Between Us

Chapter 15 — Real

I avoided him for three days.

Not dramatically — I still showed up to BIO 215, still sat in the third row. But I stopped walking with him in the mornings. Kept the library sessions to messages only. Replied to his texts with short answers that technically said something without saying anything at all.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed. Zane noticed everything.

On the third day he was waiting outside my hostel at 7am.

Not at the bottom of the stairs. Outside the hostel itself, leaning against the wall, arms folded, with the specific expression of someone who has decided to be patient for exactly as long as it takes and not one minute longer.

I stopped when I saw him.

"Hi," I said carefully.

"Hi," he said back. "Walk with me."

We walked to the far end of the campus — the quiet part, past the faculty buildings, where the path opened up into a small garden that most people didn't know about or didn't bother with.

He stopped there.

Turned to face me.

"I need to say something," he said.

"Zane—"

"Please." Quiet. Steady. "Just — let me."

I stopped.

He looked at me for a moment like he was organizing words he'd been carrying around for a while.

"The deal is done," he said. "I know that. Keira's moved on, you held up your end, everything went the way it was supposed to." A pause. "But I don't want to go back to before."

I kept very still.

"Before," I said carefully.

"Before you." He said it simply, like it was just a fact. "Before the library and the 2am calls and the — all of it." He ran a hand through his hair, the first genuinely unguarded thing I'd seen him do. "I know this started as something fake. I know I didn't give you much of a choice about it. And I know you're practical and logical and you're going to want a reason that makes sense—"

"Zane."

"—so the reason is that I like you. Actually. Not for Keira, not for the deal." He met my eyes properly. "Just you."

The garden was very quiet.

Somewhere a bird was doing something cheerful and completely oblivious.

I looked at him — at the boy who'd noticed I was cold before I said anything, who'd shown up at my lunch table without being asked, who called at 2am and talked about his father and argued about banku and said my name like it meant something.

"This is going to be complicated," I said.

Something shifted in his expression. Something hopeful. "Probably."

"I have a scholarship to maintain."

"I know. I'll help."

"And I'm not—" I gestured vaguely, "—I'm not easy. I know that about myself."

"I know that about you too." The corner of his mouth moved. "I like that about you too."

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I said — "Okay."

His expression stilled. "Okay?"

"Okay." I held his gaze. "Not fake. Real. We try."

He looked at me like I'd said something that rearranged something inside him.

Then he smiled — not the careful campus smile, not the performative one. The real one. Small and warm and just for me.

"Okay," he said softly.

We walked back to campus together.

Not fake.

Real.

And for the first time since this whole thing started I didn't have to tell myself it was going to be fine.

I just knew.