Chapter Two: Terms

# LENA

I arrive eight minutes early and choose the table in the far corner near the window. Pen on the table. Bag on the floor. Outside the glass the campus is still mostly empty, a few people cutting across the lawn with their heads down against the cold. I watch them for a moment and then I stop watching them and I wait.

Landon Cross walks in at exactly eight. No jacket today, just a dark sweater, a folder under his arm. He scans the room once before he finds me, which means he did not already know where I would sit. Small thing. I file it away.

He sits across from me and opens the folder. Clean copy of the contract and a second handwritten page beside it.

"Amendments," he says.

His handwriting is small and even, the same as yesterday. I read each line carefully. Minimum two appearances per week. No social posts without approval from both sides. Full confidentiality from both parties. Two weeks notice for early termination. And at the bottom, pressed a little harder into the page than the rest: No real feelings. This is a transaction.

I look up. "You felt that needed writing down."

"Clarity prevents problems."

I pull the page toward me and write my own additions without hesitation. I did not sleep much last night but I used the time well.

First payment transfers before I wear the jacket. Not after. No contact I have not agreed to first. If your father approaches me directly the arrangement ends and I keep the full amount. My work schedule stays unchanged. No events on Sunday. That day belongs to my brother.

I slide it back across the table. He reads each line the way he read mine, carefully, no rushing. He does not react until he gets to the last one. Something moves across his face, too fast and too unguarded, and then it is gone.

He initials every amendment. Slides both pages back. "Sign the original."

I sign. He signs. Four minutes total from the time he sat down.

He picks up his phone. "First payment is sending now."

I watch him while he types. Seven thousand five hundred dollars. Half up front, half at six months. I know what that money means. I know exactly what it covers and what it does not and how close the margin is. I do not let myself think about that right now.

What I think about instead is the thing underneath this arrangement that he has not shown me yet. I know the surface. Controlling father, business interests, arranged connections, six months of someone outside his father's plans standing beside him in public. But there is a layer below that and I knew it yesterday and I know it more clearly now sitting across from him watching him not quite meet my eyes.

"Your father," I say. "What exactly is he trying to arrange."

Landon sets his phone down. The pause is one second too long. "A connection to another family. Business alliance through personal ties."

"He wants you with someone specific."

"Yes."

"Who."

Another pause, different from the first one. The first was careful. This one is something else. "It does not matter who. That is not your part of this."

"It matters if she is going to come after me when this goes public."

Something shifts in his expression and this time it stays long enough for me to read it. He did not think about that. Not fully. Which means there are pieces of this situation he has not mapped yet, which means there are things moving in his world that he has not told me about, and I signed a contract with him twenty seconds ago.

"I will handle that," he says.

"That is not a specific answer."

"It is the answer I have right now."

I look at him across the table. The composure is mostly in place. Underneath it he is managing more than one thing at once and not entirely keeping up. I recognize that. I have been doing it for two years. It looks different on him because he has more resources and fewer people watching, but the shape of it is the same.

"If anything comes at me from your world that you did not warn me about," I say, "the arrangement ends and I keep everything already paid. I want to hear you agree to that out loud, not just nod."

"Agreed." He says it quickly. Too quickly. Like he already knew I would ask and decided before he walked in that he would say yes.

That is the thing I am beginning to understand about Landon Cross. He is good at planning. He planned this conversation the same way he planned the one in the music room, thought about the geometry of it, where to stand, what to say, how much to show. The parts he could anticipate he has already handled. The parts he could not anticipate he is hoping stay slow enough that he can get in front of them before they reach me.

That is a reasonable hope. It is not a plan.

I stand and pick up my bag.

"One more thing," he says.

I wait.

"The girl my father wants me with." He says it evenly, no lead up. "Her name is Cassidy Hale. Her father and mine are closing a merger. She already knows about this arrangement. She is not going to be quiet about it."

I look at him for a moment. "You waited until after I signed to tell me that."

"I told you before you left."

"That is a very specific distinction."

He meets my eyes. "Yes," he says. "It is."

There is no apology in it. There is also no pretending it was not a calculated choice. He told me just enough, just in time, and he knows I know that and he is not going to insult me by acting otherwise. I am not sure if that makes it better or worse. Maybe neither. Maybe it just makes it accurate.

I leave the library without saying anything else.

Outside the air is cold and the campus has filled up while we were inside, people moving between buildings, the ordinary machinery of a school morning. I walk through it with seven thousand five hundred dollars pending in my account and the name Cassidy Hale sitting in the back of my mind like a lit match.

He planned the parts he could plan.

I need to start planning the parts he could not.