All Chapters of Six Months Of You: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

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

LENA Wednesday arrived the way hard days always did. Quietly. Without any announcement that it was going to be the kind of morning you carried with you for a very long time afterward. I was at St. Catherine's by 6:30 AM. My mother was already there in yesterday's scrubs, a coffee going cold in both hands, sitting in one of the hard plastic waiting room chairs with the particular stillness of someone who had been awake since before the world decided to restart. I sat down beside her without saying anything, swapped her cold cup for the fresh one I had brought, and she looked at me with eyes full of everything we had both stopped trying to put into words a long time ago. We sat together the way we had learned to sit in hard places. No words needed. Leo went into prep at 6:45 AM. He made a joke about the gown, grinning back at us as they wheeled him toward the doors. He always made a joke about the gown. Some new version of it every single time, delivered with the timing of someon

LENA Saturday arrived faster than I was ready for. I stood in front of the small mirror in my dorm room, adjusting the collar of my dress for the third time, telling myself the tight feeling in my chest was just nerves and not something worth paying attention to. Priya sat on my bed behind me, watching with her arms folded and her lips pressed together in the specific way she had when she was holding back an entire conversation she had decided not to have yet. "You look good," she told me finally, when the silence got too full to leave alone. "I know," I replied, turning away from the mirror. "You also look like you're about to walk into something you haven't fully told me about," she added, tilting her head slightly. "I'm having dinner with his family," I told her, keeping my voice completely even. "That's all." "His father's family," Priya replied. "Which is a very different sentence from what you just said." I picked up my bag and checked its contents one more time. Phone.

LENA He was already at the table when I arrived. Small place off campus, nowhere near Westbrook eyes. He had two coffees and a closed notebook and the look of someone who had been sitting with something heavy long enough for it to show. I sat down. I didn't touch the coffee yet. "Talk." He opened the notebook and turned it toward me. Dates, names, numbers, written in his handwriting but clearly copied from source documents. Things Elena had given him. "The Hale merger isn't a business arrangement," he said. "Not primarily." He tapped the first page. "Cassidy's father, Marcus Hale, has been managing a series of investment accounts for six years. Accounts belonging to clients who trusted him with significant money. He's been moving funds between those accounts and his own holdings in a pattern that isn't legal." I looked at the page. Numbers. Dates. Transfer records. "Six years," I said. "Yes. For the last two years he's needed a way to legitimize the money before anyone looks c

#LENA Landon texts me at six AM. My father knows about Elena. I sit up in bed and stare at the screen. How. I do not know. He called me twenty minutes ago. He knows she met with you. He knows about the folder. I get up. I dress. My hands are steady because I decide they are going to be steady. What did he say to you, I type. He told me to get the folder back. He told me if the folder reaches anyone with legal standing he will make sure my mother's treatment is terminated before any investigation can restructure the trust. I stop moving. He is threatening to terminate the treatment himself. Before we can protect it. Before the trust can transfer. He is not waiting for an investigation to freeze the assets. He is threatening to do it voluntarily. To cut his own wife's treatment to stop us from stopping him. I sit on the edge of my bed and I think about that. This is a man who will hurt his own family to protect his business. I already knew that. Landon has been living insi