Between Us

Chapter 12 — Caught

The problem with pretending is that you get good at it.

Too good.

After three weeks of walking together and eating together and texting at odd hours and sharing hoodies and almost-moments at gates, the pretending had become so seamless that I sometimes forgot there was anything to pretend.

That was the problem.

It happened on a Thursday afternoon in the most public way possible.

There was a small outdoor gathering near the science block — nothing official, just students sitting around between lectures, music playing, that kind of easy end-of-week energy that makes everyone slightly less guarded than usual.

Zane and I were there because Bello had called him and Bello called everyone and nobody said no to Bello. We were sitting on one of the low walls, close enough that our shoulders touched, his playlist coming from a small speaker between us.

It was fine. Normal. We'd sat like this before.

Except at some point — I genuinely cannot tell you exactly when — his hand had found mine on the wall between us.

Not dramatically. Not deliberately. Just — there. His thumb moving slowly across my knuckles like it was something he did without thinking about it.

And I hadn't moved away.

I'd just sat there and let it happen and talked to Serena about her botany practical and pretended my heart wasn't doing something completely unreasonable.

Keira saw it.

Of course she did.

She was standing across the gathering with two friends and when I looked up our eyes met and she looked at our hands and then back at my face and something shifted in her expression — not the tight controlled look she usually gave me, something more genuine than that.

Something that looked almost like acceptance.

She looked away first.

I turned back to Serena's botany story and tried to remember how to breathe normally.

After the gathering Zane and I walked back slowly, the campus evening settling around us. At some point I realized we were still holding hands and neither of us had addressed it.

I thought about saying something.

I didn't.

We stopped at the library steps — he had a late session, I was heading back to the hostel.

"Keira saw us," I said.

"I know."

"She looked—" I tried to find the word. "Convinced."

"Good." He was looking at me with that careful expression I'd learned to watch for — the one that meant he was thinking more than he was saying. "That's the point."

"Right," I said. "The point."

A beat.

"Ava—"

"I should go," I said quickly. "Early morning tomorrow."

He stopped. Looked at me for a moment. "Yeah. Okay."

I started walking.

"Ava."

I turned.

He was still standing on the library steps, hands in his pockets, the evening light catching the side of his face.

"The hand thing," he said carefully. "Earlier."

My heart did something inconvenient. "It was fine. For the act."

Something moved across his face. "Right," he said quietly. "For the act."

"Goodnight Zane."

"Goodnight."

I walked back to the hostel and did not look back.

I wanted to look back so badly.

Denise was eating noodles when I got in, which meant she was in a listening mood because Denise only ate noodles when she wanted to have a conversation.

I sat on my bed.

She looked at me.

"It's getting real isn't it," she said. Not a question.

I lay back and stared at the ceiling.

"I don't know what it is," I said honestly.

She nodded slowly. Ate a noodle. "What are you going to do?"

I thought about his hand on mine. The way he'd said for the act back at me like he was testing how it sounded. The careful expression. The way he'd called my name when I was already walking away.

"I don't know that either," I said.

Denise nodded again like this was a reasonable answer.

"For what it's worth," she said, "he doesn't look at you liked it's fake."

I closed my eyes.

"That's what I'm afraid of," I said.