Harley’s POV
The council room smells like dry-erase markers and old coffee. Tate occupies the far end of the table the way he occupies every space—like the room rearranged itself around him. I've been rehearsing this in my head for two hours—casual, breezy, no big deal.
"No."
Tate doesn't even look up from his phone. We're in the council room during free period, and I've just laid out the dinner invitation with as much casual confidence as I can manufacture—which, given the circumstances, isn't much.
"Just hear me out…"
"I heard you. The answer is no. Why would I go to your neighborhood, Valdez? Our agreement covers school—smiles in hallways, hand-holding between classes, the occasional performance for your adoring public."
"Yes, but just think about it! Wouldn't it be even more believable if we organized a family dinner outside of school?"
He finally looks up, his expression flat with disbelief. "I'm playing your boyfriend, not auditioning for a death wish. Nowhere in that arrangement did I sign up for family dinners in Southside.”
I open my mouth, thinking up new convincing arguments on the fly, but Tate doesn't want to hear it. “The answer is no. Final. Done. Move on."
I stare at him, feeling Diego's smug victory forming like a fist in my stomach.
I can already picture my brother's face when I show up without the golden boy—that dangerous grin widening, the satisfaction of being proven right settling into his shoulders.
Rich boys don't cross into our world. Not even for show.
"Fine," I say, and the word tastes like surrender. "Forget I asked."
I gather my things and leave before he can see what his refusal actually costs me.
The hallway outside the library is crowded between periods—the usual Wentworth traffic of designer bags and manufactured laughter. I'm weaving through it with my head down, replaying Tate's refusal on a loop, when a voice cuts through the noise like a blade dipped in honey.
"Well, well. If it isn't Wentworth's favorite charity case, wandering the halls without her handler. What happened, Harley—did Tate finally come to his senses, or did he just get bored of slumming it?"
Sloane steps directly into my path, flanked by two of her usual accessories—girls whose names I've never bothered learning because their entire identity is orbiting Sloane's cruelty like moons around a dying star.
Her voice is pitched for maximum audience, carrying across the hallway with theatrical precision.
Heads turn, phones materialize immediately. The Wentworth machine grinds into gear, hungry for content.
"Because I have to say, the whole performance is getting a little stale. The matching smiles, the hand-holding, the lovestruck gazes… it's cute, really. Like watching a dog learn tricks.”
She steps closer, tilting her head with mock sympathy.
"But eventually the novelty wears off, and people start remembering what you actually are. A scholarship project with gang-affiliated brothers and a father in prison. No amount of Tate Mercer's attention changes your DNA, sweetheart."
My teeth clench so hard my jaw aches. I scan for exits—left corridor, right stairwell, anything that gets me away from this performance without giving her the satisfaction of watching me run.
Then I feel him. Not a sound, not a word—just the shift in the air behind me that I've learned to recognize over weeks of proximity I never asked for.
Tate, close enough that his chest nearly brushes my shoulder blades.
I step back one inch, just enough to whisper by turning my head slightly in his direcion.
"She's making a scene. The whole hallway is watching and recording. You need to do something, say something, shut it down, anything, because I'm about three seconds from handling this myself, and my version involves her extensions on the floor."
I expect words. A cutting remark. One of his surgical takedowns that leaves Sloane bleeding socially while he barely raises his voice.
Instead, his hand closes around my arm and spins me toward him. His palms frame my face—warm, deliberate, steady, and then his mouth is on mine.
No warning, no buildup, no whispered explanation or strategic preamble—just his lips pressing against mine with a confidence that vacuum-seals the sound from the hallway, and for one disorienting second, my brain short-circuits completely.
This is for the crowd, I tell myself, strategy, a declaration loud enough to silence Sloane and everyone watching.
His hands are firm against my jaw, tilting my face up, and the kiss is hard at first—performative, pointed, a statement made with mouths instead of words. I can feel the intention behind it, the ‘look at us, look at what she is to me,’ and I play my part, leaning in just enough to sell the lie.
But then his thumb moves. Just barely—a half-inch shift along my cheekbone, so small it could be accidental. Except his other thumb follows, tracing the same feather-light path on the other side, and the symmetry of it tells me this isn't for the audience anymore.
You don't touch someone like that when you're performing.
You touch someone like that when you've forgotten anyone else exists.
The kiss changes from the inside out—not a clean break between fake and real, but a slow bleed, like ink dropped into water. The pressure softens as his lips part just slightly against mine, and there's a question in it now, something tentative beneath the confidence, as if he's testing whether I'll notice the difference.
I notice. God, I notice.
The taste of him floods my senses—warm and sharp and overwhelmingly real. My hands find his chest, and instead of pushing away, my fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt.
His breath hitches against my mouth, barely audible, and the sound sends heat cascading down my spine like liquid fire.
Time stretches, warps, loses all structural integrity. The hallway, the phones, Sloane's venomous face—all of it dissolves into static beneath the impossible reality of Tate Mercer kissing me like he means it.
Like the performance evaporated somewhere between the first second and the fifth and what's left is just… this. His mouth moving against mine, slower now, hungrier, more honest than either of us intended.
My lungs burn but I don't pull away because pulling away means acknowledging what this has become and I am absolutely, categorically not ready for that.
"Mr. Mercer! Miss Valdez!" A teacher's voice cracks through the haze like a gunshot. "This is a school hallway, not a romantic getaway. Separate immediately or I'm writing you both up!"
We break apart. Not smoothly, but messily, breathlessly, like two people surfacing from deep water without enough air.
His hands drop from my face. My fingers unclench from his shirt.
Three inches of charged silence sit between us, and I can't look at him.
I physically cannot lift my eyes to his face because if I do, he'll see it—the truth written across every flushed inch of my skin.
That this wasn't nothing.
That my heart is hammering so hard my vision is pulsing. That my lips are still tingling and my hands are shaking and every nerve in my body is screaming for something I am not allowed to want.
The usual barbs don't come. No sarcastic deflection, no cutting remark to restore the distance between us. Just the sound of our breathing and the electric silence of something irreversibly changed.
My gaze drifts sideways, desperate for anywhere to land that isn't Tate's face, and finds Grant.
He leans against the opposite wall, watching us. His expression is something I can't fully decode—hurt layered beneath resignation, the quiet confirmation of a fear he'd been carrying since the day he questioned this relationship to my face.
He holds my gaze for one long second, then looks away. The dismissal is gentle, but it lands like a door clicking shut.
Then Tate's voice pulls me back—low, rough, stripped of every defense he usually wears like armor. "I'll come to dinner with your family."