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I look at the watch in my hand. The worn leather. The simple face. The weight of it, which is not the weight of money.

I don’t say anything for a moment.

“You only turn twenty-one once,” she says, quieter. “I’d like you to have it.”

I look at her. She looks back. Neither of us is performing anything right now.

I take the watch out of the box. I put it on. It fits — slightly loose, but it fits, and the steel is cool against my wrist and then it’s not, and I look at it for a second before I look up at her.

“Thank you,” I tell her. Two words. Not enough for what she just did. But they’re the true ones.

She smiles. The small one, the real one.

“Happy birthday, Theo.”

I pull her in. One arm, brief, her face against my chest, the noise from the living room running around us. Then I let her go, because Cash is definitely going to notice if we’re in this hallway much longer.

We go back in. Nobody notices.

I wear the watch for the rest of the night. I’m still wearing it when everyone finally leaves and the house goes quiet and I sit on the edge of my bed in the dark. I look at it on my wrist. Old steel, worn leather, the face of a man who sat in a study and made time for the granddaughter who wanted to listen.

I think about the Tab on my phone. The number I carry.

This isn’t on the Tab.

Some things aren’t about money. Some things are just about what you’re worth to someone, and who they think you’re going to be.

Chapter 19

Margo

Iwait until June and Wren leave.

It’s easy enough. Wren has an early lift tomorrow. June never stays anywhere past eleven if she can help it. And I’ve gotten good at reading the natural exit points of a room — when to leave with the group, when to let it thin out around me until staying doesn’t look like anything.

The party’s been winding down for a while now. Cash lost his fourth consecutive hand of cards to Wren, who has apparently been hustling him all night with a completely straight face, and he’s taking it about as well as expected — loudly, with several dramatic appeals to a jury of nobody. Sloane’s gone half-asleep against Beau’s shoulder on the couch, feet tucked up under her, and Beau’s got one hand resting absently in her hair like he’s not even thinking about it, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes me ache a little for reasons I’ve stopped trying to name. Wyatt cleaned the kitchen without being asked, the way he always does, and disappeared upstairs sometime around ten.

I say goodnight to Wren and June at the door. I wait exactly four minutes — long enough that leaving with them wouldn’t have looked deliberate, short enough that nobody’s going to wonder where I went — and then I quietly do not go home.

I text Theo from the porch.

give me twenty.

Theo

okay

Just that. He doesn’t ask why. I think he already knows why.

I walk. Four minutes across town at midnight. Except it’s not really four minutes, because I take the long way — past the quad, past the library where all of this technically started. The March air still has winter in it, but there’s something underneath the cold tonight, some early hint of the season turning, and I walk slow enough to feel it.

By the time I let myself in with the key, which still does something specific to my chest every time I use it, the house is dark except for the thin gold line under his door.

I go up. Third step, wide left. I know this by heart now.

I don’t knock this time.

He’s on the bed. The watch still on his wrist, even after midnight, even with everyone gone home. I stand in the doorway for a second just looking at him — twenty-one years old, in the low lamp light, looking at me like I’m the last thing he expected and exactly what he wanted.