My Ex's Uncle, My Trap novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Bait

Her locker has been emptied and Winston offers to drop the complaint if she signs as his assistant; she refuses in front of everyone, and kisses his uncle against the glass wall while Winston and the dean watch.

At the bottom of the email, under a paragraph about due process, there was one small mercy.

I could collect my personal belongings from the build shop on Tuesday, nine to ten a.m., escorted.

So at 8:58 I stood outside the shop's glass wall with a campus security guard who smelled like menthols.

He badged the door for me. My card had stopped working at midnight.

The shop smelled the way it always did. Cutting oil, hot aluminum, burnt coffee.

My locker was the third one from the end, under the vent that dripped.

The padlock was gone.

Somebody had cut it and left the two halves on the floor.

I opened the door.

Empty.

No flannel. No hex keys. No green notebooks.

There had been four of them, spiral-bound, every page of the Nautilus drawn in pencil in my handwriting.

"Looking for these?"

Winston sat at the center bench with his feet on a stool.

Peyton sat beside him in a pink fleece, scrolling her phone.

Six or seven seniors were at the other benches, pretending to work. Nobody was working.

Winston held up one of my notebooks between two fingers.

"Evidence," he said. "The integrity office has the other three. This one I kept for the presentation."

"That's my handwriting."

"Is it?" He flipped it open. "Looks like mine."

"You write like a ransom note."

Someone at the lathe snorted.

Winston smiled. It was the smile he used on waiters.

"Here's the offer," he said. "In front of witnesses, so you know it's real."

He pulled a folded paper out of his back pocket.

"You sign this. It says you were my assistant on the build. Paid, even. Dad will find the money."

"And?"

"And I drop the complaint. You keep your scholarship. You graduate. Everyone moves on."

Peyton looked up. "It's honestly really generous."

I took the paper and read it.

It was one paragraph. He'd misspelled assistant.

"No," I said.

"Think about your mom," Winston said. "Think about the kid."

"I am thinking about them. That's why it's no."

I tore the paper in half, then in half again, and dropped it in the swarf bin with the metal shavings.

"I built the Nautilus," I said, loud enough for the lathe. "Every stage. You know it. Everybody in this room knows it."

Nobody said anything, and that hurt more than the locker.

The door opened behind me.

A guide from the dean's office came in first, with a clipboard.

"And this is the senior build shop," she said brightly, "where the magic happens."

Pierson Wardell came in behind her.

Navy suit today, no tie, the old brass key on its cord under his collar.

Winston's feet came off the stool so fast he nearly fell.

"Uncle Pierson!" He was on his feet with his hand out. "You came to see the shop. Man. This is huge."

Pierson shook his hand once.

"Winston."

"Peyton and I can walk you through stage four. It's my favorite."

"I'm sure it is," Pierson said.

He was looking at the cut padlock on the floor, then at the empty locker.

Then at me.

He didn't say a word to me. He didn't need to.

The guard tapped his watch. "Miss Keating. Time."

In the hallway I barely made it around the corner before my knees wanted to stop.

I leaned on the wall and breathed.

Footsteps came out after me. Long ones.

"You can say it," Pierson said. "I'll listen."

"They cut my lock."

"I saw."

"They took my notebooks. He's going to hand my own drawings to the panel and call them his."

"Rhi."

"Don't. Don't offer. You'll offer, and I'll want to say yes, and then it's yours, not mine."

He put his hands in his pockets, which I was starting to understand meant he was trying.

"Last night you said dinner," I said.

"I did."

"Make it public."

His eyebrows went up a quarter inch.

"Somewhere expensive," I said. "Somewhere with his father's friends. Make it where he'll see."

"You want them to watch."

"I want Winston to spend the next ten days wondering what I told his uncle."

"You understand what it'll look like," he said quietly. "The dean's ex-almost-daughter-in-law and his brother."

"Half-brother. If that helps."

He smiled. It changed his whole face.

Through the glass wall beside us, I could see the shop.

Winston was standing at the bench now, staring out at us. Peyton had her phone up.

At the far door, the dean had just walked in, shaking the guide's hand.

Clifford Wardell looked up and saw his brother in the hall with me.

He stopped shaking hands.

"They're watching," Pierson said, without turning his head.

"I know."

"Rhi. What do you want right now?"

My heart was doing the thing again, in my wrists.

"I'm going to kiss you," I said. "Say no now, or don't."

He didn't say no.

He said, "Then do it properly."

I took the lapel of his navy suit in my fist.

He let me walk him back one step, until his shoulders touched the glass.

Then I kissed him.

I meant it to be quick, something for the shop to see.

It wasn't quick.

His mouth was warm and patient and then not patient at all.

His hand came up and stopped an inch from my jaw, waiting.

I pulled it the last inch myself.

Behind the glass, somebody dropped a wrench.

When I let go of his lapel, my hand was shaking, and his breath wasn't steady either.

On the other side of the glass, Winston's face had gone the color of a stop sign.

And the dean was walking toward the door.

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