Chapter 109: Leo, Gold-Medal Wingman

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“Tonight, we shoot for the moon!”

After the game, the student-section leader stood on a railing with a megaphone and shouted over the exiting crowd.

The students answered with a roar. A victory party was already forming before half of them had left the stands.

Jennifer Love Hewitt did not join them.

“I am going to skip it,” she told her friends while taking off the fluorescent construction look she had worn for the game. “Too loud.”

She slipped into the flow of people leaving the stadium and headed toward the player tunnel.

She planned to wait for Nolan near the exit.

Instead, she saw Katherine, Mia, Lisa, Susan, and Charlize before she saw him.

At the sight of Katherine, Jennifer lost a little of her nerve.

She stood there for a moment, watching. When Nolan came out and the group brightened around him, she decided quietly that she should leave.

Nolan noticed.

He caught up before she could disappear into the parking lot.

“I was just passing by,” Jennifer said, smiling too quickly.

“Come meet a few people.”

“I should not interrupt.”

“You are not interrupting.”

She still hesitated, so Nolan brought her over before she could make herself smaller.

“Hi,” Jennifer said, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands.

Lisa recognized her at once. “Jennifer Love Hewitt. Atlantic Records, yes? How is the album going?”

“Almost done,” Jennifer said, surprised. “The recording is nearly finished.”

Her eyes drifted to Katherine.

Katherine smiled. “Did you pass your test?”

“I did.”

“Good. If you ever need help again, ask. For Nolan’s sake, I will even do it free.”

Jennifer froze for half a beat.

So Katherine knew.

Not everything, maybe, but enough to understand that Jennifer was not merely a classmate who had borrowed some notes.

“Would that be okay?” Katherine asked lightly when Jennifer did not answer.

“Yes,” Jennifer said at once. “Of course. If you have time.”

At the edge of the group, Charlize watched the exchange with narrowed interest. She did not know Jennifer, but she knew intelligence when it passed through a room. Katherine had found the weak point with one sentence and done it while smiling.

“Jennifer,” Nolan said, “we are going to dinner. Come with us.”

“Yes,” Lisa added. “Join us.”

Jennifer shook her head with real regret. “My parents are waiting at home. Next time?”

Nolan walked her to the car.

“The Los Angeles tour is not over,” he said. “Disneyland the day after tomorrow?”

Jennifer looked at him through the open window. “Did you already buy tickets?”

It was not a refusal.

After she left, Nolan did not immediately return to the group. He cut back toward the stadium entrance and checked the vending machines along the corridor. Most of the new stock had sold through. Mason had even hired two extra helpers for the hot-dog stand and nodded to Nolan like a partner in a serious enterprise.

The vending machines had been refurbished by William. The stock came through Mia’s supermarket. Mia handled the money. It was not a fortune, but it was a clean extra stream.

Grace had no interest in micromanaging such small cash as long as the school benefited and nothing embarrassed her. Nolan planned to buy her a few gifts anyway. Keeping her cooperative was worth the expense.

Before more fans could notice him, he left the stadium and climbed into Lisa’s luxury car.

Mia, Lisa, Susan, Katherine, Charlize, and Nolan all fit, barely.

Leo and Irmelin were not part of the dinner. They had only lingered because Lisa was there.

The destination was the same Italian restaurant Lisa had invested in. Between courses, Nolan brought up the Hawaii trip.

“A game trip?” Charlize said immediately. “I can go.”

No one at the table reacted.

Mia was first to give a real answer. “I can go. This time I am not bringing money. My son pays for everything.”

She looked pleased as she said it, as if Nolan had finally grown enough to take care of her in a visible way.

Lisa exchanged a glance with Susan.

“In theory, I can make time,” Lisa said.

“Which means we work late when we get back,” Susan sighed. She did not refuse.

Katherine thought about her course load and shrugged. “I can manage.”

That made five women already. Add two cheerleaders, Penny through the broadcast crew, and possibly Jennifer if the invitation stayed innocent and school-friendly, and the number became nine. Liv was still away, otherwise it might have reached two digits.

After Hawaii, Lisa suggested that the women meet the next day without Nolan.

“Katherine should not come back to Los Angeles and spend every hour in your room,” Lisa said. “She needs a social life here too.”

Mia laughed. “Young hormones are strong, but there are other things in the world.”

The table was full of women, so the joke landed more easily than it should have.

“I support this,” Nolan said.

Not because he had locked Katherine indoors. Katherine was usually the one who made leaving difficult. She looked quiet in front of others, but in private she had more appetite and more stamina than anyone expected.

Katherine accepted the plan. Beauty appointments, nails, shopping, gossip. An ordinary day pretending nothing about their lives had become strange.

…

At home, Charlize became unusually helpful.

She offered to straighten Nolan’s room. Then to do his laundry. Then to check whether he needed anything packed.

She wanted Hawaii badly enough to become domestic.

“Let her come,” Katherine said after watching the performance for a while. “More people will make it livelier.”

Nolan nodded with great reluctance and terrible sincerity.

One more place setting. That was all.

When Charlize finally left, only Nolan and Katherine remained in the room.

He expected Jennifer to be the first subject. Instead, Katherine studied him in the low light.

“You tried it with other people, didn’t you?”

She meant the changes in his body. The way intimacy seemed to affect more than mood.

Nolan did not answer cleanly.

Katherine smiled and pulled him into an embrace.

“We are lovers,” she said. “But we are family too. Whatever you do, I will support you.”

Her hair loosened over her shoulders, dark and soft against the room’s shadows.

That was the advantage of a childhood love. Less need to own every inch of him, more instinct to protect the whole of him. The situation was abnormal, but Katherine had been thinking about it longer than she admitted.

“Some people outside do not matter,” she said. “And women who only want money matter even less. Jennifer is different. She is young, talented, and easy to hurt. Do not play games with her just because she looks at you like you are safe.”

Nolan looked down at her hand. The aluminum ring was still on her finger.

“If she sees this,” Katherine said, “she may think she is being asked to replace someone.”

“Do not take it off.”

Then he told her about Salt Lake City. About Amy and Naomi. About the awkward way he had borrowed old Utah history and fringe family language to explain a thing that no modern church would bless and no ordinary person would calmly accept.

Katherine listened.

“So you were preparing me without telling me,” she said, tapping the tip of his nose.

“I was testing vocabulary.”

“Then here is mine. I was first. I am the queen.”

“Always.”

Possessiveness still existed in her. She simply dressed it better than most people.

“And Charlize?” Katherine asked. “She has been in this bed, hasn’t she?”

“The first time you came back,” Nolan said, “she was actually in the closet.”

Katherine laughed. “Then put her back in there.”

She asked about Jennifer again, but this time the question was gentler.

“How far has that gone?”

“Nowhere serious. A cautious outing. A school friend with a recording contract and too much curiosity.”

“Then be careful,” Katherine said. “She is not one of the women who already know the rules.”

“I know.”

“Good. The unimportant things are settled.”

She shifted closer.

They were both eighteen, both clear-eyed, and there was no uncertainty between them.

The rest of the night belonged to the two of them, private and wordless enough that the room did not need narration.

The next morning, Nolan woke close to noon. Katherine had changed the sheets near dawn and left with Mia for the day out. Charlize, because it was the weekend, remained at the house.

Nolan stood in the quiet room and considered whether private training with Charlize, Penny, or both counted as responsible time management. They were adults, willing, and already inside his private orbit; the only real question was scheduling.

His phone rang before he could reach a decision.

Leo.

“There is a party tonight,” Leo said. “I think you should be free. Want to come with me?”

If anyone else had asked, Nolan would have refused.

But Leo with an industry party invitation was not anyone else.

The boy had the instincts of a gold-medal wingman.

“Just a party?” Nolan asked.

“Just a party,” Leo said firmly.

“Then I will see you there.”

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