Chapter 6: Midnight Confessions
360 Words
I told myself I wouldn’t go.
Midnight was too late. I had class in the morning. I barely knew him. This was getting out of hand.
And yet, there I was, standing by the old fountain as the campus slept.
Luca leaned against the stone like he belonged there, moonlight catching on the silver chain at his neck. When he saw me, something in his expression softened. He looked... relieved.
“You came,” he said quietly.
“I shouldn’t have.”
“But you did.”
He walked toward me, his steps unhurried, his gaze locked on mine. “You scare me a little, Emma.”
I blinked. “Me?”
He stopped in front of me, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Yeah. You’re not like the girls I usually mess around with. You don’t play games. You’re real.”
“Then don’t mess around with me,” I said, barely louder than a whisper.
A tense silence stretched between us. Then he stepped closer, and I could feel the warmth of him in the night air.
“I don’t want to,” he said.
That single sentence made my heart ache. Because I believed him. For all his swagger and mystery, there was something in his voice that felt raw. Honest.
We sat on the edge of the fountain. He lit a cigarette but didn’t smoke it—just let it burn between his fingers.
He told me about his father—rich, cold, always away. His mother—gone. The pressure to be a certain kind of man in a world full of empty privilege.
“I act like I don’t care,” he said, staring at the water. “But I do. I care too much.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I touched his hand.
He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw the boy behind the mask. Lonely. Brilliant. Torn.
“I’m not asking you to save me,” he said. “But if you stay, I won’t push you away.”
It wasn’t a promise.
It was a risk.
And I took it.
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- Writer
