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The house didn’t settle.
That was the first thing Ethan noticed.
By the second week of classes, it should have. The rhythm should have come back. The easy division of space, the unspoken rules about who belonged where, who spoke when, who mattered. It always did.
But now the edges wouldn’t hold.
There were too many people.
The front door stayed open longer than it should have, voices carrying onto the lawn in uneven bursts. Shoes piled in the entryway. Someone had dragged a mattress halfway down the hall and left it there, angled against the wall like a decision that hadn’t been finished.
It wasn’t chaos.
It was worse than that.
It was expansion.
Ethan stepped over a duffel bag just inside the door and paused. The common room was already full, more bodies than the space really allowed, conversations overlapping just enough to keep any one of them from settling.
Connor had taken the couch again, feet up, one arm thrown across the back like it was still his. Teddy was sunk into the chair across from him, not even pretending to sit up. Marco leaned in the doorway, half in the room, half out of it, laughing at something that didn’t quite land but didn’t need to.
And threaded through all of it:
Freshmen.
You could spot them immediately. Not by what they wore, though that helped. It was the way they moved. A half-second hesitation before stepping into a space. The way they laughed just a beat too late, waiting to see if they were allowed.
One of them hovered near the kitchen doorway, hands jammed into his pockets like that alone might hold him together. Connor clocked him instantly.
“Hey,” Connor said, snapping his fingers once. “You. What’s your name?”
The kid straightened. “Ryan.”
“Ryan what?”
“Dalton.”
Connor nodded like he’d just been handed something useful. “You got a room?”
“Kind of?”
“Good,” Connor said. “Then you can help us out.”
Ryan hesitated.
Then nodded.
Of course he did.
Ethan looked away before the moment could settle.
Across the room, Mark stood near the center of it all, already moving like he’d been doing this for years. He had two of the freshmen pulled into a loose circle, one hand resting on a shoulder here, a quick laugh there, guiding the conversation without ever looking like he was doing it.
“We’ve got half a class handed to us,” he was saying. “Might as well make it count.”
Connor perked up from the couch. “Now you’re talking.”
“That’s efficient,” Mark shot back, grinning.
Marco shook his head, smiling. “You don’t waste time.”
“Never have.”
It wasn’t forced.
That was the thing.
Mark wasn’t trying to be anything. He had just stepped into it, like the room had been waiting for him to fill it.
Ethan felt something tighten.
It made sense.
That was the problem.
He leaned back against the wall and let the noise move around him. It wasn’t overwhelming, not the way it had been last year. This was different.
He could see it now. The way the room shifted depending on who spoke. The way attention gathered and dispersed.
From the far side of the room, Tyler stood against the wall, a beer in his hand that didn’t look touched. He hadn’t moved much since Ethan walked in.
Not disengaged.
Just not pulled.
Ethan pushed off the wall and made his way over, weaving through bodies and half-heard conversation.
“Fun,” Tyler said as he stepped up beside him.
“Something like that.”
Tyler’s eyes flicked toward Mark’s group, then back. “He’s not wasting any time.”
Ethan followed his gaze. “No.”
A beat.
“You think they know what they walked into?” Tyler asked.
Ethan watched Ryan again, the way he nodded too quickly at something Mark said, the way his shoulders stayed just a little too tight.
“No,” Ethan said. “Not yet.”
Tyler let out something that might have been a laugh.
Behind them, the stereo crackled, cut out, then snapped back on louder than before. Someone cheered like that alone justified it. The sound filled the room, pushing everything forward a half-step.
It didn’t need direction.
It just needed bodies.
Ethan took a beer from someone passing by without really looking. He didn’t drink it. Just held it, letting the condensation collect in his palm.
Across the room, Mark caught his eye.
Grinned.
Raised his bottle.
Ethan lifted a hand in answer, not quite a wave.
Then Mark was pulled back into it, someone saying his name, another voice cutting in, the center of the room shifting around him like it had already decided where he belonged.
Tyler didn’t move.
“Come on,” he said quietly.
Ethan glanced over. “Where?”
Tyler tipped his head toward the hallway. “Anywhere but here.”
Ethan hesitated.
Not because he didn’t understand.
Because he did.
He set the beer down on the nearest surface without taking a sip.
“Yeah,” he said.
They moved down the hallway without speaking, the noise fading just enough to feel like distance without actually disappearing. A couple of freshmen sat on the floor near the stairs, backs against the wall, talking in low voices like they were trying not to be noticed.
They stopped talking as Ethan and Tyler passed.
Of course they did.
Outside, the air hit clean.
Not cold yet. Just enough to cut through the heat of the house and make everything feel sharper. The deck was fuller than it had been earlier, small groups clustered near the railing, someone leaning too far over the edge, another couple talking quietly near the steps like they’d carved out a pocket of space that belonged to them.
Ethan leaned against one of the columns, the wood still warm from the day.
Tyler stood beside him.
Close.
Not touching.
“You good?” Tyler asked.
Ethan let out a breath. “Yeah.”
Tyler glanced back toward the room.
Inside, the music swelled again, louder now, the bass carrying through the walls. Someone shouted something that got lost before it reached them. Laughter followed anyway.
The house had tipped.
Fast.
Like it had been waiting for this.
Ethan looked back through the open door.
Mark was still there, exactly where he’d been, the room gathered around him now without question. Connor had pulled two of the freshmen into something that looked suspiciously like a drinking game. Teddy was calling out rules from the couch. Marco leaned in the doorway, watching it all unfold like he’d seen it a hundred times before.
Which he had.
So had Ethan.
Only now he could see it.
Not from inside.
From the edge.
“It’s the same,” Tyler said.
Ethan nodded once. “Yeah.”
A beat.
“Doesn’t feel the same.”
“No.”
They stood there another second.
Then Tyler said, “There’s something happening tonight.”
Ethan looked over.
“Off campus,” Tyler said. “Same place.”
That landed differently this time.
Not like the first time, when it had felt like an invitation to something he didn’t understand. He already knew what it was. The house. The music. The way he had stopped thinking about himself for a few hours without realizing it.
A place that didn’t need anything from him.
“You don’t have to,” Tyler said.
“I know.”
Inside, someone called Ethan’s name.
He didn’t turn.
“When?”
“Later. Around ten.”
Ethan nodded once.
The noise behind them swelled again as the door opened wider, carrying the night with it.
Same House. Just louder now.
Ethan glanced back once.
Mark caught his eye again.
Grinned.
Like everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.
Ethan held it for a second.
Then looked away.
“Yeah,” he said. “Alright.”
Tyler didn’t react much, but something in his posture settled.
“Alright.”
They stood there another second, the space between them quiet in a way that didn’t need filling.
Then Tyler pushed off the railing.
“I’ll meet you out front.”
Ethan nodded.
Tyler stepped back inside without looking to see if he followed.
Ethan stayed where he was.
The yard stretched out in front of him, worn in the same places it had been last year. The same patches of dirt where grass refused to grow. The same uneven line where the lawn gave way to the street.
Nothing had changed.
Not really.
Behind him, the house roared on, louder now, pulling people in, reshaping itself around whoever stepped through the door.
Ethan let out a slow breath.
Then he stepped off the porch and into the dark.
The street looked narrower than Ethan remembered.
Not because it had. The same sagging porches leaned toward each other across the road, the same patchy sidewalks gave way to dirt and crabgrass, the same old houses sat with their lights burning low behind curtains that didn’t fully close. But last time he had arrived half-braced, still carrying the stiffness of Westmore in his shoulders. The place had felt hidden then, like something he’d stumbled into by accident.
Tonight it just felt farther away from campus than the map suggested.
Tyler parked behind a battered Subaru with a cracked Kerry sticker on the bumper and killed the engine. For a second neither of them moved.
The house sat at the end of the block with a porch that looked one hard winter away from surrender. A strand of leftover white lights still hung unevenly from the railing, half-burned out, giving the whole place the look of something surviving on charm longer than structure. Music drifted through the screen door, low and unhurried, a female voice Ethan didn’t recognize, something all guitar and ache.
Tyler pushed his door open first.
“You coming?”
Ethan nodded once and followed him up the walk.
The porch boards complained under their weight. Somewhere inside, someone laughed, not loudly, just fully, without the clipped edge people wore at Westmore when they were trying to sound relaxed in front of each other.
Tyler didn’t knock. He pulled the door open and held it just long enough for Ethan to step through ahead of him.
Warmth met him first.
Then scent.
Patchouli again, faint this time, mixed with sangria, old wood, cigarettes, something sweet burning in the kitchen. The house was full, but not crowded the way Delta Chi always was. Conversations rose and dipped. Music lived inside the room instead of sitting on top of it.
Ethan stopped just past the threshold, not because he felt out of place but because his body seemed to remember before his mind caught up.
The place had changed less than he had.
A girl with cropped black hair sat cross-legged on the floor near the record player, arguing cheerfully with someone in wire-rim glasses about whether R.E.M. counted as Southern Gothic. A broad-shouldered guy in a thermal leaned against the kitchen archway, listening with his whole face. Two men stood near the back windows sharing a cigarette, heads bent toward each other in a way that wasn’t furtive or staged.
That still struck him.
Tyler touched his elbow lightly.
“You’re doing the thing again,” he said.
“What thing?”
“The standing in the doorway like somebody waiting for someone to tell him he belongs.”
Ethan huffed a laugh. “Maybe they should.”
“They won’t,” Tyler said.
Then he stepped away, not abandoning him, just moving into the room with the same easy confidence he carried everywhere that wasn’t the fraternity house. He paused near the kitchen arch, greeted someone with a nod and a quick hand to the shoulder, then leaned down to hear something over the music.
No performance.
Just Tyler.
A woman in an oversized cardigan appeared beside Ethan, holding a chipped wine glass
“You look less terrified this time,” she said, offering it.
Ethan took the glass automatically. “That obvious?”
“Only to people who were here the first time.”
He looked at her more closely then. Same faded ACT UP shirt under the cardigan, same amused steadiness in her face. He remembered her now.
“You remember me?” he asked.
“I remember all of Jason’s boys,” she said. “Some of you arrive looking like you’re about to be arrested for breathing wrong.”
That got another laugh out of him.
He looked down into the glass. Sangria, homemade, dark and fragrant, the fumes from the cheap wine burning his nostrils.
“Jason’s not here?” she asked.
“Richmond, I think. I’m sure he won’t be able to stay away for long.”
She nodded like that made sense. “You’ll survive without a chaperone.”
Before he could answer, someone called her name from the other room. She tipped two fingers against the rim of his glass in parting.
“Go stand somewhere like you meant to,” she said. “It helps.”
He watched her disappear toward the kitchen, then realized he was smiling into his drink.
The room hadn’t gotten quieter.
He had.
He moved farther in, just enough to stop behaving like he’d been dropped there by mistake. A cluster of people near the bookshelf shifted to let him through without needing to be asked. Someone brushed his shoulder in passing and didn’t apologize for taking up space.
Near the mantel, the lanky guy in the Henley from the first visit was digging through a stack of records. He looked up, squinted once in recognition, then smiled.
“Westmore.”
Ethan lifted the glass slightly. “That obvious too?”
“Only because you look like you’re noticing everything.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“That seems like a waste.”
The guy pulled out a record and held it up. “You still listening to whatever sad boys from your tape deck got you through high school?”
Ethan laughed. “Depends who’s asking.”
“Neil,” the guy said. “History, technically. Poor judgment, otherwise.”
“Ethan.”
“I know.”
“Should I be worried about that?”
“Not unless you’re dull.”
Neil slid the record from its sleeve with practiced care and set it on the turntable. “Relax. You survived Jason Whitmore dragging you here the first time. You can survive me.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“That’s because it happened to you.”
The needle dropped. A softer song came in, older, low enough that the room seemed to angle itself around it. Neil stepped back from the turntable and glanced over Ethan’s shoulder.
“Your friend’s watching you,” he said.
Ethan turned.
Tyler was in the kitchen doorway now, one forearm braced against the frame, talking to a dark-haired girl in a denim jacket Ethan didn’t know. He wasn’t staring exactly. But his eyes had drifted back more than once.
When Ethan met his gaze, Tyler tipped his head once.
You good?
Ethan answered with the smallest shift of his shoulders.
Yeah.
Neil noticed anyway.
“Nice,” he said.
Ethan looked back at him. “What is?”
Neil shrugged. “Whatever that was.”
Before Ethan could answer, someone crossed between them calling Neil toward the dining room. He went easily, leaving Ethan standing by the turntable with the wine in his hand.
He hadn’t expected the place to feel familiar.
He had expected to remember it. The smell. The warmth. The relief of not having to guard every angle of himself at once.
Familiarity was different.
He wandered toward the back of the house, passing framed prints gone slightly crooked on the walls, a kitchen table crowded with bottles, and a bowl of cigarettes and loose change and matchbooks like some communal offering.
Two women stood by the sink, laughing over something one of them was trying and failing to cut with a dull knife. Neither stopped talking when he came in. One of them just slid the cutting board farther toward the center to make room and kept going.
Not being ignored. Being included without ceremony.
He set the glass down long enough to reach for one of the oranges and was halfway through slicing it when Tyler appeared in the doorway.
“There you are,” he said.
Ethan looked up. “I’ve been in the kitchen for maybe thirty seconds.”
Tyler leaned one shoulder against the frame, hands in his pockets. “Long enough.”
The woman with the knife glanced between them. “Either help or stop hovering.”
Tyler pushed off the frame and moved beside Ethan at the table. “What’s the task?”
“Proof you’re useful.”
“That’s a high bar.”
“Then start with the apples.”
He did, reaching for the paring knife beside Ethan’s hand, their wrists knocking lightly in the process. Neither of them pulled away too fast.
The women kept talking. Something about a professor. Something about a girl named Marian who’d gone home with a Baptist and then claimed not to remember it. The conversation moved around Tyler and Ethan without making them perform for it, and they fell into the work easily. Slice. Core. Drop. The apples piled into a mixing bowl between them, skins curling into long red strips.
Tyler glanced down at the orange in Ethan’s hand. “That’s not how you do it.”
“It’s working.”
“It’s tragic.”
Ethan smirked. “You volunteering?”
Tyler took the orange from him, their fingers brushing sticky with juice and spice, then cut the peel in one clean spiral without breaking it.
“Show-off,” Ethan said.
“Competence isn’t showing off.”
“In this room maybe not.”
Tyler looked at him then, the hint of a smile still at one corner of his mouth.
“That is the point.”
One of the women shoved the bowl toward the stove. “You can brood later. Stir this.”
Tyler laughed and handed the spoon to Ethan instead. “You stir. Apparently I’m no help.”
“That’s true everywhere,” the other woman said, and the room broke around it in easy laughter.
Ethan leaned over the pot, the steam carrying up wine, citrus, all of it softened by heat. Tyler stayed beside him, close enough that the outside of his arm pressed briefly against Ethan’s before either of them shifted.
Across the room, someone started singing quietly along with the record, off-key but not embarrassingly so. More voices joined, not to take over, just because they knew it.
Tyler leaned down slightly, voice low enough to stay between them.
“You look different this time.”
Ethan kept stirring. “How?”
“Less like you’re waiting to be found out.”
That landed harder than he expected.
He glanced sideways. “Maybe I’m just getting better at hiding it.”
Tyler shook his head once. “No.”
The steam rose between them, briefly blurring Tyler’s face before clearing again.
“Last time,” Ethan said carefully, “I kept thinking somebody would walk in and decide I was wrong.”
Tyler was quiet for a second. Then: “And now?”
Ethan let the spoon circle once, twice. “Now I think maybe that’s just Westmore talking.”
The answer sat there between them.
Tyler didn’t rush to fill it. He reached for Ethan’s glass, took a sip without asking, then set it back down in the same spot.
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”
The woman with the knife took the spoon from Ethan’s hand and shooed them both sideways. “Enough domesticity. Go get drunk”
Tyler nodded solemnly. “Cruel but fair.”
Ethan picked his glass back up, still warm from Tyler’s mouth, and followed him out of the kitchen.
The side room was barely a room.
Two old chairs, a narrow bookshelf bowed in the middle, and a lamp with a yellow shade that made everything look softer than it was. The window behind the chairs was cracked open just enough to let in the night air and the hum of insects from the yard.
Tyler leaned against the doorframe instead of sitting.
Ethan stayed standing for a second, glass still in his hand, listening to the house continue around them. A laugh rose from the front room and fell away. Someone crossed the hallway outside, footsteps light, then gone. The record in the other room changed over with a soft pop.
It didn’t feel hidden.
Just smaller.
Tyler folded his arms loosely across his chest. “You went quiet.”
Ethan looked over. “Did I?”
“A little.”
Ethan smiled faintly. “You say that like you’ve known me forever.”
Tyler shrugged. “Long enough.”
That landed somewhere low and quiet.
Ethan moved to the window and rested the glass on the sill, looking out at the dark slope of the yard. Somewhere beyond that, past the neighborhood and the roads and the river, Westmore still sat where it always had, all brick and order and the illusion of permanence.
It felt farther away than it should have.
Behind him, Tyler stepped into the room.
Not close enough to crowd him. Just enough that Ethan could feel the change in the air.
“You alright?” Tyler asked.
Ethan kept his eyes on the yard. “Yeah.”
Tyler waited.
Then: “That’s not really an answer.”
Ethan let out a soft breath. “I know.”
He turned then, leaning one shoulder back against the sill. Tyler was standing near the bookshelf now, one hand resting on the bent middle shelf as if testing whether it would hold.
For a second neither of them spoke.
It wasn’t uncomfortable.
Speech just wasn’t urgent.
“I forgot what this felt like,” Ethan said finally.
“What?”
Ethan gestured toward the house beyond the room. “Being somewhere and not feeling like I have to get myself right before anybody notices me.”
Tyler’s expression softened. “Yeah. That part’s hard to unlearn.”
Ethan looked down at his hands. “I keep thinking I should know what I’m doing by now.”
Tyler gave a small exhale. “Why?”
Ethan looked up.
“Seriously,” Tyler said. “Why?”
“Because everyone else seems to.”
Tyler smiled a little. “They don’t.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“It’s not easy for me to say. It’s just true.”
Ethan leaned his head back against the window frame.
“I don’t mean just here,” he said after a second. “I mean in general. Westmore. The house. Everything.” He paused. “Last year at least I had the excuse of being new.”
Tyler moved to the chair nearest the lamp and dropped into it, one arm slung over the side.
“You think sophomore year is where everybody suddenly becomes a person?” he asked.
Ethan laughed despite himself. “Isn’t it?”
“No.”
Tyler tipped his head toward the door, toward the rest of the house.
“Half those guys are just louder now.”
That got him.
A real laugh this time, quick and low enough that Ethan felt it loosen something in his chest.
Tyler smiled at the sound of it, then looked down, rubbing his thumb over the worn arm of the chair.
The house shifted around them again. Someone called from the kitchen for more wine. A voice answered. The front door opened and closed, letting in a brief wash of colder air that moved down the hallway and disappeared.
Ethan stayed where he was.
He hadn’t been this still around someone in a long time without it turning into tension.
With Tyler it felt easier.
Tyler glanced up again. “What?”
Ethan blinked. “Nothing.”
Tyler watched him, waiting.
Ethan looked away, smiling into it. “You always know when I’m lying?”
“Pretty much.”
“That seems arrogant.”
“I’m comfortable with that.”
Ethan shook his head.
Then, because he was tired enough not to stop himself, he said, “This feels easier with you.”
Tyler didn’t look away.
“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”
Simple as that.
Ethan felt the answer go through him more sharply than he expected.
He looked down at the floorboards, at the scratches in the varnish, the dark knot in one plank near his shoe. Heat climbed into his face.
Tyler watched him for another second, then stood.
He crossed the room slowly, not tentative, not careless either. When he stopped, he was close enough that Ethan could see the faint line where the collar of his t-shirt had gone soft from too many washes.
Neither of them moved right away.
From somewhere down the hall came another burst of laughter, then the scrape of someone dragging a chair across wood. The sound should have broken the moment.
It didn’t.
Tyler’s hand came up first, not even really to touch at first. Just the backs of his fingers brushing once against Ethan’s wrist where it rested on the sill.
A question.
Ethan didn’t answer it out loud.
He turned his hand over.
That was enough.
Tyler’s fingers closed gently around his, warm and sure without tightening. Ethan felt the contact in his throat before he felt it anywhere else.
He hadn’t realized how much of the year had been spent bracing until that moment, when something in him stopped.
He looked up.
Tyler was close enough now that Ethan could see the small scar near his chin, the one he’d noticed before but never long enough to ask about. Lamp light. Open window. The warmth of another person standing close and not asking him to become somebody else first.
Tyler’s thumb moved once against the inside of his wrist.
“You don’t have to figure it out tonight,” he said.
Ethan swallowed. “I know.”
Tyler held his gaze. “I mean it.”
There was no pressure in it.
That, more than anything, made Ethan want to move closer.
He did, but only by an inch.
Maybe less.
It was enough that Tyler’s hand loosened, slid from his wrist into his palm. Enough that the space between them stopped feeling abstract and started feeling chosen.
Ethan let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “You always this patient?”
Tyler’s mouth tipped faintly at one corner. “No.”
“Good.”
Tyler smiled properly then, brief and unguarded.
Ethan had the sudden urge to touch his face just to see if the expression stayed there.
Instead he said, “If Mark saw us in here, he’d absolutely say something stupid.”
Tyler’s mouth tipped. “He’d say something stupid if he saw a lamp.”
Ethan laughed. “That’s true.”
Tyler’s fingers shifted in his hand, tightening slightly.
“You worried about him?” he asked.
Ethan knew who he meant.
Mark.
Maybe more than Mark.
The whole house. The whole structure of it. The way being seen there was never just being seen, but categorized, used, pulled into place.
He thought about Mark on the deck that afternoon saying, You don’t have to make it weird.
He thought about how little and how much that meant.
“A little,” Ethan said honestly.
Tyler nodded once. “Me too.”
That surprised him enough to show on his face.
Tyler saw it.
“I’m not scared of him,” he said. “Or any of them.” He glanced toward the hallway. “But that doesn’t mean I’m in the mood to hand them anything.”
Ethan let that sit.
It was one of the first times Tyler had said something that plain. Not buried under a joke or a shrug. Just true.
Ethan looked at their hands, still joined between them.
“You make it sound easy.”
Tyler shook his head. “No. I just don’t think easy is the point.”
The words landed softly, but they stayed.
Outside, something brushed against the side of the house. A branch maybe. The sound scraped lightly and passed. Somewhere in the front room, the song changed again, slower now, almost low enough to disappear.
Tyler looked at him for a long second.
Then he lifted their joined hands slightly, just enough to draw Ethan forward the last inch or two.
Not much.
Enough.
Ethan could feel the warmth of Tyler through his shirt now, the exact line where their bodies almost touched. He didn’t think about what came after. He just let himself want the nearness of it.
Tyler’s forehead brushed his once.
It could have become a kiss.
Instead they stayed there, slight and steady.
Ethan closed his eyes for half a second.
When Tyler stepped back, he didn’t let go immediately. His thumb slid once across Ethan’s knuckles before their hands came apart.
“We should go back before somebody comes looking,” he said.
Ethan opened his eyes. “Yeah.”
Neither moved.
Tyler smiled faintly. “In a second.”
That made Ethan laugh again, softer this time.
The house found them a minute later anyway. A voice from the hallway calling for Tyler. Another from farther off asking where the extra glasses were. Life reasserting itself with no respect for timing.
Tyler glanced toward the door, then back at Ethan with something like resignation and amusement folded together.
“There it is,” he said.
Ethan nodded.
He picked up his glass from the sill, now only faintly warm, and followed Tyler out into the hallway.
The house received them without noticing anything had changed.
The music was still low. The kitchen still bright with steam and motion. Neil was back near the turntable, arguing now with someone in a flannel over whether the next record was too depressing for the hour. People had shifted rooms, changed positions, picked up and set down conversations, but the feeling of the place remained intact.
It held.
Tyler peeled off toward the kitchen after a quick look back, one that didn’t have to mean more than it did.
Ethan stayed where he was for a second, near the little side-room door, watching the whole thing move.
No one scanned him.
No one sorted him into place.
No one asked him to prove he deserved to be there.
Later, when he and Tyler stepped back out into the night, the air had gone cooler. The walk to the car felt shorter than the walk in.
They didn’t talk much.
The quiet came back easily, settling between them without effort. Tyler drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the gearshift, the dashboard throwing pale green light across his wrist. The road curved back toward campus through patches of dark woods and empty intersections, the occasional porch light glowing in the distance like a held breath.
Ethan watched the headlights move over the road ahead.
Westmore would still be there when they got back.
The noise. The pressure. The roles waiting to be stepped into.
None of that had gone away.
He looked out the window, then over at Tyler, who kept his eyes on the road.
For a second Ethan let himself imagine what it would feel like not to split so cleanly between one life and another. Not yet. Just someday.
The thought didn’t scare him the way it once would have.
When the bell tower finally came into view through the trees, white against the dark, Ethan felt the old tightening in his chest begin out of habit.
Then stop.
Not disappear.
Just stop ruling everything else.
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