Chapter four

I found Valerian in the courtyard behind the arts building, the one with the stone benches nobody sat on because they were always cold. I'd spent all morning rehearsing what I'd say, replaying the image of him walking away with Sereia like it was a scene stuck on repeat behind my eyes. Every version of the speech in my head sounded strong. Standing there in front of him, none of it came out that way.

Neriah was a few steps behind me. She hadn't said much on the walk over, just squeezed my arm once like she was trying to load me up with courage before I ran out of my own.

He was on his phone when he saw me coming, and I watched his face do the thing it always did in public — a quick shift, like a light switching on. But this time it flickered. This time it didn't fully turn on. The courtyard was nearly empty at that hour, just a few stragglers cutting across on their way to somewhere else, and I remember thinking that even the cold stone under my feet felt steadier than I did.

"Can we talk?" I said.

"About what." Not a question. A wall.

"About yesterday. About you walking away with her like I wasn't even there."

He glanced past me, toward a group of students crossing the courtyard, and I understood before he even spoke that he was more worried about being watched than about what he'd actually done.

"You're doing this here?" he said, voice low and sharp. "In front of people?"

"I didn't choose the location, Val. You did, when you left with her instead of talking to me."

"You're embarrassing yourself right now." He said it flatly, like a fact, the same tone he might use to tell me it was going to rain. "And you're embarrassing me."

The word landed harder than I expected. Not hurting. Not even upsetting. Embarrassing. Like I was a stain on his shirt he hadn't noticed until someone else could see it too.

"I'm embarrassing you," I repeated, mostly to hear how it sounded out loud.

"Yes. Standing here, making a scene, acting like I owe you an explanation for every five minutes I spend with another human being." He shook his head, already turning half away from me, already treating the conversation like something he could simply walk out of if I didn't wrap it up fast enough.

"You left with her yesterday. In front of me."

"And you're still talking about it a full day later." He said it like exhaustion, like I was the tiring one in this conversation, not him. "This is exactly what I mean. You hold onto things. You turn one bad moment into a courtroom."

"It wasn't one bad moment, Val. It's a pattern."

"There's no pattern. There's you, deciding to see one."

Something in me finally cracked open, the way ice cracks — not all at once, just one long, quiet line running straight through the middle of something that used to hold weight.

"Do you even respect me?"

I hadn't planned to ask it. It came out plain and small, no anger in it at all, just the question underneath everything else I'd been too scared to say out loud.

He didn't answer.

He looked at me for a second — really looked, in a way that almost gave me hope — and then his eyes slid to the side, toward the students still crossing the courtyard, toward anywhere that wasn't my face.

"Don't do this here," he said again, which wasn't an answer. It was a door closing softly instead of slamming, which somehow hurt more.

I stood there and let the silence answer for him.

Behind me, I heard Neriah exhale sharply through her nose — the sound she made when she was holding back every word she actually wanted to say. She didn't step forward. She didn't say his name, didn't call him out, didn't do any of the things I half expected. She just waited, close enough that I could feel her there, giving me the space to be the one who decided what happened next.

Neriah's hand found my shoulder before I even realized I'd started backing away. "Let's go," she said quietly, and I let her steer me toward the path, my whole body numb in the particular way that comes right before real pain arrives.

• • •

I didn't see Rhydian until I'd already sat down on the low wall by the science building, three benches and a whole world away from the courtyard. Neriah had gone to get us both something warm to drink, promising she'd be back in five minutes, and I was alone with my own reflection in the dark window glass across from me, trying to figure out what my face was doing.

He must have seen part of it. Not all of it — I don't think he heard the exact words — but enough. Enough to know something had happened, and enough not to pretend otherwise.

He didn't sit right away. He just stood a few feet off, hands in his pockets, giving me room in a way that felt strange after weeks of learning what it meant to be crowded.

"You don't have to explain what happened," he said finally.

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because you look like someone who has been apologizing for something that wasn't hers."

I laughed, but it wasn't really a laugh. It came out thin, more air than sound. "You don't know that."

"I don't need to know the details," he said. "I just have to look at you."

I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that Valerian hadn't done anything unforgivable, that this was just a rough patch, the kind every couple has, the kind you're supposed to fight through instead of walking away from. The words were right there, half-formed, ready to defend a version of my life I already knew wasn't true anymore.

I didn't say any of them.

Instead I just sat there, hugging my knees against the cold, watching my breath fog in the air between us, feeling something in my chest that felt suspiciously like relief — the relief of not having to perform for once, of sitting across from someone who wasn't asking me to make my own pain smaller so he could feel better about causing it.

"He said I was embarrassing him," I said, before I could stop myself.

Rhydian didn't react the way I expected. No outrage. No rush to defend me by attacking him. He just absorbed it, quiet and steady, like he was turning the words over to check their weight from every side.

"That's a strange thing to say to someone you love," he said finally.

"Maybe I asked for too much."

"What did you ask for?"

I opened my mouth, ready with an answer, and then realized I didn't actually have one. What had I asked for? An explanation. Some honesty. The bare minimum of being looked at like I mattered as much as the people watching us in that courtyard. None of it sounded unreasonable when I actually laid it out. It only sounded unreasonable when Valerian said it back to me in that flat, tired voice, like my needs were an inconvenience he hadn't budgeted for.

"Nothing, apparently," I said quietly. "Since asking for it is what got me called embarrassing."

Rhydian sat down then, finally, a careful distance away, like he'd been waiting for permission he hadn't wanted to ask for directly. For a while neither of us said anything. The courtyard noise drifted over from behind the building — laughter, a dropped tray, someone's music playing too loud from an open window — all of it belonging to a version of the day that hadn't just quietly ended for me.

Neriah came back a few minutes later with two paper cups of tea, took one look at the two of us sitting there in silence, and quietly handed me mine before disappearing again toward the library without a word. I loved her a little more for that — for knowing exactly when to stay and exactly when to disappear.

"Can I ask you something?" Rhydian said eventually.

"Depends on the question."

"Are you actually happy with him?"

It was such a simple question. Six words. I'd answered harder ones a hundred times a day without blinking — questions about money, about Ephraim's medication schedule, about how many hours I could pick up at work without failing a class. But this one sat in my chest like a stone dropped into still water, and I watched the ripples move out in every direction, touching things I didn't want touched.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

I thought about the mornings he was warm and the nights he wasn't. I thought about how I'd learned to read his moods before he even spoke, the way you learn to read weather before a storm, some old animal instinct kicking in to keep myself safe. I thought about the courtyard twenty minutes ago, and the word embarrassing, and how quickly I'd defended him to Neriah before she'd even accused him of anything.

I thought about all of it, and I still couldn't answer.

Somewhere behind us, the courtyard was probably back to normal by now — Valerian on his phone again, or laughing with someone, or already deciding this was a fight he'd won simply by walking away from it undamaged. That was the thing about him I was only just starting to understand. He never seemed to carry any of it afterward. I was the one who left every confrontation heavier, like I'd absorbed something he'd shrugged off without noticing.

Rhydian didn't push. He just watched me sit there in my own silence, and something in his expression told me he already knew what the silence meant — that some questions don't need an answer, because the not-answering already is one.

I didn't say a word for a long time after that. I just sat there with my cold tea and my colder hands, watching the light change over the science building, wondering how a question with six words in it could weigh more than everything Valerian had said to me all week.