Page 126 of The Other Side of Green

“Thought not.”

“How exactly do you know so much about everything?” I asked.

He looked up, grinning a little. “I know lots of things.”

“I see that.” I pulled out the worst the envelope had to reveal. “Do you know how to prove a photograph is a fake?”

I showed them the doctored photograph. Lyra gasped and grabbed it out of my hands. “What the hell is this?” Her fingers shook.

“Lyra, that’s not me and Brittany.” Jesus, did she actually believe that for one moment? “Lyra, I would never do that.”

Her skin had paled to a chalky pallor. “Yeah, I know,” she agreed but her fingers trembled a little as she lifted it to peer closer. “Those are my shorts.”

“See.”

“Jack. I know you wouldn’t do this. The image of you with someone else makes me want to set fire to something though.”

Her confession washed through me. She really did love me and it made me feel like a god walking the earth. Leaning forward and forgetting the envelope, I pressed my lips to hers, no joking this time, just an honest expression of how much I loved her.

“Finished?” Evan asked and I smiled against Lyra’s lips.

“No,” we both mumbled together, sweeping one another lips again.

Lyra pulled away first, a faint stain on her cheeks and I fished out the other photograph, flashing it at them, but not allowing Evan to look too long at the image of Lyra coming over my lap.

“So what’s the deal?” Lyra asked, attention firmly on my face. “What do they want? I assume they want something.”

I pressed my lips together, unwilling to even verbalize the thought of it. Not after how far she’d come. I knew even coming back to college where all the fuss had been made was a challenge enough. Standing up and speaking in front of the crowd of people today was her stepping into personal superhero territory. She wasn’t that kind of woman. Never had been. Her light glimmered and glowed under a bushel that she kept in place for herself.

“They want you to tell everyone that this whole thing has been a mistake and a misunderstanding. That you know the Collins family aren’t racists and you have full support for their foundation.” I took a breath. “They must know how much influence you are getting.”

Lyra dropped her gaze down studying the coffee table. “Professor Greene said they’d had more calls from different ethnic backgrounds than ever before.”

Evan jumped up from his seat. “Why do they even want this? All that money they have, they could wait it out a few years and then come back.”

I sighed. “The Collins family are all about old money, old influence. The thought that they aren’t influencing something—something they see as proper and worthy—well that doesn’t sit well with them.”

“Old money should burn,” Rhian spat. “This is half the problem with this country, it’s founded on corruption and false ideas. All the money and influence in the wrong places.”

Lyra sat quietly, her hands still in mine, but her gaze far away. “If I do what they ask it will undermine every single person who walked on my behalf. Even after the list was published that proved I wasn’t first or second place, they still marched for me, still believed that I shouldn’t have been treated that way. Bad things happen to people of color every day, and these people were trying to support the good.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Bad things happened to everyone every day. Look at what happened to your mom, Jack. Bad things happen to good white people too. And then there are people like this who live in an ivory tower and think they can manipulate people like puppets, that they have the final say on someone’s success or future—like they are better. And it’s not because of their color, or their background. It’s because they simply think they are better. Money doesn’t make them better, not better than Grams, or Patience, people who worked hard, loved hard, went to church every week and believed in something good.”

We lapsed into silence, Lyra’s words burning through the atmosphere.

Her shoulders dropped. “What will they do if I don’t agree?”

“Then these go public.” I unfolded the piece of paper with Brittany’s statement on it.

“That will ruin you.”

“Sweetheart, there isn’t much left to ruin.”

“They must have paid Brittany a whole heap for her to agree to publicly shame herself like that.” Evan reached for the picture and studied it. “Hey, that’s my storeroom, Jack!”

“And if I still don’t agree, even after they’ve ruined you?”