Harley's POV
The mop smells like bleach and regret. I drag it across marble floors, watching dirty water spread across surfaces I'll have to polish again in twenty minutes.
Hargrove's definition of "clean" apparently requires surgical-grade sterility for a man who's never touched a cleaning product in his life.
"You missed a spot." Sloane's voice carries from three feet away, where she's wiping down a display case with the enthusiasm of someone handling radioactive waste. "Right there—that streak near the baseboard. Very on-brand for you, Valdez. Sloppy work from sloppy people."
"And you've been rubbing the same six inches for fifteen minutes. At this rate, you'll finish that display case by graduation.”
I wring out my cloth with more force than necessary, dirty water dripping back into the bucket with satisfying splashes.
“Maybe your father can donate—In Honor of Sloane Whitmore, Who Once Cleaned Something."
"At least I know how to hold a cloth without looking like I'm strangling it.” Sloane pauses her wiping to glance over her shoulder, her expression dripping with manufactured pity. “Do they not teach basic motor skills in Southside, or were you too busy learning to hotwire cars with your brothers?"
"I'd rather hotwire cars than whatever it is you do with your free time—which, based on the evidence, involves stalking my boyfriend and losing fights in hallways. How's the lip healing, by the way? I hope it scars."
She scrubs harder, her jaw tight. "Enjoy the boyfriend while he lasts. We both know how this story ends."
The hostility is almost comfortable at this point. We've been doing this so long it requires no thought, no strategy, just muscle memory and mutual contempt operating on autopilot while our hands do the menial labor Hargrove assigned as penance.
Then Tate rounds the corner carrying a stack of folding chairs, and the atmosphere shifts entirely.
He sets the chairs down, crosses the space between us without hesitation, and slides his arm around my waist. Not the careful, performance-calibrated contact we've been maintaining for weeks—this is open, deliberate.
His palm is settling against my hip with the easy confidence of someone who isn't calculating angles or managing optics. He leans down and presses his lips to my temple, lingering there for a beat longer than strategy requires.
"You've got bleach on your cheek," he murmurs against my skin, his thumb brushing the spot. "Very sexy. The custodial look really works for you."
"You're carrying folding chairs. Glass houses, Mercer."
He grins, and the expression stops me mid-breath. It's nothing like the calculated smirk the school knows, nothing like the sharp weapon he deploys to charm or intimidate.
This is something unguarded and real, something that transforms his entire face into a version of Tate Mercer I'm not sure anyone else has ever seen—almost boyish in a way that makes my chest ache.
Sloane watches from behind her display case. She rolls her eyes with theatrical exhaustion, her mouth opening and closing twice as if testing responses and discarding them.
Doubt creeps in despite myself.
Is this still the performance?
Is he protecting our cover because Sloane is standing six feet away with a cleaning cloth and a front-row seat?
Or has something shifted, something he's not saying out loud, something that changed in my narrow bed or on a ridge overlooking the city or in his room where his mouth proved a point my body hasn't recovered from?
I don't ask. I'm not sure I want the answer, because if it's still a performance, the truth would break something I can't afford to break. And if it's not, then we've wandered so far past the boundaries of our arrangement that I don't know how to find our way back.
We work for another hour and the irony of preparing for Tate's father isn't lost on me.
I'm cleaning floors so the man who looked through me like glass can walk across them without noticing the effort.
Mid-afternoon, my mop bucket reaches the color of something that should be reported to environmental services and I haul it toward the utility room at the end of the corridor, arms aching, the smell of bleach permanently lodged in my sinuses.
I'm dumping the water into the industrial sink when arms wrap around me from behind.
Tate’s mouth finds my neck before I can turn, warm lips pressing against the spot below my ear, the spot he discovered that makes my knees unreliable. His hands settle on my hips and pull me back against his chest, and my body responds before my brain catches up.
I lean into him, feeling the solid warmth of him along my spine, heat spreading through my stomach as his mouth traces down to my shoulder.
"Tate." My voice comes out breathless, which undermines the authority I'm going for. "We're at school, we were just reprimanded. Hargrove said one more incident…"
"One more incident and you're expelled. I heard."
His mouth moves against my collarbone, his hands sliding forward across my stomach.
"But this isn't an incident, this is a utility room. No one comes here—the janitor's on break until three, and Sloane's too afraid of chemical fumes to venture past the main corridor. We're all alone."
"That doesn't make it a good idea. Five minutes ago we were in a hallway with witnesses. If someone walks in…"
"No one's walking in." His voice drops lower, the part of me stopped caring about consequences somewhere around the third time he kissed me.
I hear the click of the lock behind us and my resistance erodes like sand in a current.
His mouth crashes against mine, and we fall into each other with a recklessness that should terrify me. My back hits the utility room wall, cold tile against my shoulder blades, his body warm against my front, hands everywhere at once.
His fingers push beneath my shirt, skating across my ribs. My hands drag through his hair, pulling him closer, harder, needing the weight and the pressure and the proof of him.
The kiss escalates past making out into something more urgent—his thigh pressing between mine, my hips grinding against him, clothes shifting and bunching as hands find skin and the temperature in the small room spikes past sustainable.
His mouth leaves mine to work down my neck, my chest, and I'm pulling at his shirt, pulling him closer with an intent that leaves zero room for misinterpretation.
I want him. Here. Now. Against this wall, consequences and utility sinks and Hargrove's threats be damned.
But then suddenly Tate stops and pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine. His hands are still on my waist, his body still pressed against mine, but the urgency has shifted into something more careful.
“Why did you stop? Come on, I’m ready to…”
"I'm not doing this here." His voice is rough, strained with the effort of his own restraint. "I'm not taking your virginity in a school utility room next to a mop bucket, Harley. I have some dignity left, enough to know that you deserve better than a locked door and the smell of industrial cleaner."
"I wasn't asking for romance, Mercer. I was asking for you."
"And you'll get me."
His thumb traces my cheekbone, the gesture tender enough to make my chest ache.
"Somewhere that doesn't smell like bleach, on a surface that isn't tile. When I can take my time instead of racing a janitor's break schedule." He presses his lips to my forehead—soft, lingering. "Consider it something to look forward to."
"We should get back," I manage, still catching my breath. "Before Sloane starts screaming about our absence and Hargrove adds another week to our sentence."
Tate helps fix my skirt, hands smoothing fabric back into place with a gentleness that contradicts the past five minutes. His fingers comb through my hair, tucking stray pieces behind my ears, and the care in the gesture protects something I didn't ask him to protect.
"After you, Valdez." He unlocks the door and gestures with exaggerated chivalry. "Try to look like you've been cleaning and not like you've been doing exactly what we were doing, Davidson."
"You have peach lipgloss on your neck, pretty boy."
"Shit." He scrubs at it frantically while I walk back into the corridor, flushed and rumpled and trying very hard to look like a girl who's been just changing mop water and not unraveling against a utility room wall.