Semua Bab Puck Me, One More Time: Bab 101 - Bab 110

Liam's POVThe door barely had time to close behind me before I was moving.I had the paper in my hand…the real one, the one Principal Desmond had handed me after going through every exam script personally, the one that reflected what Ken had actually submitted. And now something in my chest was moving faster than my feet were.It was Straight A's.I had looked at it three times inside that office just to make sure I was reading it correctly, and Principal Desmond had watched me do it with the patient expression of someone who understood why a person might need to confirm good news more than once.Now, it all seemed real… I mean, every grade on that page was real, and every one of them was exactly what weeks of early mornings, practice papers and sessions that ran long had been building toward.I pushed through the main school doors and stepped outside into the open air, and the first thing I did was look at the paper again...one more time. Standing right there in the daylight where th

Ken's POVFor about thirty seconds after my dad finished with Ann, I actually let myself believe that was it. That the worst of it was over. That the room had exhaled and something had shifted and my dad — having just watched his girlfriend's entire scheme unravel in front of him — might look at me differently now.So, I turned to face him with a smile already on my face in the realest way. The kind that had been sitting there since I saw those straight A's on the paper and hadn't fully left since.My dad looked at me.And then he said, "This doesn't change a thing, Ken. You are still going to the military."The smile stayed on my face for exactly one second after that — held there by momentum rather than feeling, and then it was gone.I stood there and let the words land properly, because part of me had genuinely not seen that coming. At least, not after everything…After the grades, after Liam walking through the door with the real results, after Ann standing against the wall with no

Author's POVThe Blair residence looked different in the evening light than it had the last time both Ken and Liam had stood anywhere near it.You know, a year had a way of doing that to places…not changing them exactly, but changing the way you saw them. The same house, the same front door, the same quiet street. But the two young men walking up toward it were not the same two who had walked out of it twelve months ago, and that made everything about it feel slightly new.Ken had been quiet on the drive over. Not the closed-off, guarded quiet from the old days — just thoughtful. The kind of quiet that came from someone who had made peace with something and was simply taking a moment to feel the weight of that before stepping into whatever came next.Liam walked beside him without filling the silence, because he understood by now that Ken's quiet was not the same as Ken being distant. He had learned to read the difference a long time ago.Ken rang the bell.The door opened, and Mr. Bl

Liam's POVBefore I could even think straight, he walked right over the scarf.Not around it. Not a step to the side. I mean directly on it — the red scarf, my grandmother's scarf, that was right there on the ground in plain sight — and he didn't slow down, didn't look down, didn't give any indication that he had even noticed it at all. He just kept walking at that same unhurried, majestic pace while his shoe came down square on the fabric."Oh, my God."The words left my mouth before I had made a decision to say them.Nobody heard me. The crowd was too loud for that — the cheers hadn't let up since the convoy pulled in, and if anything they had gotten louder now that he was moving through the space and the students had something to react to in real time."He is so handsome." Someone to my left, voice pitched high with the specific excitement of a person who had been waiting for this moment and was now fully inside it."I cannot believe he is actually going to our school."“I want me,

Liam's POVThe silence lasted about three seconds.Then everything happened at once.The students who had gathered… and there were more of them than I had registered while I was on the floor, because apparently a royal arrival attracted a crowd that didn't disperse quickly… found their voices at the same time."Did Liam just kiss the prince?""Oh my God, someone get that on camera…""I saw it. I literally saw it happen."Before I had fully processed that I was upright again, one of the students nearby already had their phone up, screen pointed directly at us, the specific posture of someone who had decided this was the most important thing they had witnessed in their academic career.The ‘supposed’ prince’s personal assistant moved faster than I expected someone in heels to move. She crossed the space, reached the student, and had the phone out of their hand with a calm, practiced efficiency that said this was not the first time she had done exactly this. "No pictures." She said it pl