Chapter 2

"My bad" with his hands in his pockets and his eyes looking past me. That was the apology.

I didn't move. "You said you have proof. Photos and timestamps. I want to see them."

Tate shifted his weight. "I said I was sorry. Let it go."

"You put this on a board with three thousand readers. You don't get to let it go in a parking lot."

Two girls from the biology department had stopped on the walkway. A guy on a bench near the entrance closed his laptop. People were starting to watch.

Cressida stepped between us, voice dropping into that smooth, level tone she used when she wanted to sound like the reasonable one in the room.

"This is getting out of hand. Let's go inside—just the three of us—and talk this out somewhere quiet. Okay?"

I kept my eyes on Tate.

"She wants to move this somewhere private. I wonder why." I tilted my chin toward the cluster forming behind us. "You chose a public platform. We settle it on the same stage."

Tate's neck flushed. "What do you want from me? I apologized. I'll delete the posts. Done."

Cressida touched his arm. "See? He's willing to fix it, Wren. Let's just—"

"I want a retraction. Public. On every account you used. A written statement that you lied. And an actual apology—not 'my bad' like you bumped into me in a hallway."

Tate stared at me like I'd asked him to kneel.

"A written statement? Are you out of your mind?"

Something shifted behind his eyes. The sheepish act crumbled and his chin came up.

"Seriously? I'm the one being nice here. Keep pushing and I'll post everything I've got—photos, dates, all of it. See how that plays out for you."

Cressida's hand tightened on his sleeve. "Wren, he already took the comments down. If you keep blowing this up, it's only gonna make things worse. For you."

The two of them, shoulder to shoulder. Her playing calm. Him playing hard. Same routine that buried me the first time around.

Not this time.

I turned to the growing crowd—twenty people now, maybe more, phones angled toward us—and raised my voice just enough.

"Let's talk about your photos, Tate. You followed a woman at two in the morning and pointed your phone at her without her knowing. You took pictures of her leaving a building. That's called stalking."

A murmur went through the crowd. Someone said "oh shit" near the back. Tate's confidence cracked down the middle—I watched it happen in real time, the way his shoulders pulled inward and his jaw went tight.

Cressida's hand dropped from his arm.

I wasn't done.

"And if what you posted is true—if a professor really is sleeping with a student in his own lab—you've known about it for weeks. You had evidence of something serious and you didn't report it. Didn't tell the school, didn't tell anyone. You just sat on it until you could use it to go after me." I held his stare. "So which version do you wanna go with? The one where you're a stalker, or the one where you helped cover it up?"

Silence. Twenty-something phones recording. Tate looked at the crowd, then at Cressida, then back at me. His face was blotchy red and white.

"You want details?" His voice cracked high. "Fine. March 8th. Somebody found a used condom and a pair of panties at your lab bench. YOUR bench—Station 4B." He yanked out his phone and jabbed at the screen. "And I've got a photo of you coming out of Whitfield Hall at 2 a.m. Soren was still in the goddamn building. You want me to keep going?"

He shoved the phone toward my face. The photo was dark and grainy—a woman's back, hair pinned up, shoulders hunched against the cold. No face visible. Just a silhouette and the edge of a building.

4B. Three hundred hours of running samples and washing glassware until my hands cracked. My name was on the station label.

Around us, whispers. Someone said "holy shit" under their breath.

I didn't look at Cressida. I didn't need to. I could feel the change beside me—the way air gets heavier when someone stops breathing.

But I looked anyway.

She hadn't moved. Her lips were pressed shut. Her face had gone the color of paper.

Tate was still holding his phone up, chin raised, waiting for me to crumble.

He never glanced at Cressida. Not once. If he had, he would have seen something that didn't look like surprise.

It looked like recognition.