They Bet I Would Leave, I Proved Them Right Chapter 08

They Bet I Would Leave, I Proved Them Right Chapter 08

Life at the Westreach Research Center hit harder than I expected.

My first week, my advisor took me straight out to the desert testing ground.

Daytime temperatures hit a hundred and four.

At night, it dropped to near freezing.

The wind carried sand in every gust.

One of the senior researchers handed me a bandanna.

“Regret coming yet?”

I shook my head.

“Not even a little.”

“Miss home?”

I thought about it.

“I miss my parents.”

“What about everyone else?”

“There’s no one else.”

She didn’t ask anything else.

Three months in, the model I’d been building ran successfully for the first time.

The whole team cheered at three in the morning.

My advisor pulled out a can of cola that had been half–buried in the sand.

“Supplies are limited.”

“This is the adult version of champagne.”

I took a sip.

It was flat.

But it tasted better than the real champagne at Brielle’s party ever could have.

Six months in, my parents got through on the research center’s secure line.

My mom’s eyes were red.

“You look so thin.”

“Are you taking care of yourself out there?”

“I’m doing fine.”

My dad leaned into the frame.

“Has anyone given you trouble?”

“No.”

I smiled.

“Everyone here’s too busy. Nobody has time for Truth or Dare.”

They could tell something was off, but they didn’t push.

They just told me that people from the Mercer family had come by looking for me. More than once.

“Want us to pass along a message?”

My dad’s voice was careful.

“No.”

Right before we hung up, my mom hesitated, then said:

“Nolan’s been outside your house.”

“Almost six months now.”

I nodded.

“That’s his choice.”

That winter, the project hit its first real failure.

A sandstorm destroyed the testing equipment.

We pulled four straight all–nighters rebuilding the plan.

On the fifth day, the data finally held.

My advisor clapped me on the shoulder.

“Mara, you’re good under pressure.”

I smiled.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Back in Bellhaven, things weren’t going the way they’d planned either.

Nolan dropped out of his program at Kingsley and applied to transfer into energy engineering.

A professor asked him why.

He said he wanted to get to Westreach.

The professor had one answer.

“Westreach isn’t somewhere you get into just because you want to.”

Grant choked in the national championship final. First time he’d ever lost.

At Graham’s annual lab evaluation, his advisor called him out: his project files were missing the original

records.

I’d always been the one who kept those organized for him.

Reid lost a video competition.

One of the judges told him:

“The footage is gorgeous.”

“But it has no soul.”

It finally sank in.

I wasn’t some background extra they could cut from the reel.

I was the one who’d kept Grant’s medals safe.

I was the one who’d organized Graham’s files.

I was the one who’d edited every single one of Reid’s videos.

And I was the one who remembered every weakness Nolan refused to acknowledge.

They thought I was tough. Independent. That I didn’t need anyone looking out for me.

So they put me last. Every single time.

But just because someone doesn’t scream doesn’t mean you get to keep cutting just to see if they bleed.