Thursday morning Ryan’s version was already loose on campus.
Not a speech. Just enough. Ethan Sterling. Veronica Cole’s house. Sophia Bennett. The mixer. Madison’s name stuck to the end of it like it belonged there.
Ethan heard it twice before lunch. Once from a guy who thought he was being helpful. Once from a girl who watched his face to see if he would deny it.
He didn’t.
Madison found him outside the library a little after one. No Chloe. Bag on one shoulder. She looked like she had walked across campus trying to decide whether this was worth it.
"I told you I wasn’t getting in the middle of it," she said. "Then I spent the morning in the middle of it anyway."
Ethan waited.
"People keep asking me if I knew. About the job. About you living there. About last weekend." She let out a breath. "I keep saying I don’t know anything. It sounds fake when I say it."
"You don’t have to answer them."
"That’s easy for you to say. Your name is the story. Mine is the extra sentence." She looked past him at the doors, then back. "Is it true? The Sophia thing. The work."
"Yes."
Madison nodded like she had already known and just wanted it said. "Okay. Then I need you to come with me. Not here. I’m not doing this on the steps."
He could have said no. Ryan had already used her. Leaving her standing there would make her someone else’s witness.
He went.
Her building was quieter in the afternoon. A roommate’s shoes by the door. A note on the fridge. Madison locked the apartment behind them and dropped her bag on the table like that was the end of the performance.
"If you came here to explain yourself, don’t," she said. "I didn’t bring you over for a speech."
"Then why."
Madison leaned against the counter and looked at him for a long second. The new face. The same mouth. The week sitting on both of them.
"Because if people are going to talk, I want the part they’re talking about to be mine. Not Ryan’s. Not Chloe asking me in a hallway like I got tricked." She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the counter. "And because I have been thinking about that room at Chloe’s since it happened, and I hate that, and I’m tired of pretending I haven’t."
That was useful.
It was also true enough that he didn’t have to dress it up.
He stepped in. She didn’t move away. When he kissed her she made a small sound and grabbed his shirt, not pulling him closer so much as keeping him from going anywhere else.
They didn’t talk for a while after that.
The bedroom was dim and ordinary. Unmade bed. A chair with jeans on it. Madison pulled her sweater off herself and then got impatient with his hands on the button of her jeans.
"Just—" She laughed once, short, not happy. "Okay. Come here."
He got her on the bed and kissed her throat, then lower. Wicked Fingers found the place under her breast that made her breath catch. She swore into his hair and opened her legs when he hooked his fingers in her underwear.
She was already wet. Sunday had not finished with her. The week had not either.
Ethan used his mouth first. Madison tried to stay quiet and failed. Her hand stayed in his hair, not gentle. When Echo Touch hit after he pulled back, her hips followed his mouth like she hadn’t meant them to.
"Don’t stop," she said. "If you stop to look at me I am going to lose it."
He didn’t stop until she came, thighs tight against his shoulders, one hand over her own mouth. She lay there for a second breathing through it, then pulled him up by the shirt.
"Off. All of it."
They got the rest of the clothes out of the way. When he pushed into her she gasped and held his back, forehead against his.
"Slow. Just—okay. Like that."
He gave her slow until she stopped asking for it. Then he gave her what she was moving for. The bed talked. Madison bit his shoulder and came again with her legs locked around him. Iron Stamina kept him in it. He waited until she was shaking and then let go, buried in her, her name in his mouth whether that was smart or not.
After, she stared at the ceiling and laughed under her breath.
"I was going to be angry the whole time," she said. "That was the plan."
Ethan lay on his back beside her. "You can still be angry."
"I am. That’s the annoying part." She reached down, found her sweater, and didn’t put it on yet. "If Ryan says we were together, I’m not going to run around campus denying it. I’m also not going to hold your hand. Do you understand what I’m saying?"
"You’re not my girlfriend."
"And you’re not going to use me to make the Sophia thing look smaller." She turned her head and looked at him. "You can come here. You can text me back this time. You cannot tell people I didn’t know what this was."
"I wasn’t going to."
Madison sat up and pulled the sweater on. Her hair was a mess. She looked more like herself that way.
"Chloe’s going to ask again. I’m going to tell her it’s none of her business. That’s all she gets."
He dressed. At the door she stopped him with her fingers in the front of his shirt, then let go.
"If his father calls Veronica, that’s your house. Don’t bring it back here."
"I wasn’t going to."
She opened the door.
[Madison Blake: Yours]
[She can set terms. She still came back.]
[Reward: 800 CP]
[Current CP: 5,750]
Ethan walked back into the afternoon with her still on his skin and Ryan’s version still moving somewhere behind him.
She could tell Chloe it was none of her business. She could say she wasn’t his girlfriend.
That didn’t change what the room had been.
She was his. She had walked him there herself.