Home / YA/TEEN / Six Months Of You / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

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

31 Chapters

Chapter one: The Offer

LENA "Be my girlfriend." I stopped the bow mid-stroke. Landon Cross stood in the doorway of practice room four. He held a folder in one hand. He crossed the room and set it on my music stand. I looked at the folder, then at him. "Get out." "Read it first." He didn't move from the stand. I set my cello against my knee. The folder held two pages, stapled once. My name typed at the top. His name typed below it. I read the first line. Six months of fake dating. I read the second. Fifteen thousand dollars. "You have forty-seven dollars in your checking account." His voice stayed even. "Your brother needs a second surgery. Eighteen thousand after insurance. The deposit closes Thursday." My hands went still on the page. Nobody outside my family knew those numbers. "How do you know that." "It doesn't matter how I know it." His eyes stayed on me, not the door. "It matters what you do with it." I looked down at the contract again. No real feelings. This is a transaction. I read that l

Chapter Two: Library

LENA The library opened at seven. I got there at ten to eight. I picked the corner table in the east wing. The one facing the door. I wanted to see him coming. I set the contract down and smoothed the pages flat. Landon walked in at eight exactly. He carried two coffees, one in each hand. He set one in front of me without asking. "I made changes." I slid the pages toward him. He read them standing up. First payment transfers before I wear the jacket. Not after. No physical contact I haven't agreed to first. If your father contacts me directly, this ends. I keep everything already paid. He sat down slowly. "You think he'll contact you." "I think you know something you haven't told me." He didn't answer that. He turned to the next page instead. Sundays stay mine. My brother's day. No events, no appearances, nothing. "Fine." He pulled a pen from his jacket. "Not yet." I kept my hand flat on the page. "Who's Cassidy Hale." His jaw shifted, just slightly. "My father picked her. B

Chapter Three: Jacket

LENA The jacket sat heavy on my shoulders. Too big, sleeves past my knuckles. I stood in the stands and felt every eye that wasn't looking at me. Landon jogged past the fence before kickoff. He stopped for two seconds. No more. His eyes found mine in the crowd. Then he turned back toward the field. I told my chest to settle down. It didn't listen right away. Priya sat beside me, arms crossed against the cold. "He looked at you." "He looked at the crowd." "He looked at you." She didn't blink. "I was watching." The game ran long, into a second overtime. I counted plays instead of feeling anything about them. Westbrook won on a field goal with ten seconds left. The stands emptied around us in a wave of noise. Landon came straight to me after. Helmet under one arm, jersey dark with sweat. Not to the cluster of teammates by the gate. Not to the girls waiting by the fence. To me. He reached out and adjusted my collar. One hand, quick. Three seconds, maybe less. His fingers didn't li

Chapter Four: Prep

LENA Leo went into prep at 6:45. I watched the doors swallow his gurney and made myself stay standing. "Nice gown." He tugged at the collar on the way in. "Very breezy. Very me." I laughed because he needed me to. He always made the joke first. Before anyone else could look too sorry for him. I saw his hands shake once. Just once. Before he tucked them under the blanket where I wasn't supposed to notice. The waiting room chairs were the wrong kind of orange. I sat in one anyway. I pressed my thumbnail into my palm. Counting the tiles on the floor instead of the minutes on the clock. At 7:15, Landon walked in with two coffees and a paper bag. He didn't ask if he could sit. He just did, in the chair beside mine. He set one coffee in my hand before I could refuse it. "You don't have to be here." "I know." He opened the bag and set a muffin on top, untouched. "You shouldn't sit here alone, though. Nobody should." My mother came out from the vending machines a few minutes later. Sti

Chapter Five: Garage

LENA The east parking garage, fifth level, empty except for his car and mine. He picked the spot on purpose. Nobody came up this high unless they meant to. Landon leaned against the concrete pillar, not looking at me yet. "Dana Marsh. Third year. She sat two rows behind you in chemistry last semester." "I know who Dana is." My stomach had already started sinking. "She borrowed my notes twice." "She asked about your cello bag once too." His jaw tightened. "My father had her reporting to him for four weeks. Before I ever walked into your practice room." I gripped the strap of my bag until my knuckles went pale. "Reporting what." "Everything." He finally looked at me. "Leo's condition. The surgery cost. The deposit deadline. The forty-seven dollars in your account." The number landed like a slap, even though I already knew he'd had it from the start. Hearing where it came from made it worse. "She was in my room." I forced the words out slowly. "While Leo was in surgery." "Yes."

Chapter Six: Cassidy

LENA Cassidy Hale found me outside the science building before first period. No representative this time. Just her, arms crossed, waiting by the bike rack like she'd planned exactly where to stand. "You should know what you're dealing with." Her eyes flicked toward the parking lot. I stopped walking. "I'm listening." "My father doesn't stay careful when someone defies him." She kept her voice low. "Richard Cross is the same. Worse, maybe. He's patient about it." "Why tell me this." "Because nobody warned me." She held my eyes a beat longer. "That's the only reason." She walked away before I could ask anything else. Quick steps toward the main building, like the conversation had cost her more courage than she wanted to admit. I didn't get a chance to tell Landon about it until that evening. When I finally reached him, his voice sounded different on the phone. Tighter. "I called my father this morning." The words came out fast, before I could bring up Cassidy at all. "You didn'

Chapter Seven: Envelope

LENA The envelope came to my locker, not the mail. Someone had slid it through the vent by hand. Westbrook Academy Scholarship Review Board, the letterhead read. I opened it standing in the hallway, other students moving past me like nothing had changed. A third-party review firm had filed a complaint. Misrepresentation in my original application, three years prior. A hearing scheduled for Wednesday. Eleven days until conservatory registration closed for the year. I read it twice before the words settled into something I could process. Someone was trying to take the scholarship that paid for every hour I spent in that practice room. I found Landon at lunch. I set the letter in front of him without a word. He read it fast, his face going carefully blank in a way I'd learned to recognize. He was hiding something worse underneath. "This is my father." His voice stayed flat. "How do you know that so fast." "Because I know how he times things." He pushed the letter back toward me. "

Chapter Eight: Miss Kato

LENA Elena texted me the address of a café instead of the house. Sunday morning, before the dinner Richard had planned for that night. She sat in the back corner already, two folders squared in front of her on the table. A woman in her fifties, composed in a way that looked practiced. Like stillness was a skill she'd built over years. "Miss Kato." She gestured to the seat across from her. "Thank you for coming instead of asking Landon to come with you." "He doesn't know I'm here." "Good." She slid the first folder toward me. "Then we can talk without him editing what I say for your sake." I opened it. Bank transfers, dozens of them, dates going back years. Names I didn't recognize next to numbers I could barely read without feeling sick. "Marcus Hale has been running an investment fraud for six years." Elena kept her voice quiet. "Moving client funds into his own holdings. Structures designed to look like legitimate returns on paper." "What does this have to do with Landon's fa

Chapter Nine: Elena

LENA The text arrived while I was getting ready for dinner. Seven words, no name attached. He knows about Elena. Get out now. I checked Landon's phone over video call a minute later, holding my breath. The same message had landed on his screen too. Same unknown number. Same seven words. "Get out of where." My voice came out tighter than I meant it to. "The dinner." "I don't know." His voice had gone flat with fear. The first time I'd heard him sound anything close to afraid. "Don't come tonight. I'll handle it from here." "No." I was already pulling my shoes on. "We handle it together, or not at all." He didn't argue, which told me more than agreeing would have. I met him at the practice room instead of the house, both of us abandoning the dinner before it started. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it for a second. Like he needed the solid weight of something behind him. "The document's already signed." His voice stayed low. "From last night. Margar

Chapter Ten: Academic Integrity Policy

LENA I told Priya everything the next morning. We sat on the floor of the library archive room, the one spot nobody ever looked for us. She listened without interrupting, which wasn't like her. When I finished, she pulled out her laptop without a word. "What are you doing." "Reading the academic integrity policy." She was already scrolling. "All forty pages, if that's what it takes." "Priya, the hearing's Wednesday." "Then I have until Wednesday." She didn't look up. "Go do whatever you need to do. I'll call you when I find something." I left her there and spent the rest of the day gathering what I could. My mother dug the original scholarship application out of a filing box in the closet. Three years of paperwork, filled out at midnight after double shifts. Exhausted, doing her best with forms she barely had time to read. "I don't understand what they think I lied about." She spread the pages across the kitchen table. "I don't think you lied about anything." I scanned the hou

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