Rebecca took great pride in informing President Sterling, in a voice so loud I heard it over the thunderous clatter of Gordon's clubs, that she'd graduated from Garland University with honors.

Yeah, I thought, in international relations.

I was glad I'd gotten stuck with Gordon's bag.

He didn't attempt to make conversation.

Not even when I proved to be the worst caddy who had ever caddied. Twice, I pulled the wrong clubs out of his bag and handed them over with the unjustified confidence of a blissful idiot. I also dropped a mini pencil when I went to jot down his birdie on the scorecard and completely lost it in the grass.

I was a hot mess.

This became a far more literal self-reflection as the morning sun climbed higher in the sky.

The back of my hideous polyester uniform polo soaked through with sweat. My cheeks were hot as frying pans to the touch. A single drop of perspiration rolled from my underarm to my elbow, unimpeded.

I shivered with discomfort.

The heat was rough, but I took some consolation in the knowledge that Truman Vaughn was perhaps the worst golfer I'd ever witnessed—and I'd once watched Mrs. Sherwood send her putter flying into the man-made pond on the fourteenth hole.

"God damnit," I heard him shout as his ball landed in a sandtrap.

Gordon sighed. There was an amused twinge to it.

Bodie drove the cart down the fairway. Vaughn walked with the rest of us, because he seemed to be in the mood to stomp. Rebecca and Sterling weren't paying attention to his tantrum, though. They were still locked in some pretentious discussion about their mutual love of convincing wealthy people to fork over money for good causes.

We arrived at the sandtrap.

Vaughn turned, saw that Rebecca was busy telling Sterling her life story, and snapped his fingers to get my attention.

"Get me my putter," he said. It wasn't a request, nor a question. It was a demand. "Actually, the chipping wedge. You know what, just bring the whole damn bag."

I tried to ignore the fact that Bodie was in the driver's seat of the cart.

Vaughn's bag was enormous and dark green, with the Garland school crest on one side and the Titleist logo on the other. It pained me to think that this hideous display of school pride had probably cost him more than I made in a week of work.

I hooked my hand under the strap and tried to lift it with all the strength of one tiny bicep. It was twice as heavy as Gordon's.

Compensating for something, aren't we, buddy?

Bodie appeared around the side of the cart.

I braced one foot on the back bumper for leverage and hauled Vaughn's bag up and over the barrier. The bottom end of it hit the pavement with a thunderous clanking of clubs.

"You got it?" Bodie asked.

"Yep," I grunted. "Keep walking."

But Bodie was, well, Bodie.

"Here," he said. "Let me help."

He didn't even give me a chance to wield the attitude. Before I could manage a single word of protest, he'd slung the strap of Vaughn's Titleist bag over his shoulder.

"I can carry it," I snapped.

"I know you can," Bodie said, meeting my eyes. "I just want to help."

"Shouldn't you be in bed, or something?" I asked. "Isn't your head fucked up?"

"Yeah, it is," he muttered under his breath.

Vaughn's eyes narrowed a fraction when he saw Bodie was the one who'd brought over his bag, but he didn't comment on it.

He took three mediocre practice swings before attempting to chip his ball out. It ricocheted off the lip of the grass and went tumbling back into almost exactly the same position it'd started.

It took Herculean effort not to scoff.

Bodie seemed to notice. He shuffled one step closer to me and ducked his head, as if to adjust his baseball hat.

"Laurel, can we—" he began in a low murmur.

"I'm not talking to you with them around," I muttered, nodding my head discreetly at his head coach, who was cursing under his breath as he lined up his second shot out of the bunker.

It was a solid excuse.

Much better than, I'm not talking to you because if I do I'm probably going to cry about your stupid broken nose again.

"Alright," Bodie said with a shrug.

I didn't like the spark in his shadowed eyes.

"I'm serious. My boss already hates me—"

"Don't worry about it."

The next hole, the ninth, was one that sloped downhill the whole way to the green. From the top, you could see clear across the sprawling valley to the mountains along the horizon.

Bodie plucked his driver out of his bag, marched up to the tee, and took his stance. He swung without even looking out at the fairway. His club came down and unearthed a clump of the grass before following through at the strangest angle I'd ever seen, sending his ball careening a hundred yards off and to the far left. It landed somewhere deep in the rough, in a patch of heavy grass shaded by enormous oak trees.

He spun, without missing a beat, and beamed at me.

"Could you help me find that?"

Rebecca, who was unmoved by my open-mouthed shock, shot me a sharp look and gestured for me to follow him.

Bodie marched off in the direction he'd launched his ball. I left Gordon's bag behind and jogged after him down the cart path, unable to so much else but admire the way the sweat on the back of his neck made his short hair curl beneath his baseball cap.

Together we trudged into the rough.

The shade of the trees was a welcome relief, but the grass was knee-high and thick as a shag carpet. Searching for a golf ball in it would be like searching for a shirt in the sale rack of Forever 21 that wasn't neon, polyester, or plastered with cut-outs that showed off rolls of fat I hadn't even known I had.

"If you think you're gonna find that ball in this shit, you're—"

Bodie turned on me.

"Do you remember what you said to me right after the article came out?" he asked, lightning in his thundercloud eyes. "That day I sat next to you in class and asked you why you wrote it. Do you remember?"

"Not—not verbatim. Why? What—"

"You told me you had to do the right thing."

I shot a glance up the fairway. Vaughn sat in the driver's seat of the golf cart. He was a hundred yards off, and Bodie and I were under the cover of the trees, but I could've sworn he was staring straight at us.

My spine prickled with nerves.

"Can you just make your point?" I asked.

"My point," Bodie said, "is that I believe you."

A hot breeze whistled through the trees, lifting strands of my hair and rippling the thin fabric of Bodie's shirt.

"You," I croaked.

It was all I could manage.

"You stand by your article, right?" Bodie asked coaxingly.

I nodded.

"So use me."

"I never meant to—when I quoted you, it—you're not an investment to me," I sputtered out.

Bodie scrubbed a hand over his face.

"I know, I know," he said. "I shouldn't have said that. It was selfish of me. You're a journalist. You weren't trying to get information out of me so you could fuck me over. You were trying to figure out the truth, because it was the right thing to do. I know that. And I want to help."

I stared up at him. At his angular, boyish face and thundercloud eyes and that big, charming freckle on his right cheek and his bruised, swollen nose.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Spell it out for me, I thought. I want to hear it. I really, really need to hear it.

"I mean, you know, use me," Bodie said. "If there's something I can ask Vaughn, some way you think I can get helpful information out of him—tell me. I'm not good at this interrogation stuff. I've been trying all week to get him to slip up and say something—"

"Do you think he's guilty?" I blurted.

I had to ask. Brutal as the question was, I needed the answer.

Bodie took a bolstering breath.

"I think he could be," he admitted. "I don't know. All I'm sure about is that I trust you."

I trust you.

It was not the time to get emotional. If anything, it was the time to channel Ellison Michaels, queen regent of competence and composure. But there were tears prickling in my eyes and a lump lodged in my throat that made it very, very difficult to stay cool.

"Okay, then," I said. "I'll confer with Ellison and we'll—" and there was the voice crack, "—see how we can utilize your talents."

The weight of Bodie's eyes on me was too much.

"Utilize my talents," he repeated, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement.

"What?" I demanded, cheeks burning.

He shook his head.

"You're so smart, Laurel," he murmured.

I scoffed, even though I knew that this moment was something I would tuck in my pocket and carry with me always. When I ducked my head to tuck my hair behind my ear, I caught a glimpse of the golf cart coming down the path towards us.

"Vaughn's coming," I said.

Bodie nodded.

We turned in unison to walk back out to the fairway. I made it two steps through the tall grass before the toe of my sneaker hit something. It felt like a rock, but lighter. I stopped and reached down into the grass.

When I stood again, I had Bodie's golfball in my hand.

_________________

This is one of the chapters I am simultaneously most excited about and most terrified of. I don't know if I've done my idea justice. I hope I have. I hope that what's on the page reflects my intention. It's important to me that Bodie believes Laurel BEFORE a court of law decides whether Vaughn is innocent or guilty. It's important to me that, while Laurel's arguments inform and guide Bodie's thinking, he comes to this conclusion on his own. I hope this chapter is believable. I hope it feels inevitable, and not out of the blue, that our two Soft children are teaming up to help each other.

I am NERVOUS wow. Honest feedback, positive or scathing, is very much appreciated.

Your friendly author,

Kate