Page 23 of Spearcrest Queen

It stops me cold. I stare at her, at the tears sliding down her cheeks, waiting for her to wipe them away. She doesn’t. She lets them fall.

When she finally speaks, her voice is hoarse, dragged from a deep dark well of pain.

“It’shard, Evan. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Every single day, I walk into those lecture halls and feel like a fuckingimpostor. I’m working as hard as I possibly can just to—keep afloat. And I refuse to give up, no matter how hard this is. So yes, I’m willing to throw away what we have, because I can look you in the eyes and tell you this for a fact.”

She leans down over me, eyes narrowed, jaw set, mouth twisted into a fierce line.

“I would rather die than let anyone believe for even a second that I fucked my way to where I am.”

Two tears roll down her cheeks, mirroring one another, arching down the heart shape of her face to meet at her chin and fall between her hands on the bed. She doesn’t wipe away at her eyes, and her resolve doesn’t falter.

“I want to stand on my own,” she says, biting out each word. “Separate fromyou.Your wealth and privilege—yourname. I don’t want to be seen as a charity case who got lucky. Not again.Neveragain.”

Theanger drains from me, replaced by a sinking, suffocating sadness. Even my jealousy goes crawling back into the hole where it lives, curled up in shame. My heart is a tight knot because I understand it. I understand exactly what she’s saying, why she wants to break us apart. I see the determination in her eyes, the pride she’s clinging to with every ounce of her strength.

This is the tragedy of it: this terrible pride of hers, this unshakeable determination, this sense of dignity she wears like a suit of armour—is exactly what I love so much about her.

Sophie wants to break up with me because of the thing I love most about her. I understand it, I do, but I can’t accept it. I’m willing to bargain and beg, a dog whining at its master’s ankle for fear of abandonment.

“If the only reason you have for breaking up with me is because you don’t want people to think you’re with me for my money, then let the world believe we’re not together. You can tell everyone we broke up, I’ll do the same. I won’t even tell the truth to my parents. We can stay together. Nobody ever has to know.”

She listens to me as I speak, eyebrows furrowed in surprise, like she didn’t think I’d sink so low. She shakes her head, still frowning, and sighs.

“I don’t want to make you feel like you’re my dirty secret.”

I laugh, rough and a little unhinged. “You think I care? Don’t you get it by now? Nothing’s going to stop me from wanting you, Sophie. I wanted you when all my friends were telling me I shouldn’t; I wanted you when you hated my guts. I want you now that you’re miles away from me. I want you even when you’ve been ignoring me for weeks. I’d still want you if you ran halfway across the world to get away from me. I’d want you if you broke up with me, if you married someone else, if you told the entire world you despise me.” I push my hair back from myforehead, where it’s fallen in damp curls, still sweaty from earlier. “So trust me when I say this: I wouldn’tcareabout feeling like your dirty little secret. I wouldn’t care if Iwasyour dirty little secret. I just want to beyours.”

I avoid the word ‘love’ on purpose: the memory of Sophie’s words on our first night here is still imprinted into my mind, a wound that’s not even had time to scar. Whether or not Sophie remembers saying it doesn’t matter. That night, the alcohol allowed her to say something she might never otherwise have had the courage to tell me.

Now, she watches me, eyes wide and dark as I debase myself begging for whatever scraps she’s willing to give. Does it disgust her, my willingness to plead, to accept so little? Or is there enough hatred left in her heart from how I treated her in Spearcrest that a part of her feels avenged in this moment?

With a sigh, she crawls back down to me, pushing me back against the pillows by my shoulders and draping her chest over mine, her hair sliding around us in a dark curtain.

“Youaremine,” she says, her smoky voice soft, almost affectionate. She looks up at me, almost fearful. “What if you end up regretting making this deal?”

“I’m not going to,” I say, and her body and skin and proximity are good enough to distract me from the flicker of doubt in my chest. My arms wind around her waist, pressing her close to me, as close as I can hold her.WhileI can hold her. “I’ll be your dirty little secret, Sutton. I’ll be whatever you want.”

She rewards me with a kiss. It tastes like vanilla, desire and regret.

11

Proving Ground

Sophie

The long weekend ends:true to our deal, Evan drops me home at dawn, when campus is still deserted. The warmth of the hotel fades like a dream. Term resumes.

Autumn bleeds into winter. The trees in Harvard Yard go from being painted red and gold to their bare branches scratching against a hard grey sky. Frost creeps along brick walls, the air stings my cheeks and chaps my lips, but I barely notice. My days blur into an endless cycle of casebooks, lectures, and the pressure to keep up.

Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure: L1’s hellish trinity. I tell myself I can keep up. I tell myself I deserve to be here, but the cases keep piling up—Hawkins v. McGee, Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad—circling my mind like vultures when I collapse into bed, too wired to sleep. The reading never ends.

A thousand pages a week. My classmates show off their records of pages read like medals, like trophies, a badge of honour earned after weekend trips to Europe, while I can barely keepup.

And when exhaustion creeps in, when my thoughts wander against my will, I think of Evan. The way he looked at me in that hotel room, the hurt I saw in his eyes but refused to acknowledge.

I made a choice. I can’t let it be for nothing.

My skin is wan from lack of sleep, my hair dull because I don’t have time to wash it daily, my desk buried under highlighters and frantic scrawls I can’t decipher the next day. The radiator in my room rattles like it’s as exhausted as I am, but the nights still feel cold.

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