All Chapters of Six Months Of You: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

# LENAI 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 th

# LENAI am at St. Catherine's by six thirty.My mother is already there in yesterday's scrubs, a cold coffee in her hand, the particular stillness of someone running on no sleep and sheer will. I sit beside her. I swap the cold cup for the one I brought. We look at each other and say nothing because we have built a whole language out of not saying things in hard places.Leo goes into prep at six forty five. He makes a joke about the hospital gown. He always makes a joke about the hospital gown. He is twelve years old and the funniest person in any room he walks into and I press my thumbnail into my palm to keep from crying in front of him because he needs me steady.My mother and I sit in the waiting area. Time moves the way it does in hospitals, thick and slow. Around us the morning shifts over, staff changing, a PA announcement somewhere down the hall, a family in the corner praying quietly. I count the ceiling tiles. I count the chairs. I count the minutes.At seven fifteen the ma

# LENA She finds me on a Thursday. Not a message through Priya this time. Not a phone call from a representative. Cassidy Hale herself, in the corridor outside the science building, leaning against the wall like she has been waiting long enough to make a point. She is exactly what I expected. Polished. Expensive. The kind of girl who has never had to calculate anything because the answer has always been provided in advance. She is also, I notice immediately, not as composed as she wants to appear. Her shoulders are slightly too straight. Her smile arrives slightly too fast. She is performing calm. "Lena," she says. Like we know each other. "Cassidy," I say. Like I am not particularly interested. "I wanted to introduce myself properly. I feel like we have been talking around each other." "Through representatives," I say. "I got the call." "That was my father's doing. Not mine." She tilts her head slightly. "I prefer directness." "Then be direct." She looks at me for a moment

#LENA He is already at the table when I arrive. Small place off campus. Not Common Grounds. Somewhere without Westbrook eyes, which tells me he thought about the location before he suggested it. He has two coffees and a closed notebook and the look of someone who has been sitting with something heavy long enough that it has started to show on his face. I sit down. I do not touch the coffee yet. "Talk," I say. He opens the notebook. He turns it toward me. Inside are dates, names, numbers, written in his handwriting but clearly copied from something else. Source documents. Things Elena gave him. "The Hale merger," he says, "is not a business arrangement. Not primarily." He taps the first page. "Cassidy's father, Marcus Hale, has been managing a series of investment accounts for the past six years. Accounts that belong to clients who trusted him with significant money. He has been moving funds between those accounts and his own holdings in a pattern that is not legal." I look at t

#LENA Landon texts me at six AM. My father knows about Elena. I sit up in bed and stare at the screen. How. I do not know. He called me twenty minutes ago. He knows she met with you. He knows about the folder. I get up. I dress. My hands are steady because I decide they are going to be steady. What did he say to you, I type. He told me to get the folder back. He told me if the folder reaches anyone with legal standing he will make sure my mother's treatment is terminated before any investigation can restructure the trust. I stop moving. He is threatening to terminate the treatment himself. Before we can protect it. Before the trust can transfer. He is not waiting for an investigation to freeze the assets. He is threatening to do it voluntarily. To cut his own wife's treatment to stop us from stopping him. I sit on the edge of my bed and I think about that. This is a man who will hurt his own family to protect his business. I already knew that. Landon has been living insi