Elaine blinks, like she’s not sure if she heard me right. “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying,” I cut in, “you’re not the only one who wants to see him pay.”
Her shoulders drop a fraction, not in relief, but like she’s laying down a weapon she’s been gripping for too long. “And what exactly are you picturing?”
I don’t answer right away. I pick up my coffee, swirl it once, and set it down untouched. “You’ve already given me the broad strokes. Now give me the full picture. Dates. Times. Locations. Hotels. What he told the team. Who saw you together? I don’t care if it was a five-minute hallway flirtation or a full weekend away. If it happens, I want it on paper.”
“You’re talking receipts,” Elaine says, almost shy.
“Receipts so thick they choke him,” I say. “I’ll dig through his emails, credit card statements, and mileage logs—and cross-reference everything with what you give me. Once we have a timeline, I’ll send anonymous copies to every high school and collegiate athletic director he’s ever worked with. He’ll never coach again.”
“That’s not—” She stops, studies me. “You’d really use it?”
“Oh, I’d weaponize it,” I say, no softness left.
“And what about my career? My life?”
“You’re out of the frame,” I answer without hesitation. “Any photo evidence, I crop you out. Anything with your name gets scrubbed. This doesn’t touch you publicly—it just buries him.”
Elaine’s mouth twists, her voice low. “Doing this together… it doesn’t make us friends.”
“No,” I agree. “But it makes us dangerous.”
For the first time since I sat down, her lips twitch into something that could be a smile.
We hold each other’s gaze, neither blinking, until it’s clear we’re bound by something uglier than trust. There’s no handshake. No promise. Just the knowledge that from this moment on, we’re in it together, and there’s no way out.
Elaine exhales like she’s releasing a weight, then reaches into her bag. The sound of the zipper feels loud between us. She pulls out a slim black notebook, the leather soft and worn, and sets it in front of me.
“Every date. Every message. Every lie he told to get to me. I stopped writing once the truth came out.”
I stare at it, the air suddenly heavier.
“It’s all there,” she says. “Where we were. What we said. Even the things he didn’t mean to say. I wrote it down like a fucking schoolgirl crush.” The book is warm from her hand when I pick it up. I don’t open it here, not with her watching, but I can feel the weight of it like a loaded gun.
I slip the book into my bag, the leather catching on the zipper.
“Then I guess it’s time we start planning the siege,” I say.
Elaine tilts her head, studying me like she’s still trying to figure out if I’m truly capable of the ruin I’m promising. “Careful, Carrington. War maps are just paper unless you’re willing to draw blood.”
I stand, the chair legs scraping against the tile. “I’m not afraid, sweetheart. I’m impatient.”
Her laugh is low and humorless, following me as I walk out into the blinding afternoon. The sun feels wrong on my skin, too bright for what I’m carrying, but that’s the beauty of it. No one out here knows the destruction I’ve just agreed to.
Three days later, the diary is splayed open on my dining table, surrounded by a scatter of index cards and a single black pen. Each card holds one entry—stripped of sentiment, boiled down to its sharpest points. Date. Place. Lie.
I’m not preserving this for memory. I’m distilling it for precision. Elaine’s handwriting runs romantic in the margins, loops, and curls, betraying just how far she let herself fall. My pen doesn’t bother with that. I only write what I can use. By the time I’m done, the table looks like a map of a war we haven’t started yet. I stack the cards, wrap them in twine, and slide them into the false bottom of the old jewelry box in my bedroom.
I call her just after ten. Not too late to seem desperate, not early enough for it to be casual.
She answers on the second ring, her voice low like she’s somewhere she shouldn’t be.
“You’ve been reading,” she says. Not a question.
“I have,” I reply. I tap one of the index cards against the table, eyes tracing the neat, inked words. “On April fifth, you wrote about The Marrow Club. How often did you meet there?” There’s a pause, a faint rustle like she’s shifting under a blanket. “Enough for them to know his drink order. Why?”
“Just painting the picture,” I say, keeping my voice smooth, distant.
