The Westchester Regional Tournament is held at a sprawling prep school that smells like old money and floor polish. Crystal chandeliers. Mahogany-paneled debate chambers. The kind of place where they probably have a waiting list for the waiting list.

I arrive early, my debate jacket already buttoned despite the warmth, armor in place. Three days of avoiding James have left me raw-edged and volatile. Three days of telling myself that what happened in that practice room was a temporary insanity, a glitch in my carefully calibrated system. Three days of lying.

The problem with tournaments is that avoidance becomes impossible.

I'm reviewing my case files in the competitor's lounge when James appears in the doorway, and the air pressure in the room seems to shift. He's in his debate jacket too—navy blue, pressed sharp—and his hair is still damp from a shower. The sandalwood and amber hit me before he does, that warm intoxicating scent that's started to feel like a threat.

"We need to talk," he says.

"We need to compete," I correct, not looking up from my notes. "Talking is a luxury we don't have right now."

He crosses the room in three strides and sits directly across from me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been focused."

"You've been running."

I finally look up, and the mistake is immediate. His brown eyes are serious, stripped of their usual charm, and there's something in his expression that feels like a challenge. Like he's daring me to keep lying.

"James." I keep my voice level, clinical. "We have a match in forty minutes. We need to be in sync, which means we need to be professional. That's all."

"Is that what we're calling it?"

"Yes."

He leans back, studying me with an intensity that makes my skin feel too tight. "You're scared."

"I'm focused," I repeat, but my hands have betrayed me—they're gripping my pen too hard, my knuckles white.

"You're scared," he says again, softer this time. "Of whatever this is. Of the fact that you felt something in that practice room and it terrified you so much you've been running ever since."

I should stand up. I should walk out. I should do literally anything except sit here while he dissects my defenses with the precision of someone who actually knows how to read me.

"We have forty minutes," I say instead. "Are we going to waste it on this conversation, or are we going to review our rebuttal strategy?"

For a moment, I think he's going to push. His jaw tightens, and there's a flash of something frustrated in his eyes. But then he exhales slowly, and when he speaks again, his voice has shifted into something more measured.

"Fine. We'll do this your way. For now." He pulls out his case folder, but he doesn't move away. We sit across from each other in a space that feels deliberately intimate, close enough that I can track every movement he makes. "But after we compete, we're talking. Really talking. And you're not running."

I don't respond because responding would be admitting that he's right, and I'm not ready for that particular brand of honesty. Instead, I launch into my opening argument, and he meets me there, and for the next thirty-five minutes, we do what we do best.

We destroy everyone else in the room.

---

The debate chamber is all dark wood and leather chairs, designed to make you feel small. The opposing team from Dalton Academy looks confident—they have a good reputation, solid research, strong delivery. On paper, we shouldn't be a problem for them.

On paper, James and I aren't supposed to work.

But then the round starts, and something happens that I've never experienced before.

It's like we're breathing the same air.

I open with our primary contention, laying out the framework with surgical precision. James is supposed to wait for the opposing team's response before building his argument, but I watch him in my peripheral vision and see the moment he understands where I'm going—three sentences before I actually get there. When the opposing team makes their rebuttal, he doesn't just counter their points; he extends my logic in directions I hadn't even articulated yet, and I feel the sudden, shocking clarity of how to respond.

We're finishing each other's arguments.

Not in a sloppy, overlapping way, but in a way that feels orchestrated. Like we're two halves of the same brain, each one knowing exactly what the other is about to say, what evidence we need, what logical leap comes next. I make a point about policy implications, and he's already building the bridge to our impact calculus. He challenges their framework, and I'm there with the internal link card that proves him right.

It's intellectual intimacy in its purest form, and it's more intense than anything physical could ever be.

The opposing team looks increasingly flustered. Their arguments start to collapse under the weight of our unified assault. We're not just winning; we're dismantling them with the precision of surgeons, every cut deliberate and devastating. By the final rebuttal, their lead debater has resorted to repeating arguments we've already destroyed, and I can see the moment she realizes they've lost.

We know it before the judges even deliberate.

When the decision comes back—unanimous, 30-27, in our favor—the adrenaline hits like a drug. My hands are shaking. My heart is slamming against my ribs. I've won plenty of tournaments, but this feels different. This feels like standing on the edge of something, and I can't tell if I'm about to fly or fall.

James is already standing, his expression electric with victory and something else. Something dangerous.

"That was," he says, his voice low enough that only I can hear, "the most incredible thing I've ever experienced."

The way he's looking at me makes it clear he's not talking about the debate.

We walk out of the chamber together, moving through the hallway toward the competitor's lounge where our teams are waiting. The tournament is loud around us—other matches happening, judges debriefing, the ambient chaos of competition. But we're in a pocket of quiet, just the two of us, and the air between us feels charged, combustible.

"That was textbook synchronicity," I say, trying to ground myself in analysis. "We anticipated each other's arguments. Our evidence was perfectly complementary. We should study that tape, figure out what we did right so we can—"

"Margot."

He says my name like it's a complete sentence. Like it's a warning or a prayer or both.

We're in an empty hallway now, the kind that exists between the main competition spaces. Sunlight streams through tall windows, dust motes dancing in the golden light. I can smell him—that sandalwood and amber and something smoky that makes my brain fog over.

"Don't," I say, but I don't move away.

"Don't what?"

"Whatever you're about to do."

He takes a step closer, and I should back up. Every survival instinct I have is screaming at me to back up, to put distance between us, to protect the walls I've spent three years constructing. But I'm frozen, caught between the magnetic pull of him and the terrified part of me that knows if I let him get any closer, I won't be able to pretend anymore.

"You felt it in there," he says. "That connection. Don't tell me you didn't."

"It was debate chemistry. It doesn't mean—"

"Stop." He closes the distance between us, and now he's close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body, close enough that my pulse is hammering so hard I'm sure he can see it in my throat. "Stop hiding behind logic. Stop pretending that what happened in that practice room and what just happened in that debate chamber is something we can analyze away."

"James—"

He kisses me.

It's not gentle. It's not tentative. It's a kiss that tastes like victory and frustration and something raw and honest that I've been running from since the moment he first made me laugh. His hand comes up to cup the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair and destroying the careful architecture of my ponytail. His other hand finds my waist, pulling me closer until I'm pressed against him, and I can feel the rapid beat of his heart matching the chaos of my own.

For a moment—just a moment—I let myself kiss him back.

I let myself feel the soft fullness of his mouth, the warmth of his body, the safety of his arms around me. I let myself taste sandalwood and amber and the possibility of not being alone. My hands find their way to his jacket, gripping the fabric like it's the only solid thing in a world that's suddenly spinning out of control.

And then my survival instinct kicks in like a physical force.

I shove him away hard enough that he stumbles back, his eyes wide with surprise and hurt. My breathing is ragged. My lips are tingling. My carefully constructed walls are crumbling, and I can feel the panic rising in my throat like floodwater.

"No," I say. The word comes out shaky, unconvincing. "No, we can't—this is a mistake. We're competitors. We're—"

"You felt it," he says again, and his voice is steady despite the fact that his chest is heaving, despite the fact that his hair is disheveled and his mouth is swollen from kissing me. "Don't stand there and tell me you didn't feel that. I know you did. I know you, Margot. I know you."

"You don't know anything." The words come out vicious because vicious is safe. Vicious is armor. "You know the version of me that I let you see. You know the debater, the competitor. You don't know the person underneath, and you don't want to. Nobody does. Nobody ever—"

I'm backing away as I speak, and he doesn't follow. He just stands there in that shaft of golden sunlight, watching me like I'm something precious that he's afraid to touch.

"I want to," he says quietly. "I do want to. That's the thing, Margot. That's what terrifies you. Not that I'm leaving. That I'm not."

I turn and walk away before he can say anything else, before I can be tempted to turn back around. My hands are shaking. My mouth still tastes like him. And somewhere deep in my chest, underneath all the fear and all the walls and all the carefully constructed defenses, something that feels dangerously like hope is starting to crack through.

By the time I reach the competitor's lounge, my team is already celebrating, already talking about how incredible we were, already strategizing about the finals. I accept their congratulations with nods and tight smiles, and when someone asks where James is, I tell them he's reviewing the judge's feedback.

It's only partially a lie.

What I don't tell them is that I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my waist. That I can still taste him. That for the first time in my carefully controlled life, I've experienced something I can't debate my way out of, can't strategize around, can't win by being smarter and sharper and more ruthless than everyone else.

I've experienced the terrifying, consuming, absolutely devastating reality of being wanted by someone who actually sees me.

And I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do about it.

The tournament continues around me—matches, deliberations, scores posted on the wall. We advance. We keep winning. By the time we make it to the finals, James and I have won four more rounds together, and every single one feels like foreplay. The way he looks at me across the debate floor. The way our hands brush when we exchange evidence cards. The way he says my name during rebuttals like it's a secret only I can hear.

Victoria finds me in the bathroom before the finals, and I know immediately that she's heard about the kiss. It's in the way her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, in the predatory tilt of her head.

"Heard you and James had quite the moment in the hallway," she says, examining her reflection in the mirror like she's the only thing worth looking at. "How deliciously reckless of you. I always thought you were smarter than that."

I should ignore her. I should walk out. Instead, I find myself asking, "What do you want, Victoria?"

"I want to know if you're really willing to throw away everything we've built for a boy." She turns to face me, and her expression is sharp as broken glass. "Because that's what this is, Margot. You're compromising yourself. You're letting emotion cloud your judgment. And when he leaves—and he will leave, they always do—you'll be the one left behind, broken, irrelevant."

The words hit exactly where she intended them to.

"He's not going to leave," I say, but my voice wavers.

"Of course he is." She moves closer, and I catch the cloying sweetness of her Chanel No. 5. "Boys like James don't stay with girls like us. We're too much. Too sharp, too ambitious, too difficult. We're useful for a while—we make him feel like he's more than his family's money—but eventually, he'll get bored. He'll want someone softer. Someone easier. Someone who doesn't make him feel like he has to prove himself."

I want to tell her she's wrong. I want to tell her that what James and I have is different. But the truth is, I don't know that. I don't know anything except that I'm terrified, and Victoria is offering me a way out—a way to shut this down before it destroys me.

"You should focus on the finals," I say coolly. "Your team's going to need you sharp."

"They will," she agrees. "And so will yours. Which is why I'm telling you this now: don't let your heart make decisions that should be made by your head. We didn't come this far to lose everything."

She leaves me standing in the bathroom, staring at my reflection. My ponytail is still messed up from James's fingers. My lips are still slightly swollen. And in my eyes, I can see something I've spent years trying to hide—the desperate, terrified need to be loved by someone who actually knows me.

The finals are brutal.

It's Lincoln High versus Riverside Academy, and the stakes feel astronomical. Both teams are flawless. Both teams want this. But James and I have something the other teams don't—we have that connection, that synchronicity, that ability to read each other like we're sharing a single consciousness.

We win 29-28, and the margin is so close that the judges actually deliberate for twenty minutes before reaching a decision.

When they announce our victory, the room erupts. Our team explodes in celebration. People are screaming, jumping, hugging. James's teammates lift him onto their shoulders. My teammates do the same to me, and for a moment, I'm suspended above the chaos, looking down at the crowd of celebrating students.

And then I see James, still on his teammates' shoulders, looking directly at me across the room. His expression is unguarded, triumphant, and full of something that looks a lot like love.

The judges want to interview us about our strategy. There are photos to take. There's a trophy to accept. There's the endless ritual of victory that demands my attention and my presence.

But all I can think about is getting him alone.

When we finally escape the main competition space—when the celebrations have died down and people have dispersed to pack up their things—I find him in that same empty hallway where he kissed me earlier. He's waiting for me, like he knew I'd come.

"We won," he says, like he still can't quite believe it.

"We did."

"You felt it too," he says. "In there. That connection. We were perfect together."

I should leave. I should tell him that Victoria is right, that this is a mistake, that I'm not capable of being what he needs. I should protect myself.

Instead, I say, "I'm scared."

The words come out small, broken, nothing like the sharp and armored version of myself that everyone knows. James steps closer, and this time, I don't back away.

"I know," he says softly. "I'm scared too."

"No, you don't understand." I'm shaking now, and I hate it. I hate how vulnerable it makes me. "I'm scared because Victoria's right. I'm scared because you're going to realize that I'm too much, too broken, too—"

He kisses me again, but this time it's different. It's gentle. It's a question and an answer and a promise all at once. When he pulls back, he's looking at me like I'm something precious, something worth fighting for.

"Stop," he says. "Stop letting other people's fears become your truth. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. And I know you, Margot. I know the sharp version and the scared version and every version in between. And I want all of it."

I should tell him he's wrong. I should tell him that wanting me is a mistake.

Instead, I let myself believe him.

Just for a moment, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, I'm not going to be left behind.

Maybe I'm going to be chosen.