I step off the stage. For a second, I just stand there, watching families surge toward graduates in waves of color and noise.
Mom is front and center, sunglasses shoved up into herhair, clapping so hard she might make the sound permanent. Liam towers over the row, arm slung around Sophie, who’s laughing at a joke he murmured in her ear. Erin’s there too, bright and watchful, Dmitri at her side, calm with that grounded presence that makes everything else seem louder by comparison.
They’re proud. They know what this cost me. They know who isn’t here.
I walk over when they release us, the crowd breaking into pockets of noise and movement. Mom gets to me first. She pulls me into a hug that smells of her perfume and summer heat.
“Look at you.” Her voice is thick. “My graduate.”
Something in my throat tightens. The last time Mom looked at me this way—proud without reservation—was before she found out what kind of man I’d let myself become. Or almost become. Before she was told I’d agreed to seduce a girl for sport. For a bet. For nothing that mattered.
“Careful. I might start believing it.”
She pulls back, cups my face, eyes searching. There’s pride there. Relief. Wariness, too, knowing better now than to assume the smile means everything’s fine.
“I’m proud of you, baby boy.” Just that. No qualifiers.
“I know.” And I mean it.
Liam claps me on the shoulder hard enough to knock me half a step forward. “Took you long enough.”
“Four years. Same as you.”
“Yeah, but you complained more.”
Sophie leans in and hugs me, quick and warm. “Congratulations, Kieran.”
“Thanks.”
Dmitri gives me a nod that somehow manages to be both casual and sincere. “Well done.”
We stand there for a minute, trading small talk—plans for lunch, who’s flying out when, how the season ended earlier than anyone wanted. No one dwells on it. Early exits happen. So do worse things. Perspective has a way of rearranging priorities.
“You okay?” Erin asks quietly.
“Yeah. I am.”
She studies me for a second. Then she nods. “Good.”
We start walking toward the edge of the quad. Erin slows, letting the others drift ahead a few steps. She clears her throat.
“I texted Wren,” she says quietly. “Asked her to join us for lunch.”
The world narrows. Just her voice. Just those words.
“She said she’ll come,” Erin adds.
I stop walking. My pulse misfires once, hard, before I shut it down.
Hope is dangerous. Hope makes you stupid. Hope got me here in the first place, thinking I could have her, keep her, without being worthy of her.
But I can’t kill it entirely.
“Okay.”
Erin watches my face, probably looking for the old tells. The rush. The grab. The panic dressed up as confidence.
I give her none of it.
