Chapter 6: We Don’t Say Out Loud

Lucien knocked on Cassian’s door before seven.

Cassian answered in a t-shirt, not fully awake, and took one look at Lucien’s face and stepped aside without a word.

“Let it end, today” Lucien said. 

“What’s that?.” 

“The bet” 

“Is that all you came to say?” Cassian sat on the edge of his bed. 

“Yes.”

Cassian looked at him for a moment. “Luce.”

“I’m asking one thing.”

“Are you falling for him?”

The room went quiet.

“No,” Lucien said.

“Okay.”

“I’m not. It’s thirty days, it’s a bet, it’s” he stopped.

Cassian didn't move, he just stared at him. 

“It ends today,” Lucien said, and walked away.

He made it through two lectures before his phone buzzed.

@saintaurelius_confessions posted at eleven forty-three. 

‘Since we’re all invested in the Lucien Vale situation,  here’s something; He and Adrian Cross were a thing? Why did they split up? Is it because of Eli Thorne?’

The comments ran fast.

‘What?’

‘Adrian cross?? fencing captain??’

‘Does Eli Thorne know about this?’

Lucien put his phone away and walked to his next lecture and sat down, he told himself he was fine but he knew that this wasn’t the kind of attention he needed currently. 

Eli found him at two in the student council room, he knocked once on the open door and waited, and when Lucien didn't make a move to reply, 

“Can I come in,” Eli said.

Lucien nodded.

Eli closed the door and stood on the other side of the table with his hands in his pockets and looked at Lucien

“I’m not going to ask about what got posted,” Eli said. “That’s your business, but I want to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Lucien.”

“I said I’m fine, Eli.”

“You’ve been sitting in an empty room for two hours.” Eli’s voice was even. 

He wasn’t pushing, he was just present in that way he always was.

“You don’t have to be okay. Not with me.” Lucien looked up to him with an unreadable expression.

There it was, ‘Not with me’ Lucien felt he said it like he had the right to it. Like their short term relationship had built something with actual walls and a foundation, something real enough to stand in.

“Stop,” he said when he couldn't take it anymore.

Eli looked at him. “Stop what.”

“This.” The word came out harder than he planned. “Whatever you think you’re doing right now, whatever you’ve been telling yourself this is.”

“I’m just asking if you’re…”

“You don’t get to just ask.” Lucien stood up. “That’s not what this is, those were the terms of this arrangement, no real expectations and you agreed to that on day one.”

“I know what I agreed to.”

“Then act like it.” He heard his own voice and knew it was too flat, 

“Stop pretending this is something it isn’t,” Lucien said, pausing for a moment, “Because it isn’t. And you know that.”

Eli went silent for a long moment, then he nodded once.

“Okay,” Eli said, he walked to the door and opened it.

Then he stopped without turning back.

“For what it’s worth,” Eli said quietly, “I wasn’t pretending.”

 The door closed behind him quietly. 

Lucien sat back down and looked at the table, he  spent the rest of the afternoon finding out who had leaked it.

Adrian wasn’t the only person at Saint Aurelius who knew exactly what resurfacing that information would cost, not because it was damaging, but because of what it implied. Because if the school connected Lucien’s history with Adrian to his thirty days with Eli, they would start asking a question that Lucien had never once, in four years, allowed anyone to ask out loud.

His phone lit up, with a message from an unknown number.

‘Ask Adrian what he told Mira Solene last Tuesday. Then ask him why’

Day ten of thirty 

Twenty days to go