Tate’s POV
My father taught me one useful thing before he stopped being a father and became a politician full-time: never enter a fight without an exit strategy.
Harley Valdez thinks she holds the leash. She thinks that secret about Ezra gives her permanent leverage—a collar around my neck she can tighten whenever she wants. And right now, she's right.
I play the boyfriend, I walk her to class, I perform devotion for an audience that's still trying to decide if we're real or insane. But I also haven't forgotten my promise.
You're going to regret the day you thought you could control me.
I meant every word. And while she's busy running her little campaign and managing her color-coded clipboard empire, I'm building my insurance—quietly, methodically, the way Dad handles political threats.
You don't strike in anger—you collect, you wait, you choose the moment that inflicts maximum damage with minimum exposure.
The opportunity presents itself on a Tuesday afternoon during corrective hours.
I'm heading toward the council room, rounding the corner by the east stairwell, when I spot Harley in the hallway. She's talking to a younger student—a sophomore, maybe, one of those scholarship kids who orbits her like she's magnetic north.
Harley reaches into her bag and pulls out a small wrapped bundle—notes, probably. Study materials, maybe supplies for some charity drive she's organizing because the girl can't go twelve hours without saving the world on a volunteer basis.
Completely innocent. But from where I'm standing, fifteen feet back, pressed against the wall at just the right angle, it doesn't look innocent at all.
I pull out my phone before the thought fully forms. The camera frames them perfectly: Harley mid-handoff, the small package passing between their hands, her expression focused and serious.
Without context, stripped of explanation, it looks exactly like what Wentworth already assumes about the girl from Southside with four brothers in the Wolves.
A handoff. Pills, powder, product—take your pick.
The narrative writes itself, and every rich parent at this school would believe it without blinking. One leak—that's all it would take. One anonymous post to the right gossip account, one "concerned citizen" email to the principal, and the story detonates.
Scholarship student dealing on school grounds, academic career—incinerated.
Campaign—destroyed.
Scholarship—revoked before she could blink.
Everything Harley Valdez has spent years clawing toward, gone in the time it takes to tap send.
I save the photo and pocket my phone, my pulse steady, my hands calm. This is strategy. Not cruelty, but strategy, a safety net in case she decides my cooperation isn't enough and goes after Ezra anyway.
People are unpredictable, especially people with nothing to lose, and I won't gamble my brother's life on the assumption that a girl from Southside will keep her word just because she promised.
She'd regret the day she put me on a leash. I told her that.
And Tate Mercer keeps his promises.
I'll wait for the perfect moment, and when it comes, I'll watch her fall the same way I watched her walk into that paint trap freshman year. Except this time, she won't get back up.
The conviction holds for approximately ninety seconds.
Harley finishes her conversation, waves goodbye to the sophomore with a smile that transforms her entire face, open, warm, nothing like the guarded mask she wears for the rest of Wentworth, and turns to find me leaning against the wall.
The warmth vanishes, replaced by her default setting: suspicion sharpened to a fine edge.
"Lurking in hallways now?” She crosses her arms, one hip cocked in that way that simultaneously irritates me and does something unfortunate to my pulse. “That's not creepy at all, Mercer. Should I check for hidden cameras, or are you just practicing your serial killer aesthetic?"
"I was walking to the council room, which is literally ten feet away. Not everything revolves around you, Valdez, despite what your ego suggests."
"My ego is perfectly proportioned.”
She steps closer and tilts her chin up to hold my gaze. The movement exposes the long line of her throat, and I force my eyes back to her face.
“Unlike your head, which I'm convinced has its own gravitational pull."
She falls into step beside me, and we walk toward the council room together—this rhythm we've developed, barbed and automatic, more habit than hostility now.
"You're late, by the way. We were supposed to start inventory of the supply closet twenty minutes ago."
Harley doesn't break stride, her pace brisk and purposeful, clipboard tucked under one arm.
"I was at practice. Some of us have athletic commitments that extend beyond competitive clipboard management."
"And some of us have responsibilities that extend beyond chasing a ball across a field while grown men scream at us.”
A freshman couple barely jumps out of our path, and neither of us slows down. Harley's shoulder brushes mine as we navigate around them.
”But sure, tell me more about how throwing a football is a meaningful contribution to society."
"It's a meaningful contribution to my scholarship prospects, which is more than your little presidential campaign can say right now. How are those poll numbers looking, by the way? Still in the toilet, or have they graduated to the sewer?"
"You're hilarious.”
She stops abruptly outside the council room door, turning to face me with that particular expression that means I've successfully gotten under her skin.
“Has anyone ever told you that your humor is your best quality? Because it's really not, I was lying just now, your humor is terrible."
The council room is empty when we push through the door—everyone else is gone for the day, chairs pushed in, the long table cleared except for a stack of folders I left yesterday.
Late afternoon light slants through the tall windows, painting golden rectangles across the floor. The room feels different when it's just us. The absence of an audience strips away the performance, and what's left is something I don't have a name for yet.
Harley moves to the table and starts sorting through the folders, her silky straight black hair catching the light as she bends forward.
I should start on the supply inventory, I should do something productive with my hands instead of standing here watching her like an idiot.
"Are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there contributing nothing? Because I can put that on your corrective hours report—Tate Mercer: present, useless, decorative at best."
"I'm supervising, it's a leadership skill. You wouldn't understand—you're more of a doing-everything-yourself-because-you-trust-nobody type."
"I trust people who earn it. So far your résumé includes bullying, property destruction, and chronic tardiness. Not exactly trust-building material."
She looks up at me, those sharp dark eyes catching the gold light, and something about the angle, the way her lips are parted mid-sentence, the shadow her lashes cast across her cheekbones, makes my breath hitch.
"You forgot devastatingly handsome," I say, but the deflection comes out quieter than I intended. "That should count for something."
"It counts for less than you think."
Her voice drops too, matching mine without either of us deciding to. The air between us tightens—a shift so subtle I almost miss it, like a key turning in a lock I didn't know existed.
"Looks fade, Mercer. Especially when the personality behind them is this insufferable."
"You think I'm good-looking." I step closer without meaning to. "That's what I'm taking from this conversation."
"I think you're statistically symmetrical. There's a difference, and it's significant. Don't let it inflate your already dangerously oversized…"
She stops and I've moved close enough to see the flecks of amber in her dark brown eyes, close enough that her breath catches visibly, the sentence dying on her lips. Her chin tilts up to hold my gaze, defiant even now, but her pupils have widened and there's a flush creeping up her neck that she can't control.
My gaze drops to her mouth.
I don't mean to, it just happens—the way gravity happens, inevitable and stupid and completely beyond my control.
Her lips are slightly parted, still shaped around the word she didn't finish, and the thought that crashes through my head is so clear it's almost audible: I want to know what she tastes like.
The moment stretches in a way that has nothing to do with secrets or leverage or the photo sitting in my phone like a loaded gun. Her eyes flicker to my mouth and back up, and neither of us pulls away.
Seconds pass, maybe hours.
Then the building's heating system clicks on with a mechanical groan, and the spell shatters. Harley blinks, steps back, clears her throat while I turn away, jaw clenched so hard my teeth ache, shaken to my core by how badly I didn't want to move.
By how close I came to closing that gap and ruining everything—the deal, the distance, the carefully maintained lie that this girl means nothing to me.
I pocket my phone, the one carrying the photo, the insurance, the proof that I'm still playing to win, and the weight of it feels different now, heavier. Wrong in a way it wasn't twenty minutes ago.
"I have to go," I say without turning around and I leave her standing in the golden light, not looking back.
If I look back, I won't leave. And if I don't leave, I'll do something I can't take back.