Page 102 of The KING Review

But when Neve faces me again, the ice in her expression stops me dead.

“What’s wrong?” I set my pen down, standing from my desk chair.

She doesn’t speak, just holds up the small stack of papers in her hand. A few emotions pass across her face, as if she’s searching for the right words, or a reasonable place to start. “I, uh—I just got my paper back for Intro to Readable Body Language. The visual media breakdown.”

“Okay,” I say carefully, but my stomach plummets. The grading is anonymous, but I had a feeling I might have ended up being a second reader on her paper. The way she’s reacting is as good as confirmation.

Neve is flushed, jaw tight. I already don’t like where this is going. I reach for the rubric on instinct—still sitting on the corner of my desk from where I finished the last round of grading—but she marches up to me so quickly I almost stumble back against the desk.

“You marked me down for failing to reference the underlying emotional context,” she says evenly. “The whole second section is about that. You annotated the paragraph. You literally wrote, ‘good point.’ And then undercut it in the final grade.”

My skull feels full of static. “If you want an independent review, I can pass it to another staff member. I was already the secondary reader. Doctor Levenson’s comments were nearly identical to mine.”

“Except he didn’t dock my grade for it,” she snaps. “Why did you?”

“My grade didn’t deviate enough from the primary reader to warrant concern over⁠—”

“How exactly does this not warrant concern? This is my education, Grant. I’m concerned.” She swallows hard, taking a long, slow breath, then blowing it out of her mouth, as if she’s trying to center herself—then she looks at me expectantly.

When I shrug, her eyes flash with murder, but I keep my voice steady. “You can request a third review if you’re dissatisfied.”

Neve’s mouth compresses into a hard line. “I don’t want to call your professional ability into question.”

I stare at her, frustration rising slow and sour in my gut. “Then what are you doing here, exactly? I need you to break it down for me, Neve—I don’t get it.”

She groans, scrubbing a hand over her face. “Yeah, well, I don’t get it either. What is this? Like, your way to throw people off the scent or something?”

“Excuse me?”

“Because we’re—” She cuts herself off, gesturing vaguely between us, then sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and bites down. She’s blinking fast, as if she’s trying not to cry.

My chest goes tight. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if she cries.

“You really think I’d do that?” I ask quietly. I want to reach out and touch her, but I think she might break my arm if I do. “I didn’t know I was grading you, Neve. It’s anonymous.”

A breath shudders out of her. All the usual wild and bright things about her are knotted up, atomic, like a slow-burn fuse hissing down to detonation.

I hate being the reason her hands are shaking.

“I have to be objective, okay?” My voice sounds too big in the air, chewing up all the oxygen. “That’s all I tried to do. No, I don’t want anybody to know about us yet, because I have to protect myself and my job and my daughter, but I graded you fairly.”

She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Her anger is an electric thing—I can feel it arcing off her, crawling up the nerves in my neck.

“It’s not a bad grade, Neve. I’m sorry it’s lower than you expected,” I say, then I force a laugh, like I’m trying to defuse the situation. “We can’t all be as smart as your sister.”

The silence ignites, and she stares at me. “Are you fucking serious right now?” She’s trembling, and it almost hurts to meet her gaze. “I handed you my trauma on a silver platter. I literally told you all of it. About how every time I did something, it was never good enough, because Fia was smarter, or quieter, or easier to deal with, and you just—you say that to me?”

My chest caves in at the devastation in her face. Suddenly, it’s no longer about the grade. It’s about all the old scripts, the bullshit that’s been haunting her since birth.

I try to keep my voice steady. “Angel, just because we’re sleeping together doesn’t mean I can give you a free pass.”

She barks an incredulous sound, but it’s absolutely not a laugh. “Are you for real? That’s all this is to you?” Her whole body is rigid and vibrating, like she’s seconds from bolting—and then, she is. She spins to leave.

Nope—not happening.

I catch her wrist, gentle but unyielding, and haul her back. She whirls, stumbles, and slams against my chest. I wrap her up, crushing her close.

She makes a sound—not quite a word, not quite a whimper, closer to a growl, actually—but then she buries her face in my shirt, fingers digging in at my sides. Her body heaves once, and I hold her tighter.