Tulips and Lilies

Chapter 3

Nova's POV

The nurse hadn’t asked for more. But memories have a strange way of crawling back once you let one slip out.

So even after she left, I lay there, eyes half-open, thinking about everything that came after that quiet introduction in the park.

It didn’t take long for one meeting to become many.

Our fathers—college friends turned family—started visiting each other often. The warmth they shared became the foundation of our lives too. Playdates became routine. Weekend dinners stretched into sleepovers. And soon, our families began treating each other like extended limbs.

By the time I turned six, Vincent and Victor’s home felt as familiar as my own. I knew the creaky stair on the way to their room. I knew how their mother made hot chocolate with a cinnamon stick in winter, and how their dad would ruffle Vincent’s hair but duck every time Victor came running for a hug.

And they knew my home just the same. How I liked my sandwiches cut into triangles. How I hated when anyone touched my books with dirty hands. How I’d fall asleep in the middle of cartoons and wake up tangled in blankets and stuffed animals. We celebrated our birthday at on the same day too.Mine was on March second and the twins was born on March first, exactly a year between us.

Our parents trusted each other like second nature. If I was at their place, no one called to check. If they were at mine, no one worried. It was as if our families had blended at the edges—different homes, same heartbeat.

Victor was still the loudest of us. He talked in dreams and danced in disasters. Vincent was quieter, but I always caught him watching, remembering. He was the one who’d fix a crooked crown Victor made from paper or offer me his last candy without a word.

Somewhere in those endless afternoons, summer vacations, and pillow fights—we became more than friends.

We became a safe place for each other.

The three of them had grown in different directions—like branches from the same tree. Each unique, but always tangled at the roots.

Victor was the noise.

A little shorter than Vincent, he walked like music played under his skin—drumming fingers on tables, strumming air-guitars in class, making even silence feel energetic. His laugh could fill a whole room, and his stories—often exaggerated—were what made school bearable for everyone around him. He was never just “in the room,” he owned it. But for all his volume, Victor was the one who noticed when someone was down. He was the mood-maker, yes, but also the mood-healer.

No one could stay sad around him for long. He simply didn’t allow it.

Nova was the balance.

Her head barely reached the twins’ shoulders now, but no one ever looked down on her. She was the bridge between Victor’s chaos and Vincent’s quiet—half wildfire, half calm sea. Around the twins, she was free-spirited, curious, and endlessly expressive. But in school, or crowds, or around people who didn’t know her like they did—she became a shadow. Quiet. Unreachable.

Books were her retreat. Art was her voice. And music was her comfort. She copied drawings from her favorite fantasy novels, marked lyrics in the margins, and read late into the night with a flashlight under her blanket.

Without the twins, Nova barely spoke. But with them, she shined.

Vincent was the silence.

Always observant, always calculating, always watching the world like a puzzle to solve. While Victor claimed attention like fire, Vincent sat in the background like gravity—unseen but deeply felt.

He spent hours learning languages “just for fun,” could recite quotes from Russian poets, and often wrote down pieces of poems in a notebook no one else was allowed to touch. He was disciplined, practiced martial arts with eerie grace, and worked out every evening without fail.

But it was Nova who unraveled him.

She was the only one who could make him smile without a reason. The only one he willingly shared silence with—not the heavy kind, but the kind that felt like belonging. She didn’t always notice the way he looked at her, or the way his entire mood shifted when she laughed. But Victor did.

And maybe—just maybe—so did Nova.

Together, they weren’t just friends.

A little mismatched, a little unexplainable, but whole.

Nova didn’t notice things the way he did.

She didn’t see how the boys in class looked at her. Nova was gorgeous, the kind of beauty that would make anyone look twice. She gleamed like a diamond in a world full of rolled gold. She didn’t hear the comments in the hallway—the low whispers that followed her like shadows. She didn’t realize that in a world of noise, she had somehow become visible. And that made Vincent’s skin prickle.

So he watched. Quietly. Constantly.

Not in a possessive way, but in the way someone might watch over something fragile in a storm.

He wasn’t loud like Victor—Victor who teased Nova endlessly, who called her "Princess Trouble" and flopped beside her in every free period like it was his right. Vincent saw the way Victor laughed a little too long at her jokes, leaned a little too close when he showed her his new guitar chords.

Nova never seemed to mind. But Vincent did.

It wasn’t jealousy—not exactly. It was... control. Or maybe fear. That if he let things slip, someone else would take his place beside her. Someone who didn’t know that she liked her tea lukewarm or that she scribbled constellations on the last page of every notebook.

Victor got a warning once. It wasn’t dramatic—just a sentence spoken low and firm when Nova was out of earshot.

“Don’t flirt with her.”

Victor blinked. “I’m not—”

“You’re not stupid either,” Vincent interrupted. “So don’t.”

Victor backed off. At least when Vincent was around.

But Vincent’s guard didn’t drop with his brother alone. Anyone who looked at Nova twice—anyone whose gaze lingered a second longer than it should—got a silent stare. The kind that didn’t need words. The kind that said: Don’t.

And strangely, it worked.

Maybe it was the calm coldness in his eyes. Or the rumors that Vincent knew how to break someone’s wrist with a single move (which weren’t rumors, really). But no one ever crossed the line.

And Nova… Nova stayed untouched by the worst parts of the world, never quite realizing who was shielding her from it.

She’d never know how often he stood at the edge of her world, quietly choosing to burn if it meant she could shine safely.

And Vincent? He was fine with that.

He didn’t need her to know.

He just needed her to be okay.

And none of them knew it yet, but time was already ticking—quietly, cruelly—toward something none of them were ready for.

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