Chase blinked. “Shifting how?”
“She didn’t say.”
Theo’s mouth flattened slightly. “She didn’t have to.”
Luke’s hand pressed against my thigh. “Her dad doesn’t move quietly,” he said. “If pressure’s coming from outside the board, it’s not random.”
Jax frowned. “You think this is connected?”
Luke’s expression stayed composed. “I think timing rarely is.”
Tori’s fingers curled around her cup. “She has been… weird today.”
“Weird how?” Avery asked.
Tori hesitated, as if she was analyzing what loyalty cost. Then her shoulders squared.
“She is not doing the big stuff,” Tori said. “She is doing the small stuff. The careful stuff. She is watching who sits with who. She is taking notes without writing anything down.”
A muscle ticked in Luke’s jaw.
Theo’s gaze went distant, thoughtful.
Chase grimaced. “That is creepy.”
“It is smart,” Jax corrected.
Luke’s palm moved once against my thigh, slow and deliberate. I looked at him, and his gaze met mine for a second. We were aligned.
Avery noticed it and went quiet, as if she was filing it away. Tori’s attention drifted past our table, and I followed it.
Elise sat across the cafeteria with Nina and two other girls. She didn’t look at us. She didn’t need to. The entire cafeteria was looking at her too.
Nina’s posture was different today—shoulders tighter, smile smaller. She kept glancing at Elise as if she was waiting for instructions.
Then Nina’s eyes flicked toward me again. She looked away quickly. Guilt lived in that movement. I didn’t know what Nina was guilty of yet. But I knew she was not as solidly in Elise’s orbit as Elise believed.
By the time the final bell hit, my body felt like it had been braced all day. I walked out of my last class and found Luke already waiting near the lockers, his bag slung over one shoulder, his expression unreadable in the way it always got when he was thinking too hard.
He stepped into my space with quiet certainty and took my hand as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
We walked toward the doors, Avery catching up on my other side, Tori just behind us, her steps tentative but determined.
Elise appeared near the exit as if she had timed it. Of course she had.
She didn’t block our path. She simply spoke as we passed, voice pitched low enough for only me. “When people start losing ground,” she murmured, “it’s risky to stand too close.”
Luke’s fingers tightened around mine, and I stopped walking, needing to react before he did. This was my fight. Not his.
I turned toward Elise, my hand still in Luke’s. Her smile was faint, expectant. She wanted a reaction. She wanted proof she could still get to me.
I met her gaze and let my voice stay calm. “Do you want to know the difference between clinging and choosing?” I asked.
Elise’s eyes narrowed slightly. I lifted our linked hands, not high, not dramatic, just enough. “This is choosing,” I continued. “I know exactly where I stand.”
Elise’s smile thinned.
Nina shifted behind her, looking abruptly ill.