Chapter 42: The Villain They Invented

"Don’t, Seriously, Sarah, don’t worry about it. You don’t need to pay it back. Not now, not later. It’s fine."

"Okay," Sarah said gently, nodding. "If you say so."

Quinn, watching from the sidelines, felt something click into place in his mind, the wrong thing, naturally, but it clicked with great confidence.

’Owe money. She owes him money.’

’That’s what this is about.’

His brain, desperate for an explanation that didn’t involve Stan Harrison being genuinely desirable to beautiful women, latched onto the theory with both hands.

’Sarah owes Stan money, and that’s the only reason she’s being nice to him. He’s holding her debt over her head. He’s using her. That’s why he keeps refusing her invitations, he’s playing hard to get, keeping her on the hook, dangling the debt like a leash.’

’Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting behavior.’

The theory was entirely wrong in every particular, but Quinn believed it with the fervent certainty of a man who needed it to be true.

Stan glanced around the cafeteria. The staring had intensified. Every table within a fifteen-meter radius was pretending not to watch while very obviously watching. A few people had given up pretending altogether and were openly gawking, elbows on the table, chins in their hands, like they were watching a television drama unfold in real time.

Sarah’s presence beside him was drawing attention the way a spotlight draws moths.

"If there’s nothing else," Stan said, keeping his voice light, "you should probably head out. You’re causing a scene just by sitting here."

Sarah’s eyes widened slightly, then she laughed, a small, genuine sound that made several nearby heads turn yet again.

"Fine, fine. I’ll go." She paused, then added with quiet hope: "But promise me you’ll make time tomorrow? Even just for an hour. I really do want to see you."

Stan looked at her for a moment. The earnestness in her expression was hard to refuse, and besides, he did need to keep her favorability climbing.

"I’ll try," he said. "If things aren’t too packed, I’ll make it work, don’t get your hopes high though."

Sarah’s face lit up, a full, unguarded smile that transformed her already striking features into something almost unfairly beautiful. She stood up from the bench, smoothed her skirt, and gave him a small, eager wave.

"Okay! Tomorrow then. I’ll hold you to it."

She turned and walked out of the cafeteria with a lightness in her step that hadn’t been there when she’d walked in.

Every pair of eyes in the room followed her to the door. And then, slowly, inevitably, every pair of eyes drifted back to Stan Harrison, the man she’d come to see, the man she’d smiled at, the man she’d waved goodbye to like a girl leaving her boyfriend’s table after lunch.

Quinn Carter stood rooted to the floor, his grand speech about Stan’s unworthiness still decomposing in the air around him, and tried very hard to figure out what exactly had just happened to his understanding of the world.

Quinn waited until Sarah had fully disappeared through the cafeteria doors before he opened his mouth again.

He wasn’t stupid enough to say what he was about to say while she was still in earshot. But the moment she was gone, the restraint evaporated.

"Stan Harrison."

Quinn’s voice rang out across the table with the crisp, rehearsed indignation of a man who had just constructed an entire moral framework out of thin air and was ready to deliver it.

"Just because Sarah owes you money, you think you can bully her like that?"

Stan looked up from his tray, genuinely confused.

"What?"

"You heard me." Quinn folded his arms, chin raised, expression hardened into something meant to look righteous. "She came here to be nice to you. She offered to buy you dinner. She offered to buy you clothes. And you turned her down, twice, because you’re holding her debt over her head. You’re keeping her on a leash."

Stan stared at him.

’What in the world is this man talking about?’

He had refused Sarah’s invitation because he was busy. He’d told her not to worry about repaying the money because a hundred-times penalty from the system would financially annihilate him.

At no point, at no point, had anything resembling bullying, exploitation, or leash-holding occurred at this table.

"How can you live with yourself?" Quinn continued, his voice rising with theatrical disgust. "Exploiting a girl like Sarah, a campus belle, just because she’s in a vulnerable position. Using her debt as leverage. It’s sickening."

"Exploitation?" Stan’s brow furrowed. The word was so disconnected from reality that he wasn’t even sure how to begin correcting it. "I literally just told her she didn’t need to pay me back. How is that,"

"Oh, please." Quinn cut him off with a dismissive wave. "That’s the oldest trick in the book. Tell her she doesn’t need to pay, so she feels even more indebted. Keep her grateful. Keep her coming back. Classic manipulation."

Stan set his chopsticks down slowly and looked at Quinn Carter with the expression of a man watching someone confidently explain that the earth is flat.

"Are you out of your mind?"

Quinn didn’t hear him. Quinn wasn’t listening anymore. Quinn had built his narrative, furnished it with assumptions, and moved in. No amount of evidence was going to evict him now.

And unfortunately, Quinn’s voice carried.

The cafeteria was packed. The tables surrounding them were close together. Every word of his accusation had traveled cleanly across the lunchtime crowd, landing in dozens of ears that were already primed to think the worst of Stan Harrison.

The whispers started almost immediately.

"Wait, he’s exploiting Sarah? Using her debt against her?"

"That’s what it sounded like. She owes him money and he’s using it to control her."

"No wonder she was being so nice to him. She probably has no choice."

"That’s disgusting. Who does something like that to a girl?"

"And he rejected her dinner invitation on purpose? To make her feel small? What kind of person,"

The telephone game was already in full swing. Each retelling stripped away another layer of nuance and added another coat of outrage. By the time the story reached the far end of the cafeteria, Stan Harrison had apparently been reduced to a loan shark who was psychologically tormenting a helpless campus belle for sport.