Page 54 of Collateral Love

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That was the closest I’d come to claiming anything.

She studied my face.

“Is that a rule,” she asked quietly, “or a feeling?”

That stopped me.

Because I didn’t have a clean answer.

“Kenya,” I said carefully, “if something happens to you?—”

She raised a hand.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t turn me into a liability you need to protect. I can't survive that.”

I exhaled through my nose.

“Then loop me in,” I said. “Not because you need me. Because we’re aligned.”

She nodded slowly.

“Fair,” she said. “I was testing a boundary.”

“Whose?”

“Yours,” she answered.

That was when I understood.

She wasn’t pushing me away.

She was checking how far I’d bend without breaking the system.

“What was it?” I asked.

“Another student,” she said. “Trying to sell information.”

“To who?”

“To anybody who’d pay.”

“And?”

“I bought his silence,” she replied. “With consequences.”

I didn’t ask what that meant.

If Kenya said it was handled, it was handled.

We walked to my car together, the silence between us heavy but not hostile.

“You scared me,” I said finally.

She glanced at me. “Good.”

I frowned. “That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” she said. “Fear keeps people honest.”

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