Chapter 9
ARCHIE
By the time we cut across the quad, the lunch rush had thinned just enough to move without weaving around people every two seconds.
Not that it made it quieter.
Voices still carried. Someone had music playing somewhere.
Sun hit the stone hard enough to throw heat back up at us, baking through the soles of my shoes while students moved in loose clusters across the grass.
Rhys kept pace beside me.
His sleeves were pushed up unevenly, sunglasses hooked into the collar of his shirt. The sunlight caught in his hair when he turned his head, pale strands shifting gold for a second before falling back into place.
“They still haven’t fixed that.” He nodded toward the stretch of walkway ahead where the stone dipped slightly in the middle.
“They’re not going to.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “This is why I left.”
I rolled my eyes. “You left because you graduated.”
“Exactly.” He looked over at me like that proved his point. “Which means I can bitch about it. All this money and they can’t fix a fucking stone?”
“You don’t have to come back here every week, you know?”
“Archibald.” He adjusted the strap of his bag, one sleeve already slipping back down his wrist. “Our lunch dates and afternoon walks are the only time I get to see you.”
“We just had dinner last night. In the apartment we share.”
“Babe, you nearly fell asleep in your Pad Thai.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
He nudged my arm with his elbow. “You had a fork in your hand and your eyes were closed.”
“I was blinking.”
“You were unconscious.”
I rolled my eyes, but the corner of my mouth gave me away.
Rhys made a quiet sound, like he’d won something, and took another sip of his iced coffee.
“You don’t sleep enough.”
I glanced over at him. “Will you stop telling my mother that shit?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She texts me every morning. ‘How many hours did you sleep?’ ‘Did you eat breakfast?’ I swear, I’m one step away from being put on a schedule.”
“Good,” he snorted. “You need one.”
Rude.
“I’ll have you know I got seven consecutive hours last night,” I shot back. “Thank you very much.”
He lowered his coffee slowly, looking at me over the rim. “Seven?”
“Seven.”
“Consecutive? That’s concerning.”
I frowned. “How is that concerning?”
“Because it means you crashed. Which means you were running on fumes before that.”
I nudged the edge of a loose stone with the toe of my shoe, sending it skidding a few inches.
“What time did you fall asleep?” His blue eyes narrowed like he already knew the answer.
“That’s not relevant.”
“It’s extremely relevant.”
I kicked the stone again, harder this time, watching it scrape along the path.
“Archibald.”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Late.”
“Late as in midnight, or late as in you lost consciousness mid-thought again?”
“I don’t lose consciousness mid-thought.”
“You literally just described doing that over Pad Thai.”
“That was different.”
He huffed softly, but didn’t press.
I knew that didn’t mean he’d dropped it.
Rhys had a way of sticking close, like if he didn’t, no one else would. His family was halfway across the world most of the year and my mom felt just as far most days.
We’d ended up as the only constant the other had.
Rhys had always looked out for me in ways I didn’t always know how to return. It stopped feeling even a long time ago—and I wasn’t sure he ever noticed.
“Maybe we should get you one of those watches that logs your sleep,” he said, slurping at his straw and then frowning. “Shit. My coffee is gone.”
I shoved him. “How can you give me shit about my sleep schedule when you run entirely on iced coffee and your hatred of Carl?”
“That’s not true,” he said. “I also run on spite.”
I laughed.
He tossed the empty cup toward the nearest trash can, missing by a solid foot before veering off to grab it like that had been the plan all along.
“It’s different,” he insisted, dropping it in. “I need a vacation. You need a fucking sleep study.”
I wasn’t going to mention he just spent eight weeks in Sweden. “That’s dramatic, even for you.”
“It’s accurate.”
“It’s not,” I said, even though I could feel the edge of a yawn sitting somewhere behind my teeth, waiting for the worst possible moment to show up.
“Arch,” he said. “You don’t get to pretend you’re fine just because you had one good night.”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
“Mm.”
“I slept. You can’t take that away from me.”
“I’m not trying to take it away. I’m trying to make it happen more than once a week.”
“Dramatic,” I said, but there wasn’t much bite behind it.
The truth was, sleep and I had never really gotten along.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want it. I just… didn’t know how to stop once my brain got going. If I started something, I finished it. A paper, a book, a train of thought that should’ve ended hours earlier but didn’t. Leaving things unfinished sat wrong in a way I couldn’t quite ignore.
So most nights, I didn’t.
And when I finally did, it was usually because my body gave out first.
Which was how I ended up falling asleep over a plate of Pad Thai with a fork still in my hand.
Rhys looked at me like he could see the whole thought play out even without me saying any of it. “You’re in denial, Archibald."
“I am not in denial.”
“You are aggressively in denial.”
My phone chimed in my pocket.
Rhys chuckled. “Saved by the bell.”
“Shut up.”
I dug my phone out, thumb already moving as the screen lit up.
The email sat at the top of my inbox.
Financial Aid Adjustment Confirmation.
I read it once, then again, eyes catching on the same line like it might rearrange itself if I gave it long enough.
Restored funding. Updated package. Effective immediately.
My steps shortened without me meaning to, just enough to pull us out of rhythm.
“What’s up?”
I tipped the screen toward him.
Rhys scanned it quickly, then flicked his eyes back to me. “Isn’t that what he said he was going to do?”
“It’s been, like, twelve hours.”
“Yeah. And?”
I shook my head, slipping my phone back into my pocket, fingers lingering there longer than they needed to. “I thought there’d be more to it. Emails. Forms. Something.”
“Something that makes you jump through three more hoops first?”
“Exactly.”
He hummed. “Welcome to having someone wealthy and competent in your corner.”
We kept moving, falling back into step, but my attention was still stuck on yesterday.
He kissed me.
It was quick enough that I could’ve missed it if I hadn’t been standing right there—close enough to feel the shift of his breath before it happened.
I’d stood under the water in the shower that morning and caught myself avoiding putting soap over the patch of skin his lips touched.
Totally normal.
Rhys said something beside me, but I didn’t catch it, too caught up in the loop my brain had settled into.
“He didn't have to do that,” I said. “He could’ve left it alone.”
“And now you’re feeling bad about it.”
“I’m not—”
“Arch, you’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The one where you apologize before anyone’s actually asked you to.”
I let out a short breath, looking ahead again as someone crossed too close in front of us. “I’m not apologizing.”
“You are. You just haven’t said the words yet.”
My jaw ticked. “That’s not what this is.”
“You had something lined up. You handled it. And the second someone stepped in and made it easier, you started trying to figure out what that costs you.”
He’s not wrong.
The thought came fast and unwelcome, sliding in before I could shut it down.
Rhys bumped his shoulder into mine, not hard enough to knock me off balance but enough to pull me back into step when I lagged half a beat behind. “You didn’t force him to do anything. He decided to.”
“I know.”
“Then let that be enough.”
I rubbed at the inside of my wrist, thumb pressing into the spot where my pulse kept jumping.
“I just don’t want to be something he has to deal with.”
Rhys made a quiet sound. “You mean care about.”
“I had a plan. I was going to cover it. I wasn’t asking him to—”
“I know,” Rhys cut in. “He did it anyway.”
“Exactly. It feels… off.”
“Of course it does. You’re used to shrinking things down, but you’re allowed to like being taken care of, Min v?n. It doesn’t turn you into a problem.”
“Archibald.”
My shoulders loosened on instinct, my body recognizing him in a way that didn’t make sense considering how little I knew him.
It didn’t matter.
It never seemed to matter when he was near me.
Henry.
Turning, I lifted my chin. Our eyes connected. “H-hi.”
“Hello, Rabbit.”
Sunlight caught along the edge of his jaw, but it was his focus that held me—direct and unwavering, like nothing else in the quad had managed to earn it.
It stayed on me.
Me. Me. Me.
I had the sudden, overwhelming urge to close the distance between us, press my face into his chest, and make him touch me again just to see if it would quiet everything the same way it had yesterday.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Rhys let out a low breath beside me. “Wow.”
I ignored him.
“I, uhm, don’t usually see you out here,” I said.
“This is where you are.”
My mouth went a little dry.
Rhys made a quiet, delighted noise. “That was hot.”
“Rhys,” I ground out.
“What?” He shifted, stepping forward with a hand out. “Nice to meet you. I’m Rhys.”
“Mr. Lindstrom.” Henry’s gaze touched Rhys long enough to acknowledge him. “I know who you are.”
He knew?
I stared at him, jaw slack and brain buzzing a mile a minute.
He knew Rhys, and not in a vague I've heard the name kind of way. Not in a polite, I’ll pretend I recognize you kind of way.
Rhys’s hand hovered in the air for a second before he let out a short laugh and dropped it. “You keeping tabs on my bestie?”
“Yes.”
I felt my fingers curl where they hung at my sides, tension pulling through them before I forced them still.
Christ.
That shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.
Which was… insane.
Rhys glanced at me, grinning. “You’re screwed.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered, and his smile grew.