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All Chapters of Six Months Of You: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

31 Chapters

Chapter Eleven: Hearing

LENA The hearing room held one long table and three board members behind it. I sat across from them with Priya on one side and an empty chair on the other. Landon walked in two minutes after we sat down. Nobody had invited him. He took the empty chair anyway, setting his folder down beside mine like it belonged there. The board chair cleared her throat. She read the complaint aloud, the same misrepresentation language I'd memorized from the letter in my locker. I kept my hands flat on the table and let her finish. "May I respond." I waited for her nod before I moved. She nodded, and I slid the first document across the table. Section 4.7, highlighted in yellow. "Any complaint requires a declaration of personal knowledge from the complainant. The firm that filed this was hired to file it. They have no personal knowledge of my family's finances from three years ago." The chair read the section slowly. Her expression shifted from neutral to something more careful. I slid the second

Chapter Twelve: Leo

LENA Leo called that evening while I was still replaying the hearing room in my head. "You sound less tight." No hello first, just straight into it the way he always did. "I feel a little less tight." I sat down on my bed, the day finally catching up with my shoulders. "It went well today. The scholarship's safe." "I know. Mom already told me." A pause, softer than his usual joking tone. "Everything you've been doing this month. I don't regret any of it, you know. Not the surgery. Not any of it." My throat tightened, unexpected. "You weren't supposed to know how much any of it cost." "I'm twelve, not stupid." I could hear the grin in his voice even through the phone. "I do the math too, Lena. I just don't say it out loud as much as you do." We talked another few minutes about nothing important. His recovery, his video game, the jello flavors he was slowly working through at the hospital cafeteria. It felt good to talk about nothing for once, after weeks of everything mattering s

Chapter Thirteen: Investigator Reyes

LENA Investigator Reyes met us in a small conference room on campus. Not a police station, not anywhere that would draw attention to what was actually happening. She set a single page on the table, printed, a section highlighted in yellow. "This is from a letter Elena Marsh gave us with her documentation." I read the highlighted lines. Fourteen years, waiting for a reason worth the risk. Found it in a seventeen-year-old scholarship student who walked into a situation she never chose. Who moved through it without losing sight of what actually mattered. My eyes stung, unexpected. I hadn't known Elena had written anything about me at all. Let alone something like that. "The merger is formally suspended." Reyes continued without pausing. "Richard Cross has indicated full cooperation with our investigation, effective this morning." "What does full cooperation mean for him." Landon's voice stayed careful. "His legal exposure decreases the more he helps us build the case." Reyes closed

Chapter Fourteen: Found Out

LENA Priya found out about the kiss before I even had a chance to tell her properly. She showed up at my locker Monday morning already grinning. "You're glowing." She leaned in close. "It's disgusting. I love it." "I don't know what you're talking about." "Lena." She leaned against the locker next to mine. "You've had your counting face on for a month straight. Today you look like someone who slept eight hours and had a good dream." I laughed, unable to argue with any of it. I told her everything on the walk to first period. The courtyard, the kiss, the way he'd said no clauses like it was the easiest promise he'd ever made. "Good." Her voice went simple and certain, once I'd finished. "You deserve something that isn't math for once." Leo called that afternoon before I'd even gotten home. My mother had already told him everything over the phone during her lunch break. "So." No greeting, straight to business the way he always was. "Landon Cross." "Leo." "I need to ask him some

Chapter Fifteen: Thursday

He knocked. I was mid phrase when I heard it and I finished the phrase before I looked up, because you finished the phrase, you didn't stop in the middle. When I finally set the bow down and said come in, something was already different about the way I had said it. Like I had been waiting. Landon opened the door and leaned against the frame the way he had the first morning, but nothing else was the same. No contract. No performance. Just him in the doorway of my practice room with his hands in his pockets and his green eyes finding mine. "You're early," I told him. "You said Thursday." He came inside. He sat in the chair by the window. "It's Thursday." "It's four forty seven." "I said I'd be here." He settled back. "I'm here." I looked at him for a moment. Then I turned back to my music stand and found the piece I had been working on for the past two weeks. New composition. Not Bach, not anything assigned. Something that had started as a scale pattern one night after the schol

Chapter Sixteen: What Priya Knows

I told Priya everything on Friday evening. All of it. The contract. Leo's surgery. The first payment. The jacket. Richard Cross. Dana Marsh in my room. Elena. Grace Okafor. Monday morning in that lobby. The scholarship hearing. The trust. All of it from the beginning, every piece I had been carrying alone for two months. Priya sat on my bed with her tea and didn't interrupt once. She was very good at this, the particular skill of being quiet while someone told you a hard thing. When I finished she wrapped both hands around her mug and looked at me. "You did all of that," she said, "and you didn't tell me." "I couldn't. The confidentiality clause." "The confidentiality clause is resolved now." "Yes." "So you're telling me now." "Yes." She looked at her tea. "How much of it was real." I knew what she was asking. "The contract was real. The arrangement was real." I paused. "The rest of it is still being decided." "The rest of it being him." "Yes." "Room 214 last night." I l

Chapter Seventeen: Margaret

She was smaller than I expected. Margaret Cross sat up in a chair by the window of her hospital room with a blanket across her lap and a book face down on the table beside her. She had Landon's green eyes and she used them the same way, steadily and with full attention, like looking at something halfway wasn't worth doing. I sat in the chair Landon pulled across from hers. He sat on the edge of the bed. Between the three of us the room was quiet in a way that wasn't uncomfortable. "You're the cellist," she said. "Yes." "Landon told me you play Bach." "My grandfather taught me." "He told me that too." She looked at me carefully. "He tells me you're very practical." "He's being kind." "He doesn't do kind inaccurately." Something moved at the corner of her mouth, close to a smile but quieter than that. "He means it as a compliment. In this family, practical is not a small thing." I thought about Richard Cross. About the trust and the clinic and four years of leverage. "I unders

Chapter Eighteen: The Investigation Closes

The formal findings came out on a Thursday. Richard Cross was charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering facilitation. Marcus Hale had accepted a plea agreement and was cooperating. Cross Capital was ordered to cease operations pending the investigation outcome. Six civil suits had been filed by the clients whose accounts Marcus Hale had misused. The school sent a second email. Richard Cross had been formally removed from the board of donors. The gymnasium naming rights were being transferred to a community health foundation. Effective immediately. I read the emails in the library during a free period, then put my phone down and looked out the window at the east parking garage visible across the quad. I thought about the first morning I had come to this library with a pen and a list of conditions. How much I hadn't known then about what I was walking into. I thought about forty seven dollars. My phone rang. My mother. "I saw the news," she said. "I

Chapter Nineteen: Room 214

He was already there when I arrived. The piano fallboard was open and he was sitting on the bench with his hands in his lap, not playing. The room was lit this time, both of us early enough to have caught the last of the afternoon light through the windows. I set my case down. I took out my cello. "You're early again," I told him. "I've been early every time." "I've noticed." He looked at me. "Is that a problem." "No," I said. "I've been early too." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. I settled the cello into position and played a long slow scale to warm up. Landon watched, then turned back to the piano and began his own warmup, scales first the way I had done it every time we were in this room, until he had started doing it too without my saying anything. We had been meeting in room 214 for three weeks. Every Thursday, some Tuesdays, and once on a Sunday when I had come back early from home and texted him without thinking about it, the way you texted someone when s

Chapter Twenty: Six Weeks

The conservatory audition was on a Saturday. I was up at five. I dressed in the dark and made coffee and sat at my desk and did not practice, because Professor Valdez had told me not to practice the morning of. The preparation was already done. The morning of was for being still and trusting the work. I was not naturally good at being still. My phone buzzed at five forty. Landon. How are you sleeping. I'm not sleeping, I typed. It's five forty. I know. I'm awake too. Why are you awake. A pause. Because you have an audition today. I looked at that message in the pre-dawn quiet of my room. You didn't have to do that, I typed. I know, he said. I wanted to. I made a second cup of coffee. I sat at my desk. Outside the window the campus was still dark, the lit paths empty, the stone buildings solid and quiet. I thought about the composition I was going to play today. Not just Bach. They had asked for two pieces. One standard, one original. I was playing the Sarabande from the f

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