Chapter 299: She Only Needed the Right Opening

Inside the bedroom, Lucas worked quickly.

The moment the Soul Awakening Needle entered Mia’s system, the change came almost at once. The tight pain in her face eased. The heat under the swelling faded. Color started returning to her skin as if the worst of the damage was being pulled backward minute by minute. He watched closely, eyes fixed on every small shift, until her breathing steadied into something stronger.

When the needle’s work was done, it vanished from his hand.

Lucas remained seated at the edge of the bed, watching her.

Mia’s eyes opened slowly.

The first person she recognized was him.

For a second she only stared, dazed, then her voice came out rough and immediate.

"Where’s the car?"

Lucas blinked.

Of all the things she could have asked first, that was not the one he expected.

"The car?" he repeated. "You’re supposed to be worried about yourself. Calm down and rest."

Mia pushed herself up slightly, still checking her own body like she did not trust the absence of pain. "I’m... fine?" The surprise in her voice was genuine. "I don’t feel anything. Not even a little."

She reached for her phone on instinct, then froze as memory rushed back in.

Daisy.

Debbie.

The parking lot.

The fight.

Her mouth opened to ask for them~

And downstairs, the living room door opened.

Both of them moved at once.

---

By the time Lucas and Mia reached the bottom of the stairs, Daisy and Debbie had just stepped inside.

They stopped cold.

Whatever they had expected, it was not this. In their heads, Mia should have been in a hospital bed, pale and bandaged, not walking downstairs with only faint traces of the earlier swelling left on her face.

Daisy’s eyes went wide.

"Lucas... you didn’t take her to the hospital?" Her voice jumped immediately. "What were you thinking? She was barely conscious. She~"

"I’m alright," Mia cut in.

Daisy turned so fast it almost looked painful, then rushed over to check her properly. She grabbed Mia’s shoulders, scanned her face, her arms, the places that had looked worst in the parking lot. The longer she looked, the more confused she became.

This was not the same Mia who had left the arena grounds limp in Lucas’s arms.

"You’re... actually okay?" Daisy whispered.

Debbie stared too, still holding the side of her own bruised cheek. "How? She was down. She was bleeding."

Lucas kept his answer simple.

"I took care of her. Gave her some medicine I had."

Neither of them looked fully satisfied by that explanation, but Mia standing upright in front of them made it hard to keep arguing. The fear that had been sitting in their chests since the lot finally loosened enough for words to come out in a rush.

They started talking over each other almost immediately.

Neither of them bothered to go wash up first. The dirt, the mess, the leftover adrenaline ~ none of it mattered as much as telling him what happened. Even Debbie, who still had real pain in her face, waved it off like it was secondary and launched into the story of the three men, the hammer, the fight, and the Ashford students who came running after Daisy dragged them out of the arena.

Lucas listened in silence.

When they finally slowed down, his expression had hardened again.

"I’ll go to the police station and deal with those bastards," he said. "But next time, leave the car. I don’t care what they’re doing to it. Don’t risk your lives over metal."

The seriousness in his voice left very little room for debate.

After a moment, the tension in the house shifted. The girls moved toward the kitchen to prepare lunch, still talking in lower voices, still replaying pieces of the night between them. Lucas remained near the living room as his phone started ringing again.

---

Across town, the aftermath at Northlake had not finished with Daisy and Debbie the moment they left the parking lot.

While they waited for their ride earlier, the stares had followed them all the way from the police line to the roadside. Boys watched with open interest. Girls watched with something sharper. Whispers moved through the students still hanging around after the finals, the same questions repeating under the noise of celebration.

Who were those girls?

Why did Lucas run to them first?

Why did he carry one of them like that?

Amanda had seen all of it.

She had been close enough to catch every important piece ~ Lucas ignoring the crowd, the urgency in his movements, the way he lifted Mia, the way Daisy and Debbie stayed inside his concern like they already belonged there. At first the sight stung. Then her eyes moved to the three men being held by the police, and the whole thing clicked into place.

She knew those faces.

Dexter’s friends. A set of loud, useless bodybuilders who spent more time flexing in campus gym mirrors than doing anything impressive with their lives. Big arms. Empty heads. And, if the locker-room jokes she’d heard over the years were even half true, very little where it actually counted. They were exactly the kind of idiots Dexter would use when he wanted dirty work done without getting his own hands caught on camera.

Amanda almost laughed under her breath.

So that was his plan. Send his little pack after Lucas’s car like a jealous child throwing rocks. It was pathetic. It was obvious. And it was useful.

Because if she played it right, this was an opening.

She could already see the shape of it in her head ~ concern, timing, the right words, maybe even a quiet warning to Lucas about who had set those men on his car. Not because she cared about justice. Because information like that was a door, and Amanda had every intention of walking through it.

The only part she disliked was the girls.

They were beautiful. Annoyingly so. The kind of beautiful that made other women pay attention whether they wanted to or not. And from the way they had thrown themselves into protecting that car, Amanda was not foolish enough to believe it was only about loyalty. They wanted him. All three of them. That much was written all over the way they looked at Lucas and the way he looked back.

Fine.

Then it was a competition.

If those bitches thought protecting a car was enough to keep him, they were welcome to try. Amanda still had his number. She still had the whole arena watching her approach him at halftime. And she still believed that with the right tactics, the right pressure, and the right moment, she could pull Lucas away from all of them.

By the time Daisy and Debbie’s ride finally arrived and took them from campus, Amanda was already smiling to herself near the thinning crowd, phone in hand, mind working.

She did not need to fight them in public.

She only needed the right opening.

---

Back at the house, the smell of food was just starting to rise from the kitchen when Lucas’s phone rang again on the living room chair.