She avoided him. It took work; he was in her classes, on her phone, in her head, but she did it with the grim competence of someone who had outwaited winters.
Liam sidled into the space Ethan left. He was kind, which counted for more than Emma had remembered. He brought her tea without asking, made her laugh without flinching when she laughed too hard, texted her draft ideas that were simply ideas, not tests.
One afternoon in the library, Emma reached too fast for a book on a high shelf. The wrist she'd promised Sophie she'd rest complained. The book slipped.
Ethan's hand closed over the spine above hers, sure and warm. She hadn't heard him come up behind her. Of course she hadn't.
"You shouldn't be reaching," he said.
"You shouldn't be hovering," she said.
"Compromise," he offered. "I'll reach. You hover."
She wanted to be angry. She chose to be tired. "What do you want, Ethan?"
"You," he said, and there it was. No math. No metaphor. Just the violence of truth said plainly.
She closed her eyes. "Say it where it matters."
"In front of my father?" he said, bitter. "In front of rooms that will make you pay for my choices?"
"In front of yourself," she said.
He exhaled. "Come with me. We'll finish the midterm at my flat. No noise. No cameras. Just… us."
"I'm not a secret," she said.
"You're the only thing that feels real," he said. "That's the opposite of a secret."
It shouldn't have worked. It did.
His flat was not a penthouse of glass and sin like she'd imagined. It was two floors below splendor, with books on the floor and a kitchen that looked like someone had almost learned to cook and then lost interest. There were musical scores he didn't play and photographs that were not staged—one of a woman with eyes like his, laughing into the camera, a child's hand at her throat.
"Your mother?" Emma asked softly.
He hesitated and then nodded.
"She was… loud," he said, surprising her with the word. "She filled rooms by making them gentler. My father hated it. He wanted quiet. He got it."
"What happened?"
"She got sick," he said simply. "She got gone."
Emma touched the frame. "I'm sorry."
He shrugged in a way that said If I don't minimize it, it might eat me. She didn't push. They worked. It was easy again, and that made it harder—the way good fits do when you've convinced yourself you're unfit to be fitted.
At some point, the power went out—a storm thrummed its fingers on the wires. The city dimmed. The flat glowed with the reluctant light from the windows. Ethan lit a candle with a steadier hand than she expected.
"You have a candle," she said, amused.
"I have three," he said, like he'd confessed a weakness.
She laughed. He looked at her like laughter was the rarest metal. They sat closer, because the light demanded it. He reached to tuck hair behind her ear, didn't stop this time, and his fingers landed at the base of her skull, gentle as prayer.
"I want to be better at this," he said. "At… being."
"You already are," she said, and meant it, and watched the hope change his face.
He leaned. She did too. The kiss was almost—so almost it felt like a completion. The candle cracked as wax shifted. She started, and in the small startle, his phone began to ring.
He ignored it.
It rang again.
"Take it," she whispered. "Or you'll obsess."
He did. "Yes."
Charles. Of course.
When he hung up, he looked older. "He knows you're here."
"Does he also know my blood type?" she asked lightly. It didn't land. He set the phone down like it had bitten him.
"He wants us at the house Sunday," Ethan said. "For dinner."
"Us?"
"Words I didn't choose," he said. "But I'm done hiding. Let him see you."
The candle burned a little steadier. Emma nodded. She didn't say be sure. He was the one who had to say it—to himself.
Later, when she left, he walked her down the two flights of stairs because the lift felt too impersonal for the moment they had almost had. At the door, he leaned in once more, as if to fix the almost with a better verb.
She lifted a hand, palm on his chest, feeling the steady thud. "Sunday," she said.
"Sunday," he echoed, like a vow.