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His hands went limp in my hair, then dropped as if someone had cut his strings.

He withdrew a fraction, enough to search my face, enough for me to glimpse something resembling agony in his expression.

The moment stretched, long enough our breaths drew little clouds in the air, long enough my fingers had gone numb from cold.

“I wanna go back to campus,” I rasped.

His jaw tightened, before he opened his mouth, but no words came. Then, his eyes shuttered, and he was miles away again.

“Okay.”

The single syllable sounded more pained than anything I’d ever heard from him.

The night fell quiet, like it was holding its breath.

He dragged his fingers through his hair, messing up already mussed strands, and let out a slow exhale.

He reached out towards my face, as if to cup it—or yank me back by my nape and show me how much he disagreed.

With his mouth.

His jaw worked for a second that felt like a lifetime.

Then, his hand dropped again, and my stomach plummeted as he brushed past me, opened my door without another word, and waited for me to get in, gaze hardened and fixed on the horizon.

My teeth sank into my swollen bottom lip, the copper tang of blood loud on my tongue.

I almost took it back. Almost reached out to touch his face and make him look at me again.

Then, my lips pressed into a line, burying any and all attempts at bridging the chasm I’d clawed open with my own two hands. I slipped inside and buckled in, feeling as though I’d left half of me outside in the cold.

To rub salt into the wound, the first thing he did when he got in was turn up the heat. As he drove, he switched on the music, almost like an afterthought, but nothing could drown the deafening silence perched like an anvil on my chest.

It hurt to breathe.

It hurt even more not to glance sideways.

Soon, too soon, the side street where he’d picked me up earlier came into view, and whatever was left of my stomach did a slow, painful roll as the chance to say something slipped through my fingers.

Before I knew it, the door shut with a too-loud bang, then tires screeched on gravel as he sped away until I couldn’t see his stoplights anymore.

I told myself it was better this way, even as my lungs still ached. That I could focus on getting through the next year and a half without the constant distraction of his company.

It was the right move…

So why did it feel like anything but?

I blinked the stinging from my eyes as my footsteps dragged, as though I was trudging through knee-high mud, not tidy gravel.

The heavy gate swung shut with a loud clang that rattled my aching heart in my chest, and my shoulders slumped as the familiar silhouette of the snow-capped Academy came into view.

I left bleeding footprints with every pained step echoing in the cavernous stairway, staining the marble crimson.

When my door finally closed with a click, my shoulders dropped, the mask slipped, and the bravado sliced out of me in a choked sob.

Then, my phone rang, and the pang in my chest told me it was the first time I wasn’t happy to see her name.

“I saw you got back. Why so soon?” Pri asked.