Chapter 4

Ethan stared at the phone in his hand as if it had changed shape.

The screen had gone black again, but his reflection remained in it: wide eyes, damp hair falling over his forehead, one hand still braced against the bathroom door.

On the other side of the wood, Lucas gave the door a light knock.

"Cole? You alive?"

Ethan swallowed. "Yeah. Sorry. Your phone almost slipped."

For half a second, he considered opening the door and handing it over. That would have been normal. Easy. The kind of thing a roommate did without turning it into a moment.

But the phone had lit up in his palm.

One notification. One stupidly familiar name.

Northstar: I am still here.

The message sat beneath a call banner from Discord, blue and white against the dark lock screen. The tiny crescent-moon icon beside the account name was one Ethan had looked at nearly every night for eight months. He knew it better than the hawk tattoo on Lucas's wrist, better than the campus map, better than the town he had left behind.

He had been in love with a voice.

And that voice belonged to the guy showering three feet away from him.

Ethan cleared his throat, forced his fingers to move, and slid the phone back under the door.

"Thanks," Lucas said.

Their fingertips brushed for less than a second.

It should not have mattered. It was only skin against skin, accidental and brief. But Ethan felt it like a spark snapping from a loose wire. He pulled his hand back too quickly and knocked his elbow against the sink.

"You okay?" Lucas asked.

"Fine."

Lucas was quiet for a beat. Then, with a trace of amusement in his voice, "You say that like someone being held hostage."

Ethan pressed his palms flat against the counter. "Maybe I just don't want to make small talk through a bathroom door."

"Fair."

The shower started again. Water rushed through the pipes, erasing the evidence of the impossible thing Ethan had just seen.

Northstar was Lucas Vale.

Lucas Vale was Northstar.

And somehow Lucas had never connected Ethan Cole, the roommate who wore battered headphones and stayed up too late gaming, to Marigold, the boy who had spent months listening to him breathe at the end of calls.

Ethan's pulse refused to settle.

He looked around the bathroom for an answer he would not find. The place was painfully ordinary: toothpaste splatter on the mirror, a towel hanging crookedly from a hook, a razor near the drain. Lucas's charcoal-gray hoodie was folded over the closed toilet lid. A clean shirt waited on the counter beside his watch.

Nothing about it looked like the private place Northstar had occupied in Ethan's mind.

Northstar had been warm in ways Lucas never allowed himself to be in daylight. Northstar remembered that Ethan hated pickles, sent him pictures of a stray orange cat behind the engineering building, and once stayed awake until four in the morning because Ethan had admitted he was afraid his mother's hospital bill would swallow his savings.

Lucas, meanwhile, could ask whether Ethan had finished a class project as if he were taking attendance.

The contrast should have made the answer less believable.

Instead, it made too much sense.

Lucas only knew how to be gentle when he thought no one could see him.

Ethan left the bathroom before the thought could turn into something worse. He shut himself in their bedroom, sat on the edge of his mattress, and opened Discord with shaking hands.

Northstar was online.

The green dot beside his name made Ethan laugh once, silently and without humor.

He typed, deleted, typed again.

Marigold: Are you somewhere private?

The reply came almost immediately.

Northstar: Bathroom. Why?

Ethan stared at the words until his eyes stung.

There it was. Confirmation, clean and cruel in its simplicity.

He could end the game right now. He could send a picture of the Cedar Hall door. He could write,

Turn around when you come out. It's me.

He imagined Lucas reading it. Imagined the beautiful, controlled expression on his roommate's face breaking for the first time. He imagined Lucas's shock, his embarrassment, maybe even relief.

Then Ethan remembered every moment he had stood near Lucas and felt foolishly invisible.

The late nights when Lucas came back from studio and barely noticed him behind a screen.

The way Lucas had accepted expensive coffee from Derek with a distracted nod, while Ethan counted coins for laundry.

The sharp, careful distance Lucas kept between them whenever anyone else was watching.

If Lucas had not known, then Ethan had a choice.

He could reveal himself and risk watching Lucas pull away.

Or he could wait long enough to learn whether the person Northstar loved had ever been real to Lucas at all.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard.

Marigold: No reason. Just checking.

Lucas did not respond for several seconds.

Then:

Northstar: You sound strange.

Ethan smiled despite himself. It was a terrible smile, thin at the edges.

Marigold: Maybe I am.

The bathroom door opened.

Ethan dropped his phone onto the bed just as Lucas stepped into the room, towel draped around his neck, dark hair wet and pushed back from his forehead. He wore loose black sweatpants and nothing else. Steam clung to his skin, and a bead of water slid from his collarbone toward the waistband of his pants.

Ethan's brain, already overloaded, simply stopped working.

Lucas caught him looking.

"What?" he asked.

The word was mild. His eyes were not.

Ethan turned toward his desk so abruptly that his chair scraped the floor. "Nothing."

"You were staring."

"I was not."

"You absolutely were."

Ethan forced himself to face him. It was a mistake. Lucas looked even more unfair from the front: broad shoulders, lean waist, a faint flush from the hot shower. The sight collided with the memory of Northstar laughing low in Ethan's headset, calling him sweetheart when he thought Ethan had fallen asleep.

"You've got a point," Ethan said, because lying convincingly had never been one of his talents.

Lucas blinked.

"A point?"

"A very normal point," Ethan said quickly. "About... personal space."

For the first time since Ethan had met him, Lucas looked genuinely caught off guard. Color rose slowly along the back of his neck.

"Right," Lucas said.

He grabbed a shirt from the chair and pulled it over his head with more speed than necessary.

Ethan watched the hem fall over Lucas's stomach and had to bite the inside of his cheek.

This was going badly. He had not even begun testing him, and he was already one stupid comment away from exposing everything.

Lucas picked up his phone. The screen lit with another Discord notification.

His gaze flicked to Ethan's face, then away.

"You gaming tonight?" Lucas asked.

The casualness was almost convincing.

Ethan lifted his own phone. "Maybe."

"With Wren?"

The question came too fast.

Wren was a name Ethan had used once, in passing, for a classmate who sometimes joined their server. Lucas did not even like Wren. He had made that clear through silences so polite they could have been mistaken for indifference.

Ethan kept his expression blank. "Why?"

"No reason."

There it was again: Lucas Vale's favorite lie.

Ethan could have laughed. Instead, he leaned back against his desk and let the silence stretch just enough to make Lucas look at him.

"You care who I play with now?" he asked.

Lucas's jaw tightened.

"I care if you're loud after midnight."

"That is the least romantic answer anyone has ever given me."

The color returned to Lucas's face, deeper this time.

"Who said anything about romantic?"

Ethan's heart stumbled. The online version of Lucas would have teased him back. The offline version looked like he might walk directly into a wall to escape the conversation.

Ethan softened before he meant to. "No one. I was joking."

Lucas nodded once, but the tension stayed in his shoulders.

At his desk, Ethan's Discord call began to ring.

Northstar's name flashed across the screen.

Lucas froze.

Ethan looked from the incoming call to Lucas's phone, which had begun vibrating in his hand at the exact same time.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Lucas's expression changed—not into recognition, not quite. Into suspicion, perhaps. Into the small, sharp awareness of a coincidence that did not yet have a shape.

Ethan answered first and lifted his phone to his ear.

"Hey," he said, keeping his eyes on Lucas.

In his earbuds, Northstar's voice arrived low and familiar.

"Hey, sweetheart."

Lucas's face went still.

Ethan felt the secret settle between them, bright as a blade.

He had the truth now.

Lucas only had a question.

And Ethan was not ready to give him the answer.