He knew now—knew I was too much, too intense, too strange. That I didn’t know how to love someone without coming apart in the process.
When the car finally pulled up, Matty thanked the valet, handed him a bill, and opened my door without meeting my eyes.
I slid in silently, my pulse still thudding with shame.
By the time he got behind the wheel, the quiet between us felt unbearable. But he didn’t say a word.
And I sat there, staring at my hands, certain I’d just destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to me.
CHAPTER 25
OPHELIA
The door to his room had barely opened before I was moving…fast, frantic, desperate to get out before he could tell me to.
The ride home had been silent. Not the comfortable kind of quiet, but the kind that hums with everything unsaid, pressing against your chest until it hurts to breathe.
Now, in the dim light of his room, I moved around like a ghost, grabbing my jacket from the chair, my phone from the nightstand, the small bag I’d left by the dresser. My hands shook too much to zip it, the sound of the teeth catching louder than it should’ve.
What had I been thinking, bringing this much to his room after just a week?
I was such a fucking freak.
Don’t cry, Ophelia. Not here. Not in front of him.
My throat burned anyway. I blinked hard, vision blurring as I shoved the rest of my things inside.
“Ophelia.”
He’d said my name quietly, but it was so unexpected that I jumped.
The strap of my bag slipped off my shoulder and hit the floor with a heavythud. Books and pens scattered across the floor, spinning out in every direction. My journal slid last, flipping open right at his feet.
I froze, my breath catching as the pages fluttered.
He stepped closer, crouching down, his gaze falling to the open book.
“Don’t,” I whispered, my throat tight. “Please don’t read that.” I lunged forward, trying to snatch it out of his hands before he could open it.
Matty caught me easily around the waist, and he held me still with one arm as he picked up the book.
“Give it back!” I gasped, reaching, but he leaned away, holding the journal high in his other hand. “Matty, please—” I twisted in his grip, but he just tightened his hold around my waist, completely unbothered, like restraining me was effortless.
I didn’t have to look to know what he saw…my handwriting crowding the page, his name scrawled again and again, words I’d written when missing him had felt unbearable.
Mrs. Adler. Scrawled in loops, in block letters, in frantic slanted script that dug too deep into the paper. Some words were circled in hearts, some were framed by doodled stars. His number was written beside my name, over and over, as if the act of pairing them might make it true.
My handwriting bled across the page, feverish, uneven,aching. There was no mistaking it, no hiding what it meant.
Heat rushed up my neck, flooding my face. I squeezed my eyes shut, humiliation breaking over me in violent, merciless waves.
It was like I was fourteen all over again.
“I found her notebook,” my mom said, and I could hear the sound of paper being shoved across a table. “Pages and pages of their names together. ‘Ophelia + Nico. Mrs. Nico Alvarez.’His schedule, his mom’s phone number, even his little sister’s birthday.”
The memory knifed through me, biting as ever. The shame of it. My parents’ disappointed stares. The laughter in the cafeteria when my classmates had heard I had stolen Nico’s hoodie. Nico’s horrified face.
And now Matty was staring at the same kind of pages, only worse…because it was him. How I felt for him was so much more than anything I’d ever felt before.
