Epilogue
LEO
Harvard smells like old books, wet stone, and ambition.
I didn’t notice it my first semester—not really. I was too busy pretending I belonged, too busy wearing the armor I’d been raised in. Confidence. Detachment. The last name that opened doors before I even touched the handle.
But by sophomore year, the place feels different.
Quieter.
Not because it changed—but because I did.
I’m sitting on the steps of Widener Library, scarf pulled tight against the cold, watching students cross the yard in clusters. Some laughing. Some arguing. Some alone but not lonely. I used to think being alone was failure.
Turns out it’s just space.
Space to hear yourself think.
I don’t live in the mansion anymore—not really. My parents separated last spring. Not explosively. Not with lawyers and tabloid drama. Just… honestly. Two people finally admitting they’d both been lonely for a long time.
They’re happier now.
And so am I.
My mom moved into a smaller place closer to the city, joined a board she actually cares about, started painting again. My dad downsized, too—kept his study, lost the echo. We talk more now. Real conversations. No performance. No chessboard.
For the first time, I don’t feel like the prize in a marriage neither of them wanted to win anymore.
I’m just their son.
I didn’t know how heavy that weight was until it lifted.
My phone buzzes.
Jade.
No emojis. No drama. Just a picture.
Her sitting on the floor of her apartment, hair in a messy knot, highlighter marks on a textbook, socks mismatched. The window behind her glows amber with early evening light.
JADE:
Studying. You?
I smile like an idiot.
ME:
Avoiding a paper. Thinking about walking to the river later.
Three dots. Gone. Back again.
JADE:
I’ll meet you. Forty minutes.
That’s us now.
No grand gestures.
No chasing.
No proving.
Just choosing each other—again and again—without urgency.
Boston makes that possible.
We have our own lives here. Separate campuses. Separate friends. Separate routines. She’s busy being extraordinary without trying. I’m busy learning how not to hide behind achievement.
We don’t share apartments.
We don’t talk about rings.
We don’t plan past the next semester.
And somehow, that makes it stronger.
I know I want her in my future—not because she fills a hole, but because she walks beside me without shrinking or demanding I grow faster than I’m ready to.
I didn’t know love could be like that.
I thought it was conquest. Or loyalty tests. Or sacrifice that looked like silence.
I was wrong.
Love is accountability.
Love is saying I’m here and meaning it.
Love is letting someone change you—and not resenting them for it.
People still recognize me sometimes. Less now. The documentary made me… human, apparently. The irony doesn’t escape me.
I don’t mind it.
What I mind—what still burns—is knowing how close I came to becoming the man I was taught to be instead of the one I chose.
I almost lost her because I was afraid to stand still.
I won’t make that mistake again.
The bells start ringing across campus, low and steady, marking the hour. I pull my coat tighter and stand, heading toward the Charles.
The river’s dark this time of year. Slow. Unbothered.
When I get there, she’s already waiting—hands in her pockets, hair whipping in the wind, cheeks flushed from the cold. She looks at me like I’m not a project, not a pedestal, not a mistake.
Just… me.
“You look tired,” she says.
“Productive tired,” I counter.
She smirks. “That’s new.”
We walk. Shoulder to shoulder. No rush.
And I think—this is it.
Not the ending.
The beginning that actually counts.
I don’t know where we’ll be in five years. Or ten. Or whether the world will try to tear us apart again.
But I know this:
I’m not the boy who let fear make his choices anymore.
I’m becoming a man who knows what he stands for.
And I know exactly who I want beside me while I figure the rest out.