.

Something warm moved through his expression, faster than it should have been. Then he reached out and straightened the collar of his jacket where it had folded at my shoulder, his fingers careful and deliberate for exactly three seconds before his hand dropped back to his side.

My heart did something I refused to acknowledge.

Priya, two feet to my left, went completely silent. That silence was how I knew she had caught every single second of it and was already filing it away.

We walked down the side corridor together, away from the noise and the crowd and the cameras.

"Cassidy was in the stands tonight," Landon told me, scanning the corridor ahead as we moved. "East section. Third row from the top. She had someone with her I didn't recognize."

"Her father's person," I replied.

"Probably." He glanced sideways at me. "She didn't look like someone who was waiting."

"What did she look like."

"Like someone who had already made a decision," he replied, his jaw tightening slightly.

Before I could respond, my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. Unknown number. I answered it.

"Miss Kato." A woman's voice, smooth and very deliberate. "I represent the Hale family. We'd like to discuss your current arrangement and what walking away from it voluntarily might be worth to you."

I looked at Landon. He watched my face without moving a single muscle.

"I'm not available for that conversation," I told her clearly. "Don't use this number again."

I ended the call and looked at him.

"That was faster than I expected," he replied, his expression shifting into something harder.

"Cassidy wasn't waiting at all," I told him. "She was already moving before tonight even started."

Something passed through his eyes. First anger. Then underneath the anger, something that looked unmistakably like guilt. Then the composed expression settled back over everything like armor clicking into place.

I walked back toward the gymnasium where Priya was standing at the entrance with her arms folded and an expression that meant she was storing absolutely everything away for a conversation I was not going to enjoy. I linked my arm through hers and smiled like a girl who had just had a perfectly lovely Friday evening at her boyfriend's football game.

Behind me I heard Landon's footsteps slow for exactly one beat.

Then continue again.

The evening should have ended there. It didn't.

Priya and I were halfway across the parking lot when I heard it. A familiar laugh, bright and easy, coming from somewhere behind us. I turned my head without really meaning to.

Landon was standing near the entrance of the building, still in his game gear, talking to a girl I had never seen before. She was tall, her dark hair falling over one shoulder, wearing a fitted jacket that probably cost more than my monthly scholarship stipend. She was smiling up at him with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times before.

She stepped forward and threw her arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug.

Landon hugged her back without hesitating, a wide grin spreading across his face that I had not once seen directed at me in the two days since he walked into my practice room.

"I can't believe you're still here," the girl said, pulling back but keeping both hands resting on his chest. "I thought you transferred."

"Still here," he replied, his voice warmer than I had ever heard it. "Unfortunately for everyone."

She laughed, tilting her head back. "Don't say that. This school would be completely boring without you."

My stomach twisted into a hard knot as I stood there watching.

Priya leaned close to my ear. "Who is that," she whispered.

"I have no idea," I replied quietly.

The girl glanced around then, her eyes landing on me standing a short distance away. She looked at me for a moment, then looked back at Landon with a slow smile spreading across her face.

"Well," she said, tilting her head in my direction. "Are you going to introduce us?"

Landon turned his head and looked at me. Something moved through his expression that I couldn't read properly from where I was standing. He dropped his hands from the girl's waist and took a step back.

"This is Lena," he replied, his voice back to the controlled, measured version I recognized. "She goes to school here."

The girl's eyebrows lifted slightly. She looked at the jacket on my shoulders. Then she looked back at Landon with an expression that asked a question she hadn't put into words yet.

"Lena," she repeated slowly, like she was tasting the name. "That's interesting." She smiled at me, and it was the kind of smile that was perfectly polished on the surface and carrying something else entirely underneath it. "I'm Jade. Landon and I go way back."

"Nice to meet you," I replied, keeping my voice completely even.

Jade looked back at Landon, her hand finding his arm and resting there lightly. "We should catch up properly," she told him. "It's been too long."

"Yeah," Landon replied, glancing at me briefly. "We'll figure something out."

My heart burned slowly in my chest as I stood there watching the two of them. The easy familiarity between them. The way her hand stayed on his arm like it had been there a thousand times before. The way his entire body language shifted when he was talking to her, looser and warmer, nothing like the careful controlled version of himself that sat across from me in library tables and practice rooms.

Priya's fingers found my wrist and squeezed once, very lightly.

I didn't squeeze back. I just kept my face perfectly still and kept breathing.

Because I had a contract. I had a plan. I had fifteen thousand dollars coming in two payments and a brother who needed surgery and a mother who needed to sleep through the night without worrying about numbers that didn't add up.

This was a transaction.

That was all it was.

The problem was that Jade was still looking at Landon the way someone looked at a person they had real history with, and Landon was still smiling at her with that warm easy grin I had never once been on the receiving end of, and somewhere in the back of my mind a question was forming that I didn't want to think about yet.

Who exactly was Jade?

And why did she look at my fake boyfriend like he still belonged to her?