Speaking again, this time there’s a different kind of honesty in her voice. Still sharp, still guarded, but stripped of some of the hostility.
“You really think Kadin is going to come after her through all of us.”
“Yes.”
The word is flat.
“Not because he cares that much about me,” I continue. “Because he cares enough about losing. And men like that don’t need to want a girl to ruin her life. They just need to want someone else to suffer more.”
Looking down at her phone, thumb worrying at the edge of the case, a lot is moving behind her face now. Old conversations. Group chats. The way Maria probably defended Kadin last night because concern is easier to believe than strategy. The way Octavia’s silence would have looked from the outside. The way my saying all of this does not actually protect me from anything.
“That’s why you told me,” she says quietly. “Because now I know enough to hurt you too.”
The truth of that sits between us.
“Yes,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine again.
“And you still did it.”
“Yes.”
That’s the thing that gets through.
Not the confession. Not the sex. Not even the love.
The risk.
For the first time, Cheyenne looks at me like she understands the depth of what I’m actually handing her. Not gossip. Not leverage. Trust. The kind that says I would rather be destroyed honestly than let another lie wrap itself around Octavia and call itself protection.
A long breath leaves her.
Straightening slightly when she speaks again, the words come steadier.
“If what you’re saying is true, then Kadin doesn’t get to use me or Maria to get to her.”
“He doesn’t.”
“And if what you’re saying isn’t true,” she adds, eyes sharpening again, “I will make your life a special kind of hell.”
That almost makes me laugh.
“I figured.”
Silence again. Wind against the porch rail. The faint creak of the front door behind me where my hand still braces against it.
Cheyenne’s face softens by degrees, not into warmth exactly, but into recognition. Something much more valuable than easy approval.
“Then I guess we do have something in common,” she says.
The sentence lands harder than I expect.
Because she means Octavia. Protecting her. Loving her in whatever form each of us is capable of. Wanting to be one of the hands that steadies her instead of one more thing she has to survive.
Her gaze flicks once more toward the staircase inside the house.
“Tell Octavia to find me at school,” she says. “Don’t be a stranger, Silas.”
