The single word cuts through the noise like a blade.
He steps forward slowly, placing himself just to the side of me, not touching, but his presence is unmistakable. His voice isn’t raised. It doesn’t need to be.
“You don’t get to talk to her like that,” he says, eyes locked on my parents. “Not now. Not ever.”
Silence swallows the room again. Jace looks at me then.
Not angry or accusing.
Just… wrecked in a way that drains the color from his face. He looks like a man who’s been hit and hasn’t felt the pain yet because he hasn’t stopped moving.
“Why would you let me believe in a life that wasn’t real, without knowing the truth?” Jace asks.
The question slices straight through me.
I don’t answer. I don’t know how.
Jace holds my gaze for a beat longer, like he’s trying to memorize the moment before it breaks him completely. Then he turns away, shoulders rigid, stepping back into the crowd without looking at me again.
Behind him, Knox exhales sharply through his nose, like his body is rejecting the moment altogether.
I turn just in time to see the look on his face.
I’ve never seen him look at me like that.
Then he turns and walks out the door without looking back a second time.
Chapter Twenty Four
The Fallout
Jace
Idon’t register the room until it crashes back into me. Until her words finish detonating and the world rushes back in around them.
The room feels overlit and overfilled, the noise less like conversation and more like a performance everyone knows their lines for. People laughing like they’re supposed to be having the best night of their lives, like the money they’re throwing at the university is a party trick.
I’m standing beside Sarah. That part is familiar yet new at the same time. I can feel her shoulder near mine, the heat of her body through fabric, her calm posture like a practiced shield.
Donors drift in and out, shaking hands, smiling, talking about programs and legacies and tax write-offs like they’re confessing sins.
Routine.
Normal.
Then a voice fractures it, cuts through the low hum, loud enough that even the music seems to flinch.
“What did you do?” Sierra’s father.
I see him step forward like he owns the air, like he’s allowed to speak that way to anyone, anywhere. His hand clamps around Sierra’s arm hard enough that her whole body jerks. Like she’s a child or his property.
Sierra flinches, yanking back instinctively. Her eyes are wide and glassy, but her spine stays straight. That’s what hits me first, not the scene but the way she’s holding herself together.
“Don’t touch me,” she says.
Her voice isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. It carries anyway, slicing through conversations close by. Heads turn. A few people pretend they’re not listening, which means they’re listening harder.
Her father’s face twists, anger bright and immediate. “You’re going to fix this.”
