And I didn’t care that my parents would refuse to help with the cost, because this wasn’t about their approval anymore.
It was abouthim.
I’d find a way.
Loans. Grants. A job. Whatever it took.
Somehow, in the middle of an application I hadn’t meant to open, with a stranger’s face frozen mid-play on a paused highlight reel, I felt something shift inside me.
It wasn’t logic. It wasn’t hope.
But it felt like purpose.
Like direction.
Like maybe this—he—was the reason I hadn’t completely unraveled yet. The reason the sky hadn’t fallen in on top of me.
And yeah, I knew what it probably looked like. What they’d say if I brought it up in therapy.
Transfer of attachment.
That was the clinical term.
A new fixation. A different container for all the same brokenness. A new object to project everything onto—need, hope, desperation, fantasy.
But it didn’t feel sick.
It didn’t feel like an obsession, even though maybe it was.
It felt likeclarity.
Like the sharp snapping into place of puzzle pieces that had never fit before…edges smoothing out into something that finally made sense.
Because I’d never been meant for the boys I used to chase. The ones I’d twisted myself into knots for, the ones who ran the moment they felt me coming too close.
I wasn’t built for halfway love. Or maybe I wasn’t built for love at all.
But I could be built forhim.
For the man who looked like he belonged to a world I’d never been allowed into, but wanted so badly to touch. Who moved like gravity bent for him. Who smiled like he’d never suffered a day in his life.
I didn’t know him yet.
But I would.
I wanted to know everything about him—where he lived, what he studied, the music playing in his ears as he walked across campus. I needed to learn what made him laugh, whatkept him quiet, and what existed beneath all that effortless perfection.
What made him real.
I’d figure it out. I’d find a way to be near him, even if I had to build that way myself.
And maybe, if I got close enough, he’d see me.
Really see me. In a way no one else ever had.
CHAPTER 2
OPHELIA
