The first time Abbigail Rose saw Rehman Khan, he was surrounded by silence.
He sat alone in the northern alcove of Oxford's Radcliffe Camera, dressed in all black like he was mourning something private and permanent. Rumors followed him like smoke: the scandal in Islamabad, the expulsion from Cambridge, the suspicious death of his sister Zara.
But Abbigail wasn't the kind of girl who chased ghosts.
She had enough of her own.
She sat two tables away, pretending not to watch him. Until he looked up.
"You glare like it's a sport," he said, voice deep and disarming.
"You sulk like it's an art form," she replied.
He smiled, the first crack in his armor. "Abbigail Rose. Law student. American scholarship girl."
She tilted her head. "Stalker much?"
"No. Just observant."
That was the beginning.
Rehman Khan wasn't supposed to care.
Oxford was just a hiding place. A polite exile. A way for his mother—the Defense Minister of Pakistan—to keep him out of headlines while she cleaned up Zara's death.
But Abbigail made him forget how to hide.
She was blunt, brilliant, maddening. She challenged his politics in class. She interrupted his loneliness in the library. She was the first person in two years who didn't flinch at his name.
And maybe that's why he followed her one night, after a particularly cruel debate about morality and state violence.
She was sitting on the stone steps of Exeter Chapel, coat wrapped tight, face tilted toward the sky.
"You lost," she said without looking at him.
"I let you win."
"No, you didn't."
He exhaled. "Do you always have to be right?"
"Do you always have to lie?"
That silenced him.
A minute passed. Then another.
Finally, he said, "My sister died two years ago. They said it was suicide."
"And it wasn't?"
"She sent me a voice note two hours before. Told me she was afraid. That she'd been threatened. That she was being forced into something."
Abbigail looked at him then, really looked.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"She was going to come here," he added. "Study philosophy. Write books. Change the world."
"You could still do that. For her."
He laughed, bitter. "I'm no one's savior."
"Good," Abbigail said. "Because no one's asking you to be."
They didn't kiss that night.
They didn't touch.
But when Rehman walked back to his room, he realized something terrifying:
He didn't feel haunted anymore.
He felt human.
Weeks passed.
They met in quiet places. Empty cafés. Late-night walks. Beneath the gargoyles of All Souls and the golden haze of the Bodleian lamps.
He told her about Zara. About his mother's manipulations. About the therapy sessions he skipped and the piano pieces he never finished.
She told him about her brother. About the day she found him, wrists open, and the silence that followed. About the nights she still talks to him, just in case he's listening.
One night, he handed her his notebook—the one he never let anyone touch.
Inside were fragments. Sentences. Poetry that felt too raw to speak aloud.
She read them all.
When she closed the cover, she didn't say anything.
She just slid her hand across the table and laced her fingers through his.
But healing is not a straight line.
Two months later, Rehman stopped answering her texts.
She waited outside his dorm for hours.
When he finally appeared, his eyes were hollow, his jaw unshaven, his hands shaking.
"I can't do this," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I can't lose you too."
"You haven't lost me."
"You will," he said. "Everyone does."
Then he walked away.
The silence lasted three weeks.
Oxford bloomed into spring.
Abbigail threw herself into moot court and reading groups. But the ache remained, tucked behind her ribs like a secret.
One rainy afternoon, she found herself back at the Radcliffe Camera.
And he was there.
Same alcove. Same coat. Same notebook.
She stood in front of him without speaking.
Finally, he looked up.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She didn't ask for explanations. She didn't need them.
"I brought you something," she said.
She handed him a small object.
A guitar pick.
"My brother used to leave them everywhere. I carry one now. So I don't forget."
Rehman stared at it. Then at her.
Then, for the first time in years, he cried.
Not loud. Not broken.
Just quietly. Honestly.
She reached for his hand.
This time, he didn't pull away.
They didn't fall in love like a firestorm.
They fell like rain.
Slow. Reluctant. Necessary.
They didn't fix each other.
They just stayed.
And for two people who had spent their lives walking away…
That was everything.