"You transferred," Cody says.
"Yes." I hold his gaze. "To UW Seattle."
A beat.
Two.
Penelope says, "I'm so sorry, I completely—"
"Don't apologize." Cody doesn't look at her. He's still looking at me. And then, slowly, something shifts in his face. The warmth comes back, but it comes back like a tide — measured, intentional, filling every visible surface. "Why?"
"I'd been planning it for months. I was going to tell you on my birthday." I keep my voice even. Gentle. Apologetic in exactly the right measure. "I didn't get the chance to."
Something moves behind his eyes.
"You transferred to UW," he says again, softer this time, like he's turning it over. Like he's deciding what it means. "For me."
"For us," I say.
He reaches out his hand.
I cross the room and take it, and he pulls me in, pressing his mouth to my temple, and I let him. I feel his exhale against my hair. The room around us fills with the soft sounds of people who think they are witnessing something tender.
Judge Ravenshaw says nothing.
But when I glance at him over Cody's shoulder, his expression is tight in a way that has nothing to do with sentiment. He is doing the same calculation I am — how much will this affect Cody?
Judge Ravenshaw’s eyes meet mine.
I look away first.
The group stays another ten minutes before the energy starts to shift toward goodbye. Hugs exchanged and promises to come back. Julian squeezes Cody's shoulder on the way out and says something low that makes Cody laugh, and I file that sound away — the laugh, the ease of it — into the growing collection of things I'm not sure I trust anymore.
When it's just me and Maeve left, visiting hours finally pulling us toward the door, Cody catches my wrist.
"Hey."
I turn.
His eyes are soft. Uncertain in a way that looks genuine. "Are you okay?"
The room goes still inside me.
I look at this boy who filmed me in my bathroom and called it love. Who left my birthday party early and ended up in a hospitalbed and has been saying my name since he opened his eyes. Who just learned I moved my entire life here for him and smiled about it in a way I couldn't fully read.
Who loves me in the only way he knows how — like I belong to him.
"Yes," I say.
His shoulders drop. His grip loosens to something gentler. He brings my hand up and presses his mouth to my knuckles, eyes closed.
I let him.
I lean in and press my lips to his cheek and stay there for one breath. Two. Listening for something true underneath the performance. Some frequency that tells me who he actually is at the bottom of all of it.
What I find is he means it. Whatever he feels for me, however broken and possessive and wrong the shape of it is, he means it. He is not performing relief right now.
That is almost the saddest thing I've ever learned about anyone.
