Chapter 7

"Yes," Ethan said.

Lucas did not move.

Rain ticked against the window. The room was too small for the distance suddenly opening between them.

"Since when?" Lucas asked.

Ethan looked down at the phone in his hand. Northstar's name glowed across the dark screen, visible to both of them now.

"Since the bathroom."

Lucas's mouth opened, then closed.

"The bathroom," he repeated.

"You dropped your phone under the door. A message came through."

For a second Lucas looked like he might sit down. Instead, he gripped the edge of his desk.

"You knew all this time."

"I knew who you were."

"And you said nothing."

Ethan laughed, but there was no amusement in it. "You said plenty. Just not to me."

Lucas looked at him as though he had slapped him.

Ethan hated that he felt relief after finally saying it. The secret had been living under his ribs for days, sharp and bright and impossible to swallow.

"Every night, you called me sweetheart," he continued. "Every day, you could barely look at me. You worried about whether Marigold was eating, whether he was sleeping, whether someone was being kind to him. But Ethan could be sitting three feet away from you and you didn't notice."

"That isn't fair."

"No. It isn't."

Lucas dragged a hand through his wet hair. "I didn't know."

"Exactly."

"I didn't know because you never told me your name."

"I told you I lived in Cedar Hall."

"There are four hundred people in Cedar Hall."

"I said I was studying digital media. I said I had a roommate who talked in his sleep. I sent you pictures of this room."

Lucas flinched. "You never sent your face."

Ethan's anger caught on something vulnerable.

"I was afraid you wouldn't like it."

Lucas looked up.

The words hung between them, humiliating in their honesty.

Ethan wished he could take them back. Instead, he kept going because stopping would have meant breaking.

"You were different online," he said. "You were so easy to want. Then I saw you here, with everyone watching you, and I thought maybe that version of you was only for someone who could stay anonymous."

Lucas's eyes softened.

"Ethan—"

"Don't."

Lucas went silent.

Ethan stared at the empty space under Lucas's bed. "I tested you. I shouldn't have. I know that. I wanted to know if you cared about me or just about a voice in your headphones."

"So you told me you had a boyfriend."

"You gave me nothing to work with."

"I gave you everything I knew how to give."

The words came out rough and immediate.

Ethan looked at him.

Lucas's composure had broken completely. His hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes were bright, his expression stripped bare by the rain and exhaustion.

"I sent you my stupid sketches," Lucas said. "I told you about my dad. I told you things I don't say to people who can look at me afterward. I thought that was real."

"It was real."

"Then why did you make me feel like an idiot?"

Because I was hurt. Because I wanted you to hurt too. Because I did not know how to ask you to choose me without pretending I did not care.

Ethan could not make any of those reasons noble.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Lucas laughed once, painfully. "That doesn't fix it."

"I know."

They stood in silence until Lucas looked away first.

"And the wallet?" he asked.

Ethan felt the floor tilt again.

"I don't know who put it there."

"But you thought it could be me."

"I was scared."

"So was I."

The quietness of his voice hurt more than anger would have.

Lucas sat on his bed at last, elbows resting on his knees. "Do you know what Derek said after you went to the bathroom?"

Ethan shook his head.

"He said maybe you didn't want housing to get involved because someone had paid you to stay quiet. He said you had a rich online boyfriend, and maybe I walked in on something I wasn't supposed to see."

Ethan's stomach turned.

"Derek said that?"

"You were there. You heard parts of it."

"I heard him being an asshole. I didn't hear that."

Lucas looked at him. "I didn't want to believe him."

"But you did."

"For a second." Lucas pressed his palms over his face. "For one terrible second, I did. And then I hated myself for it."

Ethan sat down on his own bed, suddenly exhausted.

He thought of Derek sitting in the common room, eager to tell him that Lucas had been upset. He thought of Derek discovering the wallet too quickly. He thought of the way Derek had asked,

You keep that much cash in a dorm room?

The realization formed slowly.

"Derek knew," Ethan said.

Lucas lowered his hands. "What?"

"He knew how much was missing before I told anyone."

Lucas's expression sharpened.

"When I said my wallet was gone, he asked how much," Ethan continued. "I said two eighty. Then he acted surprised I had it. But he also said he grabbed his charger this morning."

"His charger is on the common-room table," Lucas said.

Ethan looked toward the door.

Neither of them moved for a moment.

Then Lucas stood.

"We need Naomi," he said.

Ethan shook his head. "No. I don't want—"

"You don't have to do this alone."

The words were almost identical to something Northstar had once told him during a bad week. But this time Lucas said them without a headset, without a screen, without any place to hide.

Ethan's chest tightened.

"You thought I stole it," he said.

"I was wrong."

"You thought I was taking money from someone for—"

"I was wrong," Lucas said again, louder this time. His eyes held Ethan's. "I was cruel because I was scared and jealous and embarrassed, and none of that is an excuse."

Ethan looked away.

Lucas crossed the room but stopped before reaching him, leaving a careful space between them.

"You don't have to forgive me tonight," he said. "Maybe you don't forgive me at all. But Derek put your money under my bed. He wanted you to think I was the problem. I need you to let me help prove it."

Ethan wanted to say no.

He wanted to protect the last small corner of himself that had not been examined, judged, or made into a reason to leave.

Instead, he picked up the receipt note Lucas had left that morning.

We should talk tonight.

They were talking now. Too late, too honestly, and still not enough.

"Okay," Ethan said.

Lucas exhaled.

Together, they went looking for Miles.

They found him in the study lounge with a calculus textbook open in front of him and a bowl of cereal balanced on the corner of the table. He listened without interrupting as Ethan explained about the missing wallet, the search, and Derek's knowledge of the cash.

"I saw Derek in your room this morning," Miles said when Ethan finished.

Lucas went still.

"Why didn't you say that?"

Miles looked ashamed. "I thought he was grabbing his charger. He told me he forgot it after class."

"Did you see him open Ethan's desk?"

"No. I was at the door. But he had something in his jacket pocket. I thought it was his phone."

Ethan's pulse started racing.

Miles reached into his backpack and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper.

"There is more," he said. "I found this in the laundry room yesterday. I thought it was trash."

It was the blue envelope from Ethan's wallet.

His mother's handwriting was still visible on the front:

Bus, food, emergency. Love you.

The envelope had been opened along the side.

Lucas closed his eyes.

"We call Naomi now," he said.

This time, Ethan nodded.

The meeting with their RA lasted forty minutes. Naomi Park did not make promises she could not keep. She asked questions, wrote everything down, and said she would contact housing security in the morning to review the hallway camera outside their room.

When they left her office, it was nearly one in the morning.

The rain had stopped.

Ethan and Lucas stood under the yellow light outside Cedar Hall, neither ready to go back upstairs.

"I should have told you," Ethan said.

Lucas looked at him. "About being Marigold?"

"About everything."

"I should have noticed."

"You couldn't have."

"Maybe not at first." Lucas's gaze dropped to the wet pavement. "But I should have seen you."

The sentence was quiet enough that Ethan almost missed it.

Lucas swallowed. "I did see you, though. That was the problem."

Ethan's heart gave one hard, painful beat.

"What does that mean?"

Lucas's mouth twitched without becoming a smile. "It means I was less brave in person. I thought if you knew it was me, you would hear all the awkward parts of me that I could hide online."

"I heard them anyway."

"I know."

They looked at each other.

No screens. No gamer tags. No safe distance.

Lucas lifted his hand as if he wanted to touch Ethan's face, then stopped halfway and let it fall.

Ethan understood the restraint. He understood it too well.

His phone vibrated.

Both of them looked down.

The Discord notification was from Northstar.

Northstar: I don't care if you hate me. I just need you safe.

Ethan looked up at Lucas.

Lucas had clearly sent it while standing beside him.

For the first time since the bathroom door, Ethan did not turn the screen away.

"I don't hate you," he said.

Lucas's breath caught.

"But you hurt me."

"I know."

"And I hurt you too."

"Yes."

The truth between them was still a mess. Derek was still upstairs. The wallet was still evidence of a betrayal neither of them had earned.

But Lucas did not step back.

Neither did Ethan.

When the dormitory door opened behind them, both men turned at the same time.

Derek stood in the lobby, pale under the fluorescent lights.

And in his hand, he was holding a black phone that was not his.