Chapter 7
For one whole second, Xander looked like he hadn’t understood the words.
Break up.
Free.
As if those two things together made no sense at all.
For an entire year, he had let me boss him around.
He had let me turn him into another version of himself.
He had changed his hair, his clothes, his habits.
He had stopped skipping class.
Stopped fighting.
Stopped doing half the things that made him him.
He had played the gentle boyfriend I wanted.
And now I was saying he was free?
Why?
Because the person I really liked had come back?
Because now that Lucas was here, I didn’t need a substitute anymore?
That was what he thought.
I found all that out much later.
At the time, I only knew that after I said those words, the atmosphere in the room changed so fast it made me cold.
Xander pulled me into his arms so abruptly I almost stumbled.
He held me tight enough to hurt.
Then he lowered his head and pressed his face into the crook of my neck.
His voice was raw when he asked, “After you get rid of me, are you going to Lucas?”
I froze.
He kept talking like he couldn’t stop himself.
“Will you cling to him the way you used to cling to me?”
“Will you hold his hand?”
“Kiss him?”
“Smile at him like that?”
The more he said, the more unstable he sounded.
Then all at once, he went quiet again.
I buried my face in his shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry. I really did make things hard for you. I won’t bother you anymore.”
He actually laughed.
But there was no amusement in it.
At the end, he only gritted out one sentence.
“Fine.”
Then, more evenly, “If you want to break up, then break up.”
And just like that, we really ended things.
After that, life went strangely quiet.
Xander threw himself into the Hale family’s company.
He got busier and busier.
I barely saw him at school anymore.
Then one day, I came across a news article announcing that the Hale family had canceled a planned marriage alliance with one of their business partners.
The next time I saw him was three months later.
My best friend Lena nudged me in the cafeteria and whispered, “Harper. Look.”
I looked up.
Xander was standing in the crowd, tall enough to be impossible to miss.
He still had that rose-gold hair.
But this time, he was wearing black-framed glasses.
I stared for two seconds, then quickly looked away.
I thought it was just a coincidence.
It wasn’t.
That same night, when I stayed in the library until closing, I walked out and saw Xander coming out too.
He had two books in his hand.
He had changed clothes.
A pale gray sweater. Black pants.
With the books and the glasses, he looked quiet. Gentle. Steady.
The exact type I had once forced him to pretend to be.
Because of how badly our breakup had gone, neither of us greeted the other.
But over the next few days, I kept running into him at the library.
He seemed to be studying seriously now.
Actually studying.
It was strange.
Still, whatever he did was none of my business anymore.
Sometimes, on weekends or holidays, I went to the city library instead of the campus one.
Lucas was often there too.
After running into each other enough times, we naturally grew more familiar.
If it got late, he would sometimes wait for me and walk me out.
Only sometimes, while I was talking to him, I would get this odd feeling at the back of my neck.
Like someone was watching.
I never paid much attention to it.
Then one day, I went to refill my water bottle at the library and saw a figure from behind wearing the exact same gray coat Lucas had worn the day before.
Without thinking, I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Lucas, are you getting water too?”
The person didn’t respond.
After my bottle finished filling, I tapped him again.
“Lucas?”
This time, the figure finally turned around.
And I lost my voice.
It was Xander.
Somehow, at some point, he had dyed his hair black again.
Under the lights, his face looked unfairly familiar and completely unreadable.
He looked at my stunned expression and slowly smiled.
Then he said, “You seem to have mistaken me for your white moonlight again, classmate.”
I fled so fast I nearly left my water bottle behind.