Page 72 of Final Drive

I nod.

Okafor stands and puts out her hand. “Ms. Callahan. This took something. I don’t say that as a courtesy.”

I shake it and walk back out to the waiting area.

Bo and Gray are where I left them. Bo’s been looking at the ceiling. Gray’s been looking at the floor. They both come up the second I appear, reading my face for the result.

“She’s opening an investigation. Kinsley gets notified inside forty-eight hours.”

Bo folds me into him before I can say anything else, and I let him. I put my face into his chest and breathe him in, cut grass and warm hay and the ordinary smell of a clean shirt.

“You did good, darlin’,” he says into my hair.

Gray comes up behind me, close without touching. I can feel the heat of him at my back and every bit of tension he’s still carrying.

“And Quinton?”

“In the report as of today. She said his part may end up on its own track.”

“How long?”

“However long it takes.” I step back from Bo and look at both of them. “She warned me it’ll be slow. The Adams family has ties to the university. Quinton’s father is on the athletic advisory board. The process is going to be contested.”

“Then we don’t let them drag.” Gray’s whole body goes tight. “Tyler tracks the timeline. If they stall, we escalate.”

“Gray.” I put my hand on his arm, and the contact goes through both of us, the bond that isn’t there yet reaching for something it can’t reach. “I need you to let me run this. You can stand behind me. You can carry my bag. But it’s my complaint and my name.”

Gray looks down at my hand. His first instinct is still all over him: take over, build the plan, force the problem into giving up. Then he looks at my face and works out that he can’t captain his way through this one.

“Okay,” he says, quietly enough that from Gray it’s nearly alarming. “Okay.”

We come out of Whitaker Hall into a gray afternoon. Yesterday’s rain has stopped but the sky hasn’t committed to anything. My phone goes as we reach the truck.

Tyler: Are you done? How did it go?

Me: Investigation opened. Kinsley notified in 48 hrs. Okafor is solid but warned us about university connections.

Tyler: Expected. I have contingencies. Come home.

I get in and put my head against the window. The glass is cool on my temple. I have just filed something that will take my privacy apart, that puts my designation into an official record, that makes me a target for every person who believes Omegas should be quiet and grateful about it.

I’d do it again tomorrow.

Bo starts the engine. Gray’s hand lands on my shoulder from the back seat, brief and warm, and then it’s gone.

Nobody says a word the whole way home.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Beckett

Ifind out about Kinsley’s meltdown the way the rest of campus does, through my phone going off during morning Econ.

The first text is from a girl in my Business Ethics seminar. Have you seen Kinsley Adams’s insta???

The second is Zane. Get to the house. Now.

The third is from Cameron. No message. Just the image.