جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

002: ELARA POV Ronan paced behind me like a caged animal, his hockey skates probably still in his bag from practice. Every few seconds he shot a glare toward the door as if he could will the rumors away by sheer force of will.Dean Hargrove sat across from us, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose as she scrolled through her tablet. The silence stretched until it felt like a living thing.“Miss Vale,” she began, not looking up, “the university takes accusations of this nature very seriously. Especially when they involve student-athletes and potential violations of our code of conduct.”“I’m not pregnant,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time. My voice cracked on the last word. “I bought the test because I was late. It was negative. Someone is trying to ruin me.”Ronan stopped pacing and placed a hand on the back of my chair. The gesture felt protective, but it also felt like a claim. “She’s telling the truth. This is bullshit. Someone’s messing with us because of the

ELARA POV - 004 My bedroom door flew open with a crack that made me scream. Ronan stood there, chest heaving, eyes wild with something far beyond jealousy. The shared bathroom lock was nothing against a hockey captain fueled by rage and fear. He took one look at my face, then at the glowing laptop screen with the positive test and his father’s handwritten note.“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”He crossed the room in two strides and snatched the laptop. I lunged for it, but he held it high, reading Dominic’s words aloud in a voice that cracked like ice breaking. “‘You were always meant to be mine.’ What the hell is this, Elara?”“I don’t know!” Tears streamed down my face. “I swear the test I took was negative. Someone’s doing this—someone hacked my computer, planted this—”Ronan hurled the laptop onto the bed. It bounced dangerously close to the edge. Before I could breathe, his hands were on my shoulders, gripping hard enough to bruise. Not hurting me, but holdi

The footage plays on someone's laptop, propped on the boards, a knot of reporters crowded around it like it's the only warmth left in the building.I watch Elara's face instead of the screen. I already know what's on it. I watched it three times alone in my dorm before I ever brought it here, until the audio stopped meaning anything and became just sound, just proof, just the thing that was going to finally make my father answer for something in his life.Her face goes through something complicated when the footage starts. Horror first that part I expected, that part felt right, felt like justice arriving on schedule. But then it shifts. Something moves behind her eyes that isn't horror anymore. Something closer to calculation.I don't understand it. Not yet."That's it?" one of the reporters says, squinting at the tiny screen. "That's the big reveal?"I look down at the laptop for the first time since I pressed play, and something cold drops through my stomach.The footage is nothin

008: DOMINIC POVI've poured the water twice now, refilling the second glass though neither has been touched, because it gives my hands something to do besides sit still on the table in front of me.Two years. That's how long I've been telling myself a version of this that made it easier to live with. That I noticed her the way you notice any quiet, careful person in a room full of loud ones. That it meant nothing, that it was simply the reflex of a man who spent thirty years learning to see what other people overlook. I told myself she reminded me of her mother, and for a while that was even true, and it was a convenient enough lie to hide behind because grief is always easier to admit to than this.She stopped reminding me of her mother somewhere in the second year. I noticed the exact week it happened and did nothing about the noticing, because doing nothing felt, at the time, like restraint.I was wrong about that too.The suite is quiet except for the sound of the city thirty flo

010: ELARA POV"My mother," I repeat, like saying it again might make the words rearrange into something that makes more sense.Dominic sets the water glass down without drinking from it. "I was engaged to her. Before Eleanor. Before any of this." His voice stays level, but I can hear the effort it takes to keep it that way, like he's walking across something narrow and doesn't trust himself to look down. "It was a long time ago. Longer than you've been alive."I feel Kieran's eyes on me from across the room, careful, watching for whatever this is about to do to me."That's not possible," I say, though even as I say it, something in my chest is already rearranging itself around the shape of it, some part of me that's been waiting my whole life for a piece of my mother's story that finally fits. "She never mentioned you. She never mentioned any of this.""She wouldn't have," Dominic says quietly. "Eleanor made sure of that.""Made sure how."He's quiet for a moment, choosing the words