Iknewthat.
Which meant this radio silence wasn’t confusion. It was a decision, and that should have made it easier.
Because I’d made the same choice.
Hadn’t I?
I hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t asked. Hadn’t forced the moment. I’d left Berlin with that same restraint, that same understanding.
So this is the outcome of that. This is to be expected. It’s logical. It’s fair.
And for the most part, I believed that. I accepted it. Because anything else would have meant questioning something I didn’t actually doubt.
Stefan didn’t miss moments. Hechosethem.
And he hadn’t chosen me, not like that.
It didn’t undo what we’d had. It didn’t diminish it. If anything, it made it clearer, more defined.
Because now without the immediacy, without the intensity of being there, I could see it what it had been, what it hadn’t, what itcouldhave been—and why it didn’t exist.
I picked up my pen again, forcing my attention back to the work in front of me.
This is my life. This is where I am.
And whatever had existed between me and Stefan, it belonged somewhere else.
Some place I wasn’t anymore.
Except even as I told myself that, my hand drifted, almost without thinking, to my phone again. I didn’t unlock it. I already knew what I’d find.
Nothing.
I let my hand rest there for a moment longer, then pulled it back, and got on with what was in front of me, the way I always did.
Only this time, it felt as though I was learning how to do it without him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
October
Kieran
It tookme a while to realise what had changed.
Not because it wasn’t obvious, but because I’d been avoiding naming it.
I found the words one night during a video call with Karl.
“The rhythm’s the same.” I stared down at my coffee, watching the surface settle after I’d stirred it for no reason. “Everything appears to be back to normal, but it isn’t.”
“How so?”
The surface of my life in college was the same, but the rumours, the glances, they ran deep, traces of poison that would never leave, no matter what I did or how much time passed.
“Kieran?” he prompted.
I looked up at the screen, at the quiet focus in his expression, and struggled to find words that would verbalise my thoughts and not end up feeling inadequate.