20. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Merit Alone

“Okay,” Daisy says. “Girl time.”

“What’s girl time?” I ask, eyeing her nervously. Neither of us is the type to spend time shopping or getting manicures. We don’t have the money for such things, which is partly why we don’t do those things.

“We could build compression engines using paper clips?”

That’s the other reason why we don’t do those things. I would rather read an old manuscript. And she would rather engineer something. “Pass.”

“Fine. Fine. We’ll analyze a sordid drama with danger and desire worthy of a Victorian-era stage.”

“Shakespeare was Elizabethan.”

“Whatever.”

She’s talking about William, of course. And me. “What is there to say?”

“You could tell me how good the sex is.”

“TMI.”

“I’m the receiver,” she says. “I get to decide if something is too much information , and it’s decidedly not.”

The campus is still in complete disarray, as more and more details spill out.

Everyone has a story about Thorne now, about how she was rude to someone on the stairs, about how she once picked a flower from the biology department’s botanical center, even though you’re not allowed to. Even though what she did was truly awful, the pile-on is embarrassing. Next we’re going to hear that she kicked puppies for fun.

Everyone wants to be involved in the story, so they have something to add even if they only saw her in passing one day in the entire semester.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with us,” I confess, hugging a pillow to my chest. The dorm room feels small, intimate, a safe space to voice my doubts. “The sex is...well, you know.”

“I can guess, but I’d love details,” she drawls.

I ignore this. “I think he cares about me. I mean, really cares. But what kind of future can we have? He’s so much older, and I’m...me. Broke, confused, still in college.”

“And the problem is?”

“The problem is, it would be uneven. He has all the power. He wants to pay for my tuition, for God’s sake.”

She laughs. “And that’s a bad thing because...?”

“Because I don’t want it to be uneven between us.”

“I’ve seen you two together. You challenge him. You make him think. And he does the same for you. You’re both crazy about Shakespeare, about literature. I’ve never seen two people more evenly matched.”

“I challenge him to stay alive.”

She raises an eyebrow, not taking the bait. “If he’s offering to help with tuition, it’s because he cares. It’s not about power or control. It’s about him wanting to support you, to help you reach your goals.”

I sigh, looking down at the pillow in my lap. “I just don’t know if it’s enough. If we’re enough.”

“ You are enough, Anne. That’s the part you can’t accept. You always treated the scholarship as some kind of clerical error, as if you could accept it but you never believed you deserved it. Now that you’re faced with finding another way, with accepting help from someone who loves you, it’s harder. But it’s real.”

A lump forms in my throat. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” she says with casual aplomb. “You have to end up together. After all, who else will put up with either of you. I bet you guys even recite Shakespeare during sex.”

My cheeks flush with heat, remembering.

“Oh my God, it’s true!”

I can’t help but laugh even as my cheeks burn, the tension in the room breaking. Maybe she’s right. Maybe William and I are more evenly matched than I thought. Maybe, just maybe, we have a chance at a future together. But even as I laugh, a small voice in the back of my mind whispers, What if it’s not enough?

I pace the small length of the dorm room, my fingers tracing the chipped paint on the walls. Daisy watches me from her bed, her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap. She’s unperturbable. I could tell her anything.

“He’s so much older than me,” I say, turning to face her. “Like, almost twenty years older. Isn’t that weird?”

Daisy tilts her head, considering. “Age is just a number.”

“So is the golden ratio.”

She gasps, only half kidding. “Take that back.”

“What will people think?” I ask, chewing on my lower lip.

Daisy rolls her eyes. “Who cares what people think?”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “I don’t know. I just...I never expected this. I never expected him. And I definitely never expected him to be the father of my ex-boyfriend.”

“Let me get this straight. He’s good enough for a tryst, but not good enough to marry? You’re going to make him feel cheap.”

I stick my tongue out at her. “God, it’s like a soap opera.”

“It’s like Shakespeare,” she says with a cheeky grin. “ The son scorned, the father adored, the romance hath been thus foresworn. ”

“Okay, that’s annoyingly good.”

Daisy laughs, a full-throated sound that fills the room. “If the whole engineering thing doesn’t work out, I’m going to become the modern-day Bard.”

I flop down on my bed, staring up at the yellow stain on the ceiling. “Maybe. But it’s not just about me. It’s about William too. His reputation, his career. What people will think of him for being with a student.”

“Or it could make him happier than he’s ever been,” Daisy counters. “You can’t live your life worried about what might happen. You have to take risks, take chances. Otherwise, you’ll never know what could have been.”

I turn my head to look at her. “When did you get so wise?”

“I’ve always been wise. You’re just finally listening.”

I grin, some of the tension easing in my chest. “I don’t want to be a dirty little secret. I don’t want to be something he’s ashamed of.”

“Then don’t be,” she says, her voice firm. “You’re worth more than that. The scariest part might be that he knows that, too.”

I take a deep breath, letting her words sink in. She’s right. I can’t live my life in the shadows, always worried about what people might think. I have to take a chance, take a risk. I have to fight for what I want.

And what I want is William.

However, I also want an academic career, one that isn’t tainted. Gossip about my sex life is one thing. Rumors about my ethics are another.

“What about the essay, the claims that he wrote it for me? Even with Thorne discredited, people will still talk.”

Her blue eyes flash with fierce loyalty. “Fuck them.”

“The life of an academic isn’t a solitary one. You have to get your papers accepted by peers. You have to get invited to speak at events. This isn’t about vanity. It’s about my entire career. Or lack of one.”

“Shit,” she says with a sigh. “Engineering isn’t the same. Like yeah, there’s an academic community, but there are also practical uses. There’s an entire world out there to make your mark—and make money.”

“There are no corporations dedicated to decoding Shakespearean symbolism or identifying a particular source in a sonnet. Unfortunately. Only the academics who will assume I’m only with him for what he can do for my career. That I’m so ambitious I would sleep with him to get him to write stuff for me.”

“I know Thorne was an asshole, but don’t let her give ambition a bad name. Ambition is just wanting to try things, wanting them to work out. It’s wrong for society to make it such a bad word for women when men are praised for the same thing.”

“You’re right.” I shake my head, as if to clear it. “She was cruel and dishonest. That’s different.”

Daisy leans forward, her voice firm. “You’re not with William for what he can do for you. You’re with him because you love him, because he challenges you, because he makes you a better version of yourself.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. But it’s still scary.” I swallow around a lump in my throat, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m not as strong as you are.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

A snort that’s somehow feminine when she does it. “You stood up to your parents. You fought for your education. You didn’t let them hold you back, and you can’t let anyone hold you back now.”

“I’m tired.”

Her expression softens. “I know, sweetheart.”

“But I’m here for the work. If they don’t accept my papers or ask me to talk, I can still study. And if they won’t pay me, I can wait tables at diners in between my research. I’ll do what it takes.”

Her expression softens. “Of course you will.”

A renewed sense of determination surges through me. I can’t let the whispers and judgments of others hold me back. I can’t let them define me.

I have to define myself.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself for what I’m about to say. Daisy watches me, her blue eyes curious and concerned. She knows I’ve been wrestling with this, knows how torn I’ve been.

“I’m going to be with William,” I say, my voice steady. “Anything else would be cowardly. And not deserving of a Shakespearean scholar. If he taught us anything, it’s to experience love no matter the consequences. Because I do love him.”

Daisy claps. “Finally! It’s about time you admitted it.”

“But there’s one thing I won’t do.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I won’t take his money. No, don’t bother arguing with me. I can’t. I won’t let money poison what we have, like it did with my parents. I won’t let it turn us into something ugly, something toxic.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

Except I have a lifetime of conditioning showing me that it does. I saw how money poisoned my parents’ lives, their desperate quest for more and more money, their deep-set co-dependence, the way neither can live apart even though they’re miserable. I won’t let that happen to me, not even for William.

“We can be together without him paying for my tuition.”

Daisy tugs on a strand of her blonde hair. “There’s nothing wrong with help. You would want to help him if the situations were reversed.”

“As if he would let me.”

“No, you’re right. Men get stubborn about stuff like that.”

“And if men are allowed to be stubborn, then so are women.”

“You’re right. Unfortunately.”

“I can’t let him buy me, buy my time, my devotion. I can’t let him expect things from me, even if he doesn’t mean to. I won’t be owned, not even by William.”

If I take his money, he will expect things from me. He won’t do it on purpose, but he will. Everyone does. When they pay for something, for someone, when they buy someone, they expect their time, their devotion. They expect to be able to hurt them, maybe even in small ways, and I can’t go there.

“I love him, but I have to protect myself too. I have to make sure that what we have is real, that it’s not just about power or control. I have to keep my identity.”

Daisy’s expression is sober. “I understand.”

Of course she does. She knows a lot about power and control.

The version she came from was more rustic than even my small-town environment, but the result is the same. Women, trapped and hurt and afraid. Part of me knows that William wouldn’t do that, but this fear was formed a long time ago. I learned it when I was a child, when I was a baby. I probably understood it in the womb, some ancient heartbeat that warned me about the world I would enter.

“Maybe I should just try to get over it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I thought you’d want me to.”

“I want you to graduate, yeah, but you’ve done the impossible, getting to Tanglewood University, getting such good grades, being so close to the finish line despite the odds that were stacked against you. How many people that you went to high school with did this?”

Almost no one.

It’s part of why I found my refuge in books. I had nothing in common with the people there. Some of the girls were already getting pregnant. They were pairing up, preparing for a life spent as factory workers, as diner waitresses. There’s nothing shameful about those professions, but I always knew that I was meant to do this .

Her voice softens. “You didn’t come this far to only come this far.”

“It’s a rock and a hard place. The rock is leaving Tanglewood, even temporarily, which I have to do without the scholarship money. The hard place is…”

“The hard place is William Stratford’s anatomy, I’m guessing.”

“Well…yes. It’s also his money.”

“Do I think you should get over it? You set the standards for your life for a reason. And they worked. They’ll keep working. That means not letting a fuckboy like Brandon derail you, even when he was cheating on you.”

Holy shit. “I just realized that Carlisle outed him, too.”

At Daisy’s confusion, I explain how she created Tanglewood Tea.

That means she’s the one who posted a photo of Brandon making out with a girl in Ibiza. That hurt, but it also helped. Better to know the truth, even if it’s painful. I’ve only ever wanted knowledge. I always knew it was the antidote to fear.

Daisy whistles. “I mean, damn. I know we’re pissed at her, but that’s kind of impressive. Especially considering she’d be super conspicuous wherever she goes.”

“She moved out of her dorm room.” A knot forms in my throat. I’m worried for her. Regardless of my anger. Escaping is a solo activity. I knew that early on. I knew that if I tried to bring the world with me, I’d have no chance. But leaving people I love behind doesn’t feel right, either. “I hope she’s okay.”

“She probably just moved into an even nicer one, like they tore down the walls of the top floor to create a penthouse dorm room. The university has ambition, too. It loves having the hottest child actress and pop star as a student.”

Applications to the music department went up when she enrolled. The music department got a new building, under construction, courtesy of uber rich alumni—whose daughter wanted to meet Carlisle Storm. She played her part, attending the private dinner, even singing for the private audience.

In fact, I read about that on Tanglewood Tea.

Performing Monkey Does Tricks for Coins , the caption had said.

Carlisle wrote that about herself. Bile rises in my throat. I remember it specifically, because I remember thinking how much it must hurt her to read it. It probably did hurt her. To write it. To know it. Maybe I can understand the perverse way it helped to be the person who told everyone, rather than to let it come out on its own. Or to keep it inside.

The university does love having her as a student.

I think they also resent her.

We all want to succeed on merit alone. Me. Daisy.

The university.

But even they know it’s never enough.