“I figured.”
“And if Kadin’s really doing what you think he’s doing…”
“He is.”
The certainty in my voice stops her again.
Because I don’t say it like a guess. I say it like I know exactly how boys like him move when they get rejected in the wrong way. Through people. Through rumors. Through concern that sounds clean until it starts poisoning the room.
Cheyenne looks down at her phone again, then back at me. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again.
“Why tell me now?” she asks. “Why not just let me hate you?”
Because hatred is easy. Because misinformation spreads faster than truth. Because if Kadin gets ahead of this, the people around Octavia will start protecting her from the wrong things.
What comes out is simpler.
“Because if he’s trying to get me sent back to St. Augustine, fine,” I say. “Let him try. But he does not get to touch her again. Not through himself, not through your friend group, not through whatever lie he thinks he can make stick. If you want to support him after hearing all this, that’s your choice. But at least make it with your eyes open.”
Cheyenne goes still.
The porch falls quiet around us again. This time the silence feels fuller, heavier. Not empty. Processing.
“St. Augustine,” she repeats. “You really think it could go that far?”
“Yes.”
No point softening it.
“And you still told me.”
“Yes.”
That one shakes her more than anything else I’ve said.
Because now she gets it, at least in part. This isn’t me bragging. It isn’t a threat. It’s exposure. I handed her the same leverage Kadin has because I’d rather the people around Octavia have the truth than watch another man weaponize lies around her.
Something in Cheyenne finally changes after that.
Not approval. Not trust. Something more reluctant.
Her arms loosen. She doesn’t uncross them fully, but she stops holding herself like she’s bracing for a fight and startsholding herself like she’s run face-first into a mess she can’t neatly categorize.
“You really are serious about her,” she says.
The sentence lands too lightly for what it means. Maybe that’s why the answer comes out without hesitation.
“I’m not just serious.”
The breeze moves between us, lifting a loose strand of her hair. The neighborhood behind her keeps going, ordinary and oblivious.
“I love her,” I whisper. “That’s all that matters.”
Cheyenne goes still.
Not dramatically. Just enough that I can see the exact moment the words settle all the way in. She had been prepared for want. For possessiveness. Maybe even for obsession dressed up as devotion. Love is different. Love forces a situation to become real, more impossible to laugh off.
Her eyes search my face like she’s looking for the crack, the performance, the place where I’ll smirk or backpedal or make a joke to save us both from the weight of what I just admitted.
