MY FAKE BOYFRIEND CAN HEAR MY THOUGHTS
Chapter Three: He Just Said My Real Name
His arms were still around me when he said it, low, almost startled out of him, like the word had escaped before he'd decided whether he was allowed to say it out loud.
"Hazel."
Not Elowen. Not "hey" or "you okay" or any of the safe, careful words he'd been using around me for a week and a half. My actual name, in his actual voice, right there in the middle of a hallway packed with people who all still believed I was somebody else.
He said it. He actually said it.
I pulled back just far enough to look at him, and the expression on his face told me he was as surprised as I was.
"What did you just call me?"
That was thirty seconds ago. Let me back up four hours, to the exact moment I found out I was about to ruin my sister's undefeated debate record in front of the entire school.
It started with a binder.
Julian dropped it on the lunch table in front of me on Wednesday with the kind of smile that made my stomach drop before he'd even said a word. "Regional qualifiers moved up. Coach wants our final roster locked by Friday, which means you're up against Kensington on Thursday afternoon. Resolved: that public funding for the arts is a more valuable use of city budget than funding for competitive youth sports."
I know absolutely nothing about competitive debate. I know how to shade a portrait. I do not know how to argue budget allocation in front of judges with clipboards.
"You've got the arts side," Julian added, watching me with that same too sharp attention he'd had since the coffee incident. "Funny, since Elowen's always argued sports funding before. Guess you're feeling inspired lately."
He's testing me again. He knows Elowen always takes the other side and he's watching to see if I flinch.
I didn't flinch, mostly because I was too busy internally screaming to have any reaction left over for my face.
Thomas found me twenty minutes later in the library, staring at a debate prep folder like it was written in a language I'd never studied, which, functionally, it was.
"You look like someone just handed you a math test in a language you don't speak," he said, sliding into the seat across from me.
"Close. I have to debate arts funding versus sports funding in front of the entire school tomorrow, and the only debate experience I have is the time I convinced my mom that a weekend art intensive was more important than her cousin's wedding."
"Did it work?"
"No. I went to the wedding. I'm still bitter about it."
That got the smallest laugh out of him, quick and surprised, like it had gotten past his usual defenses before he could catch it. "Okay. Arts versus sports funding. What do you actually know about that?"
"Nothing official. But I know what it's like to need twelve pieces done in three weeks with a broken easel and a school that cut studio hours last year to fund a new turf field nobody asked for."
Something shifted in his expression, quiet and considering. "Then don't debate like Elowen would. Debate like you would."
That's actually good advice. Annoyingly good advice, from a boy who is supposed to be the enemy in this situation, or at least the extremely complicated bonus round.
"I can't just be myself up there," I said. "I'm supposed to be her."
"You're supposed to sound convincing," Thomas said. "Those aren't the same thing. Nobody at that podium is going to know the difference between Elowen's opinions and yours. They're just going to hear whoever sounds like they actually believe what they're saying."
He helped me prep for two hours after that, right there in the library, pulling arguments out of me I didn't know I had, asking questions that circled closer and closer to things I actually cared about until I forgot, for stretches at a time, that I was supposed to be performing anyone at all.
Somewhere around the ninety minute mark, he pulled his own notebook out and started sketching a rough outline of the debate flow, structure first, emotion second, and I found myself watching his hands instead of his notes, the careful, unhurried way he moved a pen across a page, like everything he did had already been decided somewhere calmer than the rest of the room.
"You're staring," he said, without looking up.
"I'm strategizing," I said. "Your handwriting is a mess. I'm trying to figure out if that's a debate weakness I can exploit."
"It's not a weakness. It's a personality."
It's actually kind of charming, is what it is, which is extremely inconvenient timing.
His pen paused, just slightly, and I watched the corner of his mouth twitch like he was fighting very hard not to smile at whatever he'd just heard.
"Don't," I said, before he could say anything.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was about to say your strategy is working," he said instead, mild and entirely too pleased with himself, and went back to his notes like he hadn't just made my whole face go warm.
What he didn't do, not once, not even when I joked about it out of pure nervous energy, was cheat. I caught myself thinking it around hour two, half joking, half genuinely tempted: you could just tell me what the judges are thinking during the actual debate, you know. Big competitive advantage, having a mind reading boyfriend.
His jaw had tightened at that, just slightly, and when he answered it wasn't in the teasing voice he usually used with me.
"I'm not going to do that," he said. "Whatever this is, whatever the contract says, I'm not going to turn what I can hear into a weapon against people who don't know I'm listening. That includes using it to win you a debate you're capable of winning honestly."
Oh. Okay. That's. That's a whole different kind of person than I thought he was three days ago.
I didn't say anything to that, because I genuinely didn't know what to say to a boy who had every reason and every opportunity to cheat on my behalf and had just, calmly, quietly, decided not to.
Thursday afternoon arrived faster than I was ready for. The auditorium was packed in a way that made my hands go cold, rows of uniforms and parents and, near the back, Julian, arms crossed, watching me with an expression that said he expected this to go badly and was looking forward to it.
Just say the thing you actually believe. That's all he told you to do. Just say the thing you actually believe.
I said the thing I actually believed.
I talked about Brookhaven's cut studio hours. I talked about a freshman named Priya who'd told me, in the hallway last spring, that art class was the only forty five minutes of her day where nobody expected anything from her except paying attention, and what it had done to her when that class got cut in half to pay for equipment for a team she wasn't even on. I talked about how funding isn't just about what a city can afford, it's about what a city decides is worth affording, and what that decision quietly tells every kid sitting in a room that got cut.
I did not sound like Elowen. I did not sound like anyone but myself, nervous and a little too fast and completely, embarrassingly sincere.
We won.
The judges' decision came down almost unanimous, and the sound of the auditorium clapping washed over me in a way that felt bizarre and wonderful and entirely too loud for a life I'd only been borrowing for a week and a half.
THOMAS
I have watched a lot of people win things. Board approvals, acquisition votes, the specific practiced smile of someone whose family has trained them since birth to look gracious in front of cameras when they get exactly what they expected to get.
I had never once watched someone win something they clearly hadn't expected to survive, and I was not prepared for what it would do to me, standing at the back of that auditorium, hearing one single unguarded thought arrive so loud and so bright it nearly knocked the breath out of me.
I did it. I actually did it. Nobody can take this one away from me, whatever else happens.
Three years of parties, cameras, contracts, optics, and I had never once heard anyone sound that genuinely happy about anything that wasn't a merger closing in their favor.
I found her in the hallway outside before I'd fully decided what I meant to say to her, and she solved the problem for me by throwing her arms around my neck before I could get a single word out.
HAZEL
He went still for half a second, the kind of still that made me wonder if I'd overstepped some rule I didn't know existed, and then his arms came up around me properly, careful, like he wasn't entirely sure this was allowed either but had decided he didn't especially care.
This is nice. This is really nice. I could stay right here for a while. Which is a problem, because I'm falling for a boy who doesn't even know my name.
That was when he said it.
"Hazel."
Not Elowen. My actual name, quiet and stunned, like it had slipped out the second he'd heard the thought underneath it, the one I hadn't meant to hand him at all.
I pulled back to look at him, my heart going somewhere far too fast for a simple debate victory hug to explain.
"What did you just call me?" I asked again, quieter this time, watching something complicated move across his face, somewhere between surprise and a kind of quiet, dawning realization he didn't seem entirely ready for.
"I heard it," he said, voice rough in a way I hadn't heard from him before. "Not the name. The other part. That you're falling for me."
He heard THAT part. Of course he heard that part. Of course the one time I let my guard down completely, it's the one thought that actually matters.
Heat crawled up my neck, mortification and something else tangled together so tightly I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. "That's not, I didn't mean, it's just the adrenaline talking, debate adrenaline is a very real and documented phenomenon."
"Hazel," he said again, softer this time, deliberate, like he was testing how it felt in his mouth now that he'd finally said it once, "I've known your real name for exactly four seconds and it already fits better than the one I've been calling you for a week and a half."
Do not cry in the hallway. Do not cry in the hallway after winning a debate you weren't even supposed to be able to compete in.
I didn't cry. I did, however, forget entirely how to form a sentence, which is how Julian found us thirty seconds later, standing far too close together, saying absolutely nothing at all, his expression sliding from confusion into something sharper and far more dangerous.
"Did he just," Julian said slowly, looking between us, "call you Hazel?"
The whole hallway seemed to go very quiet, waiting for an answer I did not have ready, and for one long, terrifying second, all I could think was that the one secret I'd been protecting hardest, the one that could unravel every single thing my sister had asked of me, had just walked itself directly out into the open in front of exactly the wrong person.
Say something. Say anything. He's still watching. He's still waiting.
"It's a nickname," Thomas said, before I could get a single word out, his voice sliding back into that easy, bored register like he'd never once sounded rough or startled at all. "Hazel. Her eyes. I've been using it for weeks, you've just never been standing close enough to hear it."
It was, I would think later, an unfairly good lie, delivered with the exact same calm certainty he used for everything else, and Julian's expression flickered, suspicion warring with the specific frustration of a boy who prided himself on catching things other people missed and had just, for one moment, been handed a perfectly reasonable explanation for the thing he'd caught.
"Cute," Julian said finally, in a tone that suggested he did not, in fact, find it cute at all. "I didn't know you went in for nicknames, Thomas. You've never used one for anyone before."
"There's a first time for everything," Thomas said, and slid his hand into mine, easy and deliberate, the kind of gesture built entirely for an audience, except his thumb moved once, gently, against my palm in a way that felt like it wasn't for the audience at all.
He just lied for me. Without hesitating. Without even looking at me first to check if it was okay.
Julian's gaze lingered a moment longer, moving between us with the particular patience of someone filing information away for later rather than letting it go, before he finally shrugged and turned to walk off down the hall, tossing one last line over his shoulder that landed considerably more like a warning than a compliment.
"Nice win today, Elowen," he said. "Didn't know you had it in you."
I waited until he'd disappeared around the corner before I let out the breath I'd apparently been holding since he first said my real name out loud.
"That was too close," I said quietly.
"Yes," Thomas agreed, and for the first time since I'd met him, his composure looked genuinely rattled, like the lie had cost him something to say even as it protected us both. "It was."
Neither of us let go of the other's hand for a long moment after that, standing in an empty hallway that still smelled faintly of nervous energy and old victory, and I understood, with a lurch that had nothing to do with the debate at all, that whatever this was becoming between us, it had stopped being only about a contract days ago, and neither one of us seemed entirely sure yet what to do about that.
Thomas's phone buzzed once in his pocket, then again, insistent, and when he finally checked it his whole expression changed, the softness from a moment ago folding shut like a door closing somewhere behind his eyes.
"What is it," I asked, and he turned the screen toward me without a word.
It was a text from a number saved only as GRANDMOTHER HALE, three words long, sent less than a minute after Julian had walked away down that same hallway.
We need to talk. Tonight.