Chapter 10
I ran straight upstairs the second we got back.
To the hidden room.
To the bookshelf.
To the book I had noticed before and never gotten to open.
When I pulled it down and flipped through it, my vision blurred.
The margins were full.
Notes.
Observations.
Thoughts.
Entire pages of reactions to books I had loved and mentioned in passing.
I grabbed another.
Then another.
Movie analyses.
Study guides.
Collections of articles.
Old mistakes I had once ranted about.
Tiny details from random conversations years apart.
Everything neatly kept.
Everything dated.
Everything loved.
I turned back toward the door.
Adrian was standing there, eyes red, fingers twisted in the hem of his shirt.
I asked the question quietly.
“When did you start collecting these?”
He answered instantly.
“March twenty-fifth, 2018.”
No hesitation.
No uncertainty.
An exact date stamped into bone.
I set the book down.
Put everything back carefully.
Then walked toward him.
He panicked.
Before I could reach him, he wrapped both arms around me from behind with frightening force and buried his face in my neck.
“I didn’t mean to lie,” he said, voice breaking. “I know… I know I stole you. I was scared. I was so scared.”
My heart hurt so badly I could taste it.
I touched his arms where they were locked around me.
For that moment, that was all I could do.
Not absolve him.
Not accuse him.
Just stand there in the middle of a room built from years of silent devotion and feel the truth settle into place.
The person who remembered my favorite obscure novels.
The person who caught every hidden emotion in my late-night spirals.
The person who had typed out pages and pages of explanations to help me study.
The person who had built an apartment from my offhand preferences.
The person who knew exactly how warm I liked my water.
It had always been Adrian.
Maybe not every single message.
Maybe not every sentence.
But the soul of it.
The heart of it.
That had been him.
And if that was true, then there was still one more thing I had to confirm.
So the next day, I asked Hudson to meet me at a café off campus.
He was already there when I arrived.
An unsweetened iced Americano sat on the table waiting for me.
He gave me a small, confident look.
“I remembered,” he said.
I sat down and looked at the coffee.
Then I looked up and asked, “Have you ever seen the pigeons at three o’clock in Demar Hall?”
He frowned.
Then smiled like he thought this was flirting.
“I’ve seen the most beautiful girl in the city sitting across from me right now.”
I stared at him.
And knew.
If I had asked the real boy who loved me that question, he would have answered it exactly. He would have known it came from a conversation we had once had about a novel ending, about a scene nobody else remembered, about the last flash of beauty before a soul disappeared.
Hudson knew none of it.
None.
I leaned back.
“So you don’t know about Ilocas’s Fall either,” I said. “Or why Fran chose to leave the ship at the end. You don’t know any of it. You’re not even a good messenger.”
His face changed.
The easy smile cracked.
Finally.