Chapter 43: STRATEGY, NOT COMPLIMENT

Georgia

By the third dance, Darcy’s perfection had started to feel rehearsed.

Darcy doesn’t let up all night. He’s attentive in a way that should feel flattering and mostly does, refilling my drink before I’ve thought to ask, steering me toward better lighting whenever someone pulls out a phone for photos, complimenting the pin at my collarbone without ever quite touching it, like some instinct tells him not to get too close to the cold metal himself. I notice that hesitation more than once, a fractional recoil so smooth it almost passes for grace, and each time I catch it, a small voice in the back of my mind takes note and files it away. He’s good at this, effortlessly good, the kind of charm that makes an entire evening feel curated specifically around making me comfortable. It’s the sort of attention I used to dream about receiving, back when my world was smaller and my mother’s voice was the only one that mattered, and some starved part of me leans into it despite everything I’ve learned about Rosethorne and the people who walk its halls. I keep waiting for the seams to show, for some crack in the performance, but if they’re there, I can’t find them.

It’s somewhere around the third dance that I start noticing the pattern underneath it.

"You know," he murmurs, spinning me slowly beneath the string lights, his tone light and conversational, "I heard Hale’s father barely lets him make his own decisions. Must be exhausting, living under that kind of thumb."

The comment lands somewhere tender, and for a moment I forget to arrange my face into something neutral.

"I don’t really know anything about his family," I say.

"No, I suppose you wouldn’t," he replies, warm and unbothered, the words sliding past easily enough that I almost don’t register them as anything more than idle conversation.

It happens again a few minutes later. Another small dig, delivered with the same effortless charm, something about Puck’s temper, about how "certain families" expect deference from everyone around them without ever earning it. Each comment comes wrapped in enough warmth, enough easy humor, that individually none of them feel like anything worth flagging. It’s only when I start counting them, one after another, strung together across the course of the evening, that I notice how deliberately they’re all aimed in the same direction. The pin at my collarbone goes cold against my skin, colder than it’s been all night, a small sharp point of ice that seems to keep time with his words. My chest tightens with the recognition, a slow dawning that makes the music seem farther away than it did a moment ago, and I feel suddenly, uncomfortably aware of how carefully I’m being handled, like a piece on a board whose next move has already been decided by someone else.

"You bring him up a lot," I say finally, watching Darcy’s face carefully.

"Do I?" he asks, feigning surprise, or performing it well enough that I can’t tell the difference.

"You have. Every few minutes, practically."

"Maybe I just find him interesting," he says, shrugging, guiding me smoothly into the next turn of the dance like the conversation hasn’t shifted at all. Then, lower, almost amused, he adds, "Or maybe I just don’t love watching him stare at you from across the room all night like he has some claim on you."

I glance over despite myself. My stomach tightens at the sight of Puck exactly where he’s been for the past hour, still watching, still unmoving, his expression carved from something unreadable and intense. He hasn’t touched a drink, hasn’t spoken to anyone, hasn’t so much as shifted his weight in all the time I’ve been stealing glances at him, and there’s something almost unbearable about that stillness, like watching a held breath refuse to release. Something in me aches at the sight of him standing there alone, though I couldn’t say whether it’s sympathy or guilt or something closer to longing, and the ache surprises me with how quickly it rises, how little permission it asks for.

"He doesn’t have a claim on me," I say, sharper than I mean to.

"I know," Darcy says, his voice softening into something careful and deliberate. "I’m just saying you don’t owe him anything. Whatever he’s decided you are to him, you’re allowed to decide something different."

I don’t have an answer for that right away. He doesn’t push, letting the comment settle instead of chasing it with anything further, the same practiced patience I’ve come to recognize as distinctly his. We keep dancing as the music shifts into something slower, and I let myself get pulled back into the easy rhythm of the evening, telling myself the digs are just ordinary rivalry, nothing more than two boys who don’t like each other finding small ways to compete for my attention. It’s a comfortable enough lie, and for a few measures of music, I almost believe it.

But underneath the charm, a small, persistent unease starts building that I can’t quite talk myself out of. Every comment about Puck lands too precisely, too well timed, delivered with just enough warmth to disguise how calculated the aim actually is. It doesn’t feel like jealousy, not entirely. It feels more deliberate than that, more strategic, like he’s building something one careful brick at a time and I’m the only one in the room who hasn’t noticed the structure taking shape. The thought unsettles me more than I want to admit, and I find myself smiling a beat too late to each of his remarks, buying time I don’t know what to do with, aware that my hesitation is probably as visible to him as his calculation is slowly becoming to me.

Near the end of the song, Darcy pulls me slightly closer. His voice drops low enough that only I can hear it over the music.

"You could do so much better than him, you know," he says, quiet and certain, no trace of teasing left in it.

The pin bites into my collarbone like a shard of ice pressed straight to skin, sharp enough that I nearly flinch. The words themselves aren’t unusual, the kind of thing plenty of people say when they’re interested in someone and jealous of a rival. But something underneath the certainty in his voice catches on me wrong, some quality that isn’t quite compliment at all. It sounds calculated, deliberate, like a conclusion he’s already reached and is simply informing me of rather than actually offering as his opinion. There’s no room in it for argument, no space for me to disagree, and that absence frightens me more than anything he’s actually said. I search his face for some flicker of doubt, some evidence that he’s guessing rather than certain, and find nothing but that same maddening, polished calm.

*He’s not asking. He’s telling.* The thought slides through me cold and unwelcome, and I don’t know why it matters, only that it does. My skin prickles, the metal at my throat still burning with its small private cold, the first real unease of the entire night settling low in my stomach, and for the first time all evening, I find myself wishing the song would simply end, wishing for the solid, uncomplicated ground of my own room, away from string lights and careful hands and the growing certainty that I’ve walked into something far larger than a gala.