The poison doesn't arrive as a dramatic accusation.

It arrives on a Tuesday during lunch in the form of Victoria's practiced laugh, the one she deploys like a social weapon. I'm not even in the conversation—I'm sitting three tables over, pretending to care about my salad while actually reviewing case files on my phone. But her voice carries, and so does the venom wrapped inside those perfectly modulated syllables.

"Oh my God, you didn't know?" Victoria says to Marcus, our debate team's evidence manager, her blonde hair catching the cafeteria light like she's staged this moment specifically for maximum visibility. Which, knowing Victoria, she probably has. "James totally had this girlfriend at Riverside. Sarah, I think? Or was it Sophie? Anyway, he just... dropped her. Out of nowhere. Didn't even do it in person, apparently."

My fork pauses halfway to my mouth.

"That's rough," Marcus says, and I can hear the genuine sympathy in his voice, which somehow makes it worse.

"Right?" Victoria's voice drips with false concern. "Like, I'm not trying to talk shit, but it's kind of a pattern with him, you know? He gets bored and just moves on. Golden-boy charm until he finds something shinier."

The salad tastes like ash.

I know exactly what Victoria is doing. I've watched her deploy these tactics a hundred times—the careful insertion of doubt, the weaponized sympathy, the way she frames speculation as established fact. It's brilliant, actually. Genuinely brilliant. She's not lying, technically. She's just... curating a narrative. Leaving out context. Making James sound like a predatory asshole when the reality is probably something far more mundane.

But that's the thing about poison.

It doesn't matter if it's diluted. It still kills.

I tell myself I don't care. I tell myself this changes nothing about my strategic partnership with James, nothing about the fact that we work well together despite the way my entire nervous system misfires every time he enters a room. I tell myself that his dating history is irrelevant, that I'm too smart to be influenced by gossip, that I'm above this kind of emotional reactivity.

I am, of course, lying to myself.

By the time practice rolls around that afternoon, I've had six hours to construct an entire narrative where James is a charming sociopath who targets intelligent women and discards them when he's done. Six hours to convince myself that the thing I felt in that study room—that terrifying, consuming pull—is just another manipulation. Another way I'm being foolish.

Six hours to rebuild the walls.

He's already in the practice room when I arrive, sitting at the table with his debate materials spread out in front of him. The late-afternoon sunlight slants through the windows and catches in his hair, making it look like spun gold, and I hate how beautiful he is. I hate it with an intensity that surprises me in its viciousness.

He looks up when I enter, and his expression shifts from focused to warm in the space of a heartbeat. "Hey, I was thinking we should—"

"We need to talk about something," I interrupt, dropping my bag on the table with more force than necessary. The sound echoes in the small room like a gunshot.

James straightens, his expression shifting again. Now he's cautious. "Okay. What's up?"

I don't sit down. I stand above him, arms crossed, using every advantage of height and posture that I've cultivated over years of debate competition. It's a power move, and we both know it. "I heard something about you today."

"From Victoria, I'm guessing?" His voice is even, but there's an edge to it now. A recognition of the game we're playing.

The fact that he immediately knows the source doesn't help my case, but I push forward anyway. "She said you had a girlfriend at Riverside. That you just... ended things suddenly. Without even doing it in person."

James goes very still.

For a moment, the only sound is the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead and the distant noise of the hallway outside. I can see the exact moment he understands what's happening—the moment he realizes that I've already decided he's guilty, that Victoria has successfully poisoned the well.

"So that's what this is," he says quietly. "You believed gossip over asking me directly."

"I'm asking you now."

"Are you?" His eyes are sharp now, all the warmth drained away. "Or are you executing a predetermined judgment?"

I open my mouth. Close it. Because he's right, and we both know it.

"Yes," he continues, standing up slowly. His movements are deliberate, controlled—the physical equivalent of taking a breath before saying something he can't take back. "I dated someone at Riverside. Her name was Emma. And yes, we broke up about four months ago."

Four months. Before the merger. Before me.

"But here's the thing, Margot." He moves closer, and I force myself not to step back. Not to show weakness. "I didn't 'drop her.' I ended a relationship that wasn't working because I respected her enough to be honest about it. I ended it in person. I explained myself. And then I moved on with my life, like a normal person does."

"Victoria said—"

"I don't care what Victoria said." His voice is sharper now, cutting through my defenses like a blade. "I care that you heard something about me and immediately assumed the worst. I care that you looked at me in that study room like you wanted to devour me, and then the second someone whispers poison in your ear, you decide I'm some kind of predatory asshole."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. "Your entire body language just screamed it. You walked in here ready for a trial, and you'd already decided I was guilty."

I hate that he's right. I hate it more than I hate admitting when I'm wrong, which is saying something.

"I'm not going to apologize for being cautious," I say, and it comes out cold. Calculating. Exactly what I intended. "I don't know you that well. People lie. People present one version of themselves and—"

"And what? You think I'm lying?" He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "You think I'm some manipulative player who's trying to seduce you so I can add you to my list of conquests? Is that really what you think of me?"

"I think people aren't usually what they seem," I say carefully. "I think charm is a tool. I think—"

"You think everyone is like your father."

The words hit me like a physical blow.

I've never told James about my father. Never mentioned the way he left, the way he charmed my mother into believing he was a better man than he was, the way he destroyed her when he decided someone else was more interesting. Never explained why I'm so determined to be untouchable, unreliable, impossible to abandon because I'm too much trouble to keep around.

But James is smart. And he's been paying attention.

"Don't," I say, my voice dropping to something dangerous. "Don't psychoanalyze me."

"Why not? You just did it to me based on Victoria's bullshit." He steps closer, and now we're in that terrible proximity where I can smell him—sandalwood and amber and that intoxicating smoky warmth. "You decided who I am without ever asking me. You heard something that confirmed your worst fears about human nature, and you ran with it."

"I'm protecting myself."

"From what? From me? Or from the fact that you felt something real in that study room and it scared the shit out of you?"

My heart is racing. I can feel it in my throat, in my fingertips, in the space between us that's suddenly too small.

"You don't know what I felt," I say, but my voice wavers.

"Yes, I do." He's so close now that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. "Because I felt it too. And I'm not running from it. I'm not hiding behind gossip or walls or pretending that you're just my debate partner. I'm standing right here, telling you the truth about myself, and you're still choosing to believe the lie because the truth is too fucking terrifying."

I should walk away.

That's what the smart version of me would do. The version that's survived this long by never letting anyone close enough to hurt her. The version that knows that vulnerability is a weapon that other people will use against you.

But I'm not smart right now.

I'm just angry.

"You don't know anything about me," I say, my voice sharp enough to draw blood. "You don't know what I've survived or why I am the way I am. You don't get to stand there and judge me for being careful."

"I'm not judging you," James says, and there's something in his voice that breaks me a little—not anger, but genuine hurt. "I'm asking you to trust me. Even a little. Even just enough to ask me directly instead of assuming the worst."

"Trust is a luxury I can't afford."

"That's bullshit, and you know it." He steps back, and the loss of his proximity is somehow worse than his proximity was. "You trust yourself. You trust your intelligence. You trust that you're going to win every competition you enter. But you don't trust people, because people have disappointed you. So instead of risk it, you sabotage anything that might actually mean something."

"And what would you know about that?" I snap. "Your life is easy. You've never had to fight for anything. Everything has always been handed to you."

The moment the words leave my mouth, I regret them.

Something flickers across James's face—hurt, yes, but also anger. The kind of anger that comes from being fundamentally misunderstood.

"You're right," he says quietly. "My life has been easy. I've never had to fight the way you have. I've never had to rebuild myself after someone destroyed me." He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is controlled but trembling with emotion. "But that doesn't mean I don't understand what it's like to want something so badly it terrifies you. And it doesn't mean I'm going to keep chasing someone who's too scared to let me catch her."

He gathers his materials with deliberate, careful movements.

"We can still work together," he says, not looking at me. "We're good partners. But I'm done trying to convince you that I'm not your father. I'm done trying to prove that I'm trustworthy. That's your work to do, Margot. Not mine."

He leaves before I can respond.

The practice room feels impossibly large without him in it, all empty space and fluorescent lights and the fading ghost of his scent—sandalwood and amber and the wreckage of something I was too terrified to hold.

I sit down at the table and stare at his abandoned materials.

Victoria has won.

Not because her poison was particularly potent, but because I chose to drink it. Because I took her insinuations and built an entire tower of assumptions on top of them. Because I looked at James and decided that the easiest path was the one where he was a liar, because then I wouldn't have to confront the fact that I'm falling for him and it's destroying every carefully constructed defense I've built.

My phone buzzes.

A text from my mother: How's debate going? Need to talk?

I don't respond.

Instead, I sit in the silence of the practice room and let myself feel the full weight of what I've done. Let myself understand, for the first time in a long time, that protecting yourself from pain sometimes means creating it.

That the poison Victoria fed me was only effective because I was already poisoned.

Already convinced that anyone who gets close enough to matter will eventually leave.

Already determined to push them away first, before they can choose to go.

My hands are shaking.

I press them flat against the table and breathe, trying to remember how to rebuild. Trying to remember that walls, once constructed, are very easy to hide behind.

Very hard to escape from.

By tomorrow, Victoria will have heard that James and I had a confrontation. By next week, she'll have spun it into something more scandalous. By the time we compete again, the narrative will have solidified: James is a player, I'm his latest target, and we're a disaster waiting to happen.

But tonight, sitting alone in this small practice room that still smells like him, I understand something I've been running from for a very long time.

The real disaster isn't James.

It's me.

It's always been me.

And the only person who can stop me from destroying this is the one person I'm most terrified of becoming: someone capable of trusting another human being.

Someone capable of being loved.