Tate’s POV
Sloane's house is exactly what money buys when taste isn't part of the transaction—a sprawling estate with more rooms than purpose, every surface designed to impress people who are already too impressed with themselves.
The music pounds through walls that cost more than most people's mortgages, and the liquor flows from bottles that have never seen the inside of a store because someone's assistant ordered them delivered.
I keep my role steady—arm around Harley's waist when we enter, hand on the small of her back as we navigate through clusters of classmates who greet us with smiles that don't reach their eyes.
The whispers trail us like exhaust fumes.
A whole month of playing the devoted boyfriend, and the school still can't decide if we're real or delusional.
She's wearing something I haven't seen before—nothing expensive, nothing designer, but she's done something with it the way she always does, transformed it through sheer force of will into something that looks like it was made for her body.
A dark top that leaves her lean shoulders bare, altered to fit her frame perfectly, paired with simple black jeans and somehow look better on her than anything Sloane's closet could produce.
"If one more person asks me how we got together, I'm going to start telling them it was an arranged marriage," Harley mutters through her performance smile, accepting a drink she won't finish. "Or a hostage situation. Something believable."
"Just keep smiling and stop death-gripping that cup. Relax—we're at a party, not a parole hearing."
"Given the company, the difference is marginal."
The first hour passes in a haze of performances. I play my part—hand at the small of her back, proprietary glances, the occasional whispered comment that makes her roll her eyes. But I start noticing things I wasn't expecting.
The way Connor Hayes tracks her movement across the room. How Marcus Chen suddenly finds reasons to talk to her when before she was invisible.
Even Brooks, fucking Brooks keeps looking over with this speculative expression that makes my jaw tight.
They wouldn't have given her a second glance two weeks ago. Now that she's wearing my jacket metaphorically, suddenly she's worth their attention.
The thought sits wrong in my chest, though I can't pin down exactly why it bothers me. She's still the same person she was before. But apparently, my endorsement matters more than anything actually about her.
I step out after an hour—bathroom, fresh air, five minutes away from the suffocating performance of it all. The back patio is empty except for a couple too drunk to notice me, and I stand in the cool night air letting the tension drain from my shoulders.
When I come back inside, I spot her immediately. Harley's across the room, leaning against the wall near the bookshelves. She's talking to Grant, and something about the scene stops me mid-stride.
The party light catches her collarbone, the clean line of her jaw, the way her black hair falls against her neck in a way that makes me want to brush it aside.
She's laughing, her head tilted back slightly, her eyes bright with genuine amusement, her whole face transformed by the kind of warmth she never shows when I'm standing next to her.
And Grant is leaning in, his body angled toward hers with the unconscious gravity of a man who's stopped pretending he isn't drawn to her.
His attention is locked on her face, her mouth and neck, like she's the only person in this overcrowded room, and he says something I can't hear that makes her laugh again, his hand rises to touch her arm—casual, brief, meaningless to anyone watching.
Not meaningless to me.
Something hot and unfamiliar tightens in my chest and I force myself to look away, unsettled by the intensity of my own reaction.
It's not possessiveness, she's not mine to possess. This entire relationship is fake, a contract, a performance.
It’s much worse—jealousy.
Raw, irrational, so sharp I can taste it like copper on my tongue. And the fact that I have no right to feel it, that Grant Daniels can lean toward her and make her laugh in ways I never have, that she relaxes around him with an ease she's never once shown me—all of it makes the sting more personal.
I force my legs to move, to turn away, to walk back toward the spot where I left my jacket, my phone, my carefully maintained illusion that Harley Valdez is nothing more than a transaction I'm managing until graduation.
Sloane is standing exactly where I left my things, and my phone is in her hands.
She startles when she sees me—a flinch she covers immediately with a bright smile that's about as convincing as a paper wall.
"Oh! Tate, hi. I thought this was mine, I was just checking the time and—"
"Give it to me." I close the distance between us in two strides, plucking the phone from her fingers with a grip that's controlled enough to be civilized and firm enough to communicate everything my voice doesn't. "Don't touch my things ever again, for any reason. Are we clear?"
"God, Tate, it was an honest mistake. You don't have to be so intense about it."
She laughs it off, but I catch something in her eyes that the laugh doesn't cover.
I pocket my phone, unease settling into my stomach like ice water, as Sloane drifts away with that practiced smile, and I scan the screen—nothing open, nothing obviously tampered with.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, maybe it was nothing. But something about the way she held it—not casually, not like someone who'd just picked it up... Like someone who'd been scrolling.
Then every phone in the room buzzes simultaneously.
The collective vibration cuts through the music like a signal flare. Around me, hands reach into pockets and purses with synchronized curiosity—and then the whispers start.
I pull out my own phone and see it instantly—a notification from one of those anonymous local gossip accounts that Wentworth students treat like gospel. A crime report, a fight and vandalism in Southside—property damage, police involvement, multiple individuals detained.
The names attached are unmistakable. Valdez.
My eyes snap to Harley across the room. She's still by the bookshelves, but Grant has stepped back, his phone in his hand, his expression shifting from confusion to concern.
Around them, the party fragments—conversations dying mid-sentence, replaced by the electric hum of scandal finding its target. Every head in the room turns toward her.
Harley sees it happen—the wave of attention cresting, the phones angling, the expressions rearranging from party-casual to predatory curiosity. She reaches for her own phone, reads the notification, and her face goes completely still.
Not blank, but controlled. The mask she's spent two years perfecting, the one that absorbs impact without showing the bruise.
Sloane moves first. "Oh my God, Harley. I just saw... Are you okay? That's your brothers, aren’t they?”
Her voice carries that pitch-perfect theatrical concern—loud enough for the room, trembling enough to sound genuine, poisonous enough to kill. She presses a hand to her chest, eyes wide with manufactured sympathy.
"Maybe you should head out, hon. I'm sure everyone understands—we don't really support that kind of thing here, and I'd hate for anyone to feel unsafe at my home because of... Well, you know."
The room holds its breath, and then the chorus begins—voices rising from different corners like a coordinated assault disguised as concern.
"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?"
"I mean, with that family, were we really surprised?"
"Children always end up like their parents... It's just statistics."
"Nothing good comes from people like that. My mother always said—"
Each comment lands with surgical precision, and I watch Harley absorb every single one without flinching. Her expression doesn't crack, her posture doesn't waver.
She stands in the center with the composure of someone who's been surviving this exact moment for eighteen years—different rooms, different faces, but the same message delivered by people who've never had to fight for anything in their lives.
She deliberately sets down her drink on the nearest surface and lifts her chin. Then walks toward the door without rushing, without begging, without giving them a single crack to exploit. Her spine is straight, her steps are measured.
She doesn't look at Sloane, doesn't acknowledge the whispers, doesn't offer the satisfaction of a visible wound.
I don't hesitate, don't weigh the social cost, don't calculate the political implications—I simply follow her.
“Tate?” Sloane looks genuinely surprised as I pass by. “Where are you…”
“If my girlfriend’s leaving, so am I. Enjoy the rest of the party.”
My girlfriend comes first. The word surfaces automatically, girlfriend, and for the first time, the quotation marks I usually wrap around it feel like they don't fit anymore.
The door closes behind me, and the party, the music, the whispers, Sloane's satisfied smile, every last one of them, ceases to exist.
Harley and I walk into the darkness together, and the party disappears behind us like something that never mattered at all.