"He said worse. He told Eldridge to end the program. Told him the whole thing was supposed to be a photo opportunity, not 'actual integration.'" My voice was tight. Controlled. But barely. "He sees you as a threat to the Harrington brand. And he sees me as stock he's managing for maximum return."
Liam was quiet. Processing. I could see him rearranging things—fitting this new information into the picture he'd been building of me and my life and the distance between us.
"So don't stand there and tell me I don't understand pressure," I said. "Don't tell me I get to go back to my legacy like it's some kind of gift. My legacy is a cage, Liam. And the man who built it is trying to tear apart the only person that's ever made me feel—"
I stopped.
Too close to saying it.
"Feel what?" Liam asked. Quiet now. The anger gone from his voice.
"Free." The word came out rough. "The only person that's made me feel free."
The silence that followed was different.
"I'm just as scared as you are," I said. My voice cracked and I let it. "If I step out of line—if I choose wrong—I don't just lose a scholarship. I lose my family. Everything I've ever known." I held his gaze. "So don't tell me I'm playing it safe. I've never been safe a day in my life."
We stared at each other. The space between us had changed—still charged, but the anger had burned down to something rawer underneath. The real thing. The thing we'd been circling since that summer.
"You said something that summer," I said. Quieter. "At Brackett Lake. On the dock. You said our difference didn't have to come between us. That it didn't matter. That we could figure it out."
Liam's jaw tightened. Something shifted in his eyes—not anger. Pain. Old pain.
"There were a lot of things that summer that were lies," he said.
My chest went cold. "What?"
"You led me on." His voice was raw. Stripped of every defense he owned. "All summer. Made me think we had something real. Then you found out we were going to rival schools and you just—ended it. Walked away."
The words hit like a blow to the sternum.
"Do you know what that felt like?" His eyes were bright now. "I thought we were something. I thought—for the first time in my life I thought someone actually saw me. Not the scholarship kid, not the poor kid trying to prove something. Just me. And then you cut me off. Like I was nothing."
I couldn't breathe.
He was right.
I had done that. I'd ended things because my father's expectations and the rivalry and the terror of wanting someone this badly had crushed me into choosing the safe option. The coward's option. I'd hurt him to protect myself and told myself it was pragmatism.
But it was fear, and I'd let him carry the wound of it for a year and a half without ever explaining why.
"I'm sorry." Barely above a whisper. "Liam, I'm so sorry. I was scared. I thought ending it would be easier than trying to make it work when everything was against us. I thought I was protecting both of us, but I—" My voice cracked. "I just hurt you. That's all I did."
He didn't say anything. Just stood there with his jaw tight and his eyes too bright.
"I shouldn't have done that. I was a coward. I've regretted it every day since."
Every day since.
I watched the words land. Watched him try to reject them—watched the reflex kick in, the part of Liam that had spent eighteen months telling himself I didn't care, that it was just a summer thing, that he'd been stupid to hope.
And then I watched the reflex fail.
His face broke. Not all at once—not dramatic. Just the tightness around his mouth letting go. The hard line of his jaw softening. His eyes getting brighter until he had to look away.
"Fuck," he said. Barely audible. To himself more than me.
Then he turned back to me, his eyes trained on mine. We stood there. Three feet apart. Everything between us raw and exposed and impossible.
