No, Aeron. I won’t let you say goodbye.
I close the book and hold it against my stomach and cry until the tears run down my neck. I failed him. All those weeks he was pulling away and shutting down, and I let myself believe him when he said he was fine. I was so consumed with Dorien, the exhibition, and chasing Cinna’s rumors that I let my brother become a background figure in his own family. And then Cinna fed him the lies that pushed him over the edge.
I hate her as much as I hate myself. I hate Cinna Stevens for seeing my brother’s pain and using it against him.
I put the sketchbook back on the nightstand, then wipe my face with the hem of my shirt.
I know Dorien and I agreed to keep our distance. That was days ago in his studio, and I meant every word. But right now I don’t need the boy I’m in love with. I need the only other person alive who understands what it feels like to carry this specific kind of guilt.
I pick up my phone and call. He answers but doesn’t say hello, just breathes and waits.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
CHAPTER FORTY
JUNE
The campus is eerily quiet because most students left days ago. Finals ended, the fall semester came to a close, suitcases dragged across cobblestones, and the whole place emptied like a gallery after closing. The ivy on Morrison Hall has turned into the brown of burnt umber, bare in patches where the cold has touched it. A light dusting of snow covers the pathways and the quad, thin enough that the cobblestones show through in spots.
I crunch through it. The loud sound somehow makes me feel small.
Dorien is one of a handful of students given approval to stay in the dorms over winter break. He told me once that Christmas at the Kael house involves a catered dinner for people who only talk about surface-level things, his mother retiring to her room with a bottle of wine shortly after eating, his father taking a call from overseas.
I’m sure he loves being on campus instead.
I pull my puffy jacket tighter. The air is somehow finding every gap to make me shiver. Above me, the evening sky is filled with gray clouds. The forecast says there will be a few inches ofsnow tomorrow. Real snow, not this dusting. It’ll be enough to bury this campus in white.
Aeron loves this time of year.
My feet slow and I stop on the path between Founder’s Hall and the residence buildings. I look up at the flat, colorless sky and think about my brother.
He told me once that the light after a heavy snowfall is indescribable. He said it’s the purest light in existence because every surface becomes a reflector and the whole world turns into a single continuous glow. He’s tried to capture it. Watercolor, acrylic, oil. Every attempt ends the same way: he stares at the canvas, shakes his head, says what he made is a lie.
“The snow is more honest than I am,” he told me once, and I laughed because I thought he was being dramatic.
My heart aches because he won’t see the snow tomorrow. He’s in a clinic upstate, far away from us, and the snow will fall on an empty campus without him here to try and fail to capture it.
I keep walking.
The dorm building rises ahead, dark brick softened by the dusting of snow collecting on its ledges and windowsills. Most windows are dark, though a few glow from desk lamps lit by students who stayed behind for whatever reasons people stay. Loneliness. Avoidance. A home that isn’t worth going back to.
At least Dorien has company.
I take the elevator to Dorien’s floor. The hallway is silent and smells like old carpet. Dorien’s room is at the end.
When I reach it, I notice his door is cracked about ten inches.
That’s not like him. Dorien is deliberate about his spaces, about what he lets in and what he keeps sealed. I pause with my hand raised to knock, then lower it. The crack is narrow, just enough to see warm lamplight on the floor inside.
I push the door open and walk in.
He’s shirtless—that’s what I notice first. I see his back, bare from the waist up, the planes of his shoulder blades shifting as he leans forward. He’s at his desk and his body is pressed against someone, and my mouth drops open silently.
My eyes bounce around colors first.
Pink. There are long fingernails, painted electric pink, gripping his back.
Black. The black of stiletto fuck-me heels. A woman’s legs are wrapped around his waist, calf muscles taut in those heels.
