I’d been so busy deciding it couldn’t be true that I hadn’t stopped to ask myself the more terrifying question.
What if it was?
“Has he passed Stats yet?” Rowan asked. “We need Dud on Friday if he’s not too busy. So you better not break his heart before the weekend.”
Rowan’s words slid past me at first, barely registering.
Stats. The test was today.
The thought cut clean through the fog in my head, sharp and clarifying in a way nothing else had been for days. My pulse steadied. The noise quieted. All the spiraling questions about love and timing and inevitability stepped back, suddenly less urgent than they’d felt seconds ago.
Because this wasn’t theoretical.
This wasn’t about whether Jason loved me or whether I was worthy of it or whether the universewould eventually prove me right for being cautious. This was about something concrete and immediate and terrifying in its own way. A lecture hall. A test booklet. Jason sitting there with his foot bouncing and his jaw set like he was bracing for impact.
He’d worked so hard.
I pictured him the night before, hunched over his notes, hair standing from the way he pulled it in fistfuls as he muttered formulas under his breath. The way he’d looked up at me after a practice exam, eyes bright with cautious hope, like he didn’t quite trust that progress was real yet.
The toaster clicked softly as it cooled.
“I have to go,” I said.
Rowan blinked. “You’re still in sweatpants.”
“I know.”
“And you’re holding toast.”
I looked down. The slice was bent slightly where I’d been gripping it too hard. I set it on the counter without taking a bite.
“I have to be there,” I said, more to myself than to him.
Rowan studied me for a long second, then nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “You do.”
I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair and shoved my feet into my shoes without tying them properly. My hands shook a little as I stuffed my wallet and phone into my pockets. But this wasn’t fear. It wasn’t fear at all.
As I reached the door, Rowan spoke again. “Youknow,” he said, casual but not careless, “showing up counts as an answer, too.”
I paused with my hand on the knob.
“I know,” I said.
The morning air was already colder and crisper against my face as I stepped out. I walked fast, then faster, my thoughts lining up neatly for once.
I couldn’t give Jason certainty yet. I couldn’t say the words, not when they still felt like something I might drop and shatter if I handled them wrong. I was too aware of how much weight they carried. How permanent they sounded once spoken aloud.
But I could do this.
I could sit in the back of the lecture hall, quiet and unobtrusive, a fixed point he could glance at when his brain threatened to short-circuit. I could be the familiar face in a room full of stress and noise. I could be proof that he wasn’t doing this alone.
Not showing up would mean something, whether I intended it to or not. It would mean distance. It would mean I didn’t feel the way he felt.
And that wasn’t the truth.
The truth was simpler. It was so simple that it had blinded me.
I loved him, too.