“Right. And the fact that our exact conversation about my work with Santander made its way into it was a total coincidence.”

Her heart raced like a cornered animal as his eyes searched for the honesty she couldn’t give him. She allowed the self-defensive autopilot of her anxiety to take over, speaking like a disembodied voice from somewhere in her lower brain.

“I know this is hard for you to believe, Danial, but we didn’t make a video about the atrocious things Horace is doing in Pennsylvania because of some stupid party a decade ago. I actually developed political consciousness outside of you, if you can believe it.” She willed herself to keep the tone she used in her videos, self-assured and competent when she had never felt less so. “And your firm is actually making the world we live in markedly worse.”

“Markedly worse,” he imitated under his breath, shaking his head. “I’ll have to write that one down.”

He paused, and she took the opportunity to use some of her old anxiety regulating techniques, breathing in and out in a square pattern until her heart rate began to slow and she could think more clearly.

“Yes,” she continued, relaxing her cadence to something more human. “My work fighting against industries like yours is not a personal attack on you. Like, when I make videos about for-profit healthcare, you don’t work for those companies, right? Maybe I actually care about it. Maybe I watched my father’s back get worse for years because he couldn’t afford basic preventative care with no insurance.” She felt the pendulum swinging back in her direction and capitalized on it. “And you could still take care of your mother while doing something less harmful, by the way.”

At the mention of his mother, his fingers closed around the pendant. He shut his eyes for a moment before opening them again to meet her gaze with something more painful. “Okay. Maybe you singled us out because of the campaign, even though I don’t even work in the same department that Stephens is going after. Let’s pretend that’s true. But not telling me? Letting me walk around here like a fool for a week, knowing that I would be going into a woodchipper at work on Monday morning? Don’t tell me that’s about the campaign.”

There was nothing she could say, so he continued.

“And listen, maybe that was the big one you got on me. Now we’re even. But I’ll say it again: I’m done.” He sounded ragged, close to tears. “I’m giving myself a full fucking presidential pardon for something that happened when I was twenty-two years old, okay? Because I can’t live like this.”