Alessia
I needed space.
After everything that happened—the confession, the rejection,—I couldn’t keep pretending like nothing had changed.
So, I stopped seeking him out. I stopped looking for his presence, for the way he always stood just close enough to shield me from the world. I stopped trying to decode the way his eyes darkened when I was with someone else, or the way his fingers twitched whenever Valentino so much as greeted me.
I simply stopped.
At school, I pretended he wasn’t standing a few feet away, watching over me like a silent shadow. I ignored the way my chest tightened whenever he was near, the way I itched to look at him—to reassure myself that he was still there, still mine, in a way he would never admit.
At home, I kept my conversations with him short, sharp, dista
