Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
bennet
Smoke curled up in a lazy, swirling ribbon from the toaster.
I stared at it without really seeing it, one hand braced on the counter, my thoughts running in tight, unproductive circles. The party replayed itself in fragments: Jason’s face, his voice dropping, and the words landing between us like bricks.
I hadn’t slept well since.
The toaster gave a sharp, offended ding, and I still didn’t move.
“You trying to start a fire? It’s working,” Rowan said.
I startled so hard my shoulder knocked the cabinet. “Huh?” The smell hit me all at once, burnt bread, acrid and sharp. I lunged toward the toaster on instinct and grabbed the nearest thing on the counter.
A fork.
“Whoa, hey, hey, hey!” Rowan yelped, sprinting forward. “Are you mad?”
“Crap,” I blurted, freezing mid-motion as the reality of what I was about to do caught up with me.
Rowan slapped my wrist away and yanked the toaster’s plug out of the wall with unnecessary drama. “Jesus, Bennet. I leave you alone for five minutes, and you’re reenacting a safety video.”
He shook the toaster over the sink. Two blackened slabs of toast popped up and immediately began shedding crumbs like they were disintegrating on contact with air.
I closed my eyes and scrubbed a hand down my face.
“What the hell are you thinking about?” Rowan asked.
“What do you think?” I said, opening the bread bag again like the last two hadn’t just died for nothing.
Rowan scoffed. “Seriously? You’re still hung up on that?”
“Who wouldn’t be?” I snapped, more sharply than I meant to. I shoved two new slices into the toaster and slammed the lever down like it had personally offended me.
Rowan leaned against the counter, arms crossed, striped pajama sleeves riding up. “I don’t know. Maybe someone who understands that when a hot, emotionally repressed football player says he loves you, the correct response isn’t to spiral for thirty-six hours and counting.”
I shot him a look. “He couldn’t have meant it.”
Rowan raised an eyebrow. “That was fast.”
“He barely knows me,” I said, words tumbling out now that they’d started. “He knows the version of me that tutors him and sleeps with him and makes stupid jokes about Stats. That’s not…that’s not the whole picture.”
Rowan shrugged. “Nobody gets the whole picture in a couple of months. That’s kind of how time works.”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “I’m not fun. I don’t like parties. I don’t like crowds. I overthink everything. I correct people. I stress out about things that don’t matter. I’m not someone’s boyfriend material, Rowan. I’m a phase at best.”
Rowan snorted. “You literally just described half the population of this house.”
“That’s different,” I insisted. “Jason’s world is…big. And loud. People want things from him all the time. I don’t fit into that. I’d slow him down. I’d embarrass him. I’d be the weird guy everyone asks, ‘How did that happen?’ about.”
The toaster buzzed innocently, unaware it was about to be dragged into an existential crisis.
Rowan watched me for a moment, expression unreadable. Then he sighed and rubbed his face. “Okay. Counterpoint.”
I waited.
“He already loves you,” Rowan said, like he was stating the weather.
I laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “No, he doesn’t.”
“He does.”
“You don’t just…”
“You do,” Rowan interrupted. “Some people do. Some people see something and go all in. That’s Jason. That’s not a bug. That’s the feature.”
“He’s going to wake up one day and realize he made a mistake,” I said quietly. “That he didn’t sign up for this. For me.”
“Who hurt you?” he asked, half-sarcastic, half actually asking me this.
“No one,” I said. And that was true. I had never, ever let anyone hurt me. I had never lowered the magnetic shields because the asteroid belt was always around me. No. I wouldn’t let myself be hurt.
Rowan pushed off the counter and stepped closer, voice softer but no less certain. “He’s already seen enough to know exactly what he’s signing up for, and you’re the one assuming you’re unlovable because it feels safer than believing someone actually chose you.”
The toaster popped with a loud ding. I tried not to read the symbolism too much.
I stared at the bread as it rose, golden this time, perfectly fine, and felt something uncomfortable coil tighter in my chest.
Rowan reached over and plucked one slice out. “See?” he said. “Even your toast improves on the second try.”
I didn’t smile. “I don’t want to hurt him,” I said.
Rowan met my eyes. “Then stop deciding for him.”
The silence stretched, filled only by the faint hum of the kitchen and the smell of not-burnt toast.
I swallowed. “That’s not fair,” I said.
Rowan shrugged. “Neither is assuming the guy who looked like he was ready to combust just saying your name doesn’t know his own feelings.”
I stood there, hands braced on the counter, heart thudding too loud in my chest.
Jason’s voice echoed in my head, unguarded and earnest.
I love you.
I’d been so busy deciding it couldn’t be true that I hadn’t stopped to ask myself the more terrifying question.
What if it was?
“Has he passed Stats yet?” Rowan asked. “We need Dud on Friday if he’s not too busy. So you better not break his heart before the weekend.”
Rowan’s words slid past me at first, barely registering.
Stats. The test was today.
The thought cut clean through the fog in my head, sharp and clarifying in a way nothing else had been for days. My pulse steadied. The noise quieted. All the spiraling questions about love and timing and inevitability stepped back, suddenly less urgent than they’d felt seconds ago.
Because this wasn’t theoretical.
This wasn’t about whether Jason loved me or whether I was worthy of it or whether the universe would eventually prove me right for being cautious.
This was about something concrete and immediate and terrifying in its own way.
A lecture hall. A test booklet. Jason sitting there with his foot bouncing and his jaw set like he was bracing for impact.
He’d worked so hard.
I pictured him the night before, hunched over his notes, hair standing from the way he pulled it in fistfuls as he muttered formulas under his breath. The way he’d looked up at me after a practice exam, eyes bright with cautious hope, like he didn’t quite trust that progress was real yet.
The toaster clicked softly as it cooled.
“I have to go,” I said.
Rowan blinked. “You’re still in sweatpants.”
“I know.”
“And you’re holding toast.”
I looked down. The slice was bent slightly where I’d been gripping it too hard. I set it on the counter without taking a bite.
“I have to be there,” I said, more to myself than to him.
Rowan studied me for a long second, then nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “You do.”
I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair and shoved my feet into my shoes without tying them properly. My hands shook a little as I stuffed my wallet and phone into my pockets. But this wasn’t fear. It wasn’t fear at all.
As I reached the door, Rowan spoke again. “You know,” he said, casual but not careless, “showing up counts as an answer, too.”
I paused with my hand on the knob.
“I know,” I said.
The morning air was already colder and crisper against my face as I stepped out. I walked fast, then faster, my thoughts lining up neatly for once.
I couldn’t give Jason certainty yet. I couldn’t say the words, not when they still felt like something I might drop and shatter if I handled them wrong. I was too aware of how much weight they carried. How permanent they sounded once spoken aloud.
But I could do this.
I could sit in the back of the lecture hall, quiet and unobtrusive, a fixed point he could glance at when his brain threatened to short-circuit. I could be the familiar face in a room full of stress and noise. I could be proof that he wasn’t doing this alone.
Not showing up would mean something, whether I intended it to or not. It would mean distance. It would mean I didn’t feel the way he felt.
And that wasn’t the truth.
The truth was simpler. It was so simple that it had blinded me.
I loved him, too.
I loved him even if I hadn’t realized it. I loved him even if it had scared me into stunned silence. I loved him even if it was too late already.
I crossed the quad with my heart pounding, already imagining the way his shoulders would drop when he saw me there. The small, relieved smile he’d try and fail to hide.
By the time I reached the lecture hall, my lungs burned.
I slowed only because I had to, chest heaving as I stopped just outside the door. The corridor smelled faintly of dust and old books and something metallic from the radiators. My reflection stared back at me from the narrow window in the door, hair a mess, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright.
Get it together.
I pressed my lips together and breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth, counting the seconds until the pounding in my chest eased into something manageable. This wasn’t about me. It couldn’t be. This was about showing up, not falling apart in public.
When I pushed the door open, I did it carefully, slipping through the gap like a ghost.
The room was quiet in that tense, focused way lecture halls got during exams. Pens scratched across paper. Someone coughed softly a few rows down. Pages shifted, and chairs creaked. Professor Colby sat at the front, glasses perched low on his nose as he sorted through a neat stack of exams.
He looked up when I entered.
Our eyes met for a brief moment, and he gave a small nod. No questions or interruption, just a nod that I had too much at stake to miss this.
I closed the door behind me as gently as I could and stayed near the back wall, letting my eyes adjust.
Then I saw him.
Jason sat a few rows down, broad shoulders slightly hunched over the desk, curls catching the overhead light and shining softly, like they always did when the sun hit them just right. His pencil moved fast, then paused. His foot bounced under the desk, an anxious tell I knew too well by now.
Something in my chest opened so wide it almost hurt.
There it was again. That feeling I’d been trying to reason my way around for days. Not infatuation. Not panic. Not the dizzy rush of novelty. It was deeper than that, quieter and heavier, like gravity. Like home.
I loved him.
The truth settled in without drama this time.
I took another step inside, choosing a seat near the back, close enough that I could see him clearly without being in his line of sight. I set my bag down carefully and folded my hands in my lap, willing myself not to stare.
It didn’t matter.
As if tugged by something beyond the laws of the universe, Jason shifted. His shoulders tightened, and then he turned his head, just slightly, glancing back over his shoulder.
Our eyes met.
The worry etched across his face vanished instantly as if it had never been there. The tight line of his mouth softened. His eyes lit up, bright and warm and unmistakably relieved.
He smiled.
Something in my throat closed.
That look wasn’t confusion or hope or projection. It wasn’t him mistaking comfort for something bigger. It was recognition. It was knowing. It was the kind of look you gave someone when their presence alone made the world feel steadier.
I’d been so wrong to doubt him.
Jason held my gaze for a second longer, then turned back to his exam, shoulders visibly easing, pencil moving again with renewed focus.
I sat there, heart pounding, watching the back of his head like it was the most important thing in the room.
I was here.