By the time I walked back out, my smile had already started to crack.
It wasn't dramatic. Not sudden. It was subtle—the kind of fracture that started somewhere behind my ribs and slowly spread outward until I could feel it in my face. My cheeks tightened. My jaw set. That easy grin I'd been wearing a minute ago felt like a lie now.
I replayed it again in my head.
The way Chloe had corrected Madison. She was so sure, not guessed. Not hesitated.
Completely correct.
It was clean. Confident and Instinctive. The kind of thing you didn't learn from watching or reading or being told. The kind of thing that lived in your body. Like a muscle memory. In your bone.
I shook my head once, like I could physically shake the thought loose.
Maybe I was overthinking it.
I had to be.
But that didn't stop the unease from settling deeper.
