Max calls Henry into his office the way he has always done every year since he took over as the teacher for Heartbreaker Theory. But for the first time since that very first year, Henry isn’t sure he’s ready. There’s a pit in his stomach and his hands are shoved in his pockets so nobody can notice the way they tremble.

He thinks it’s a little useless to do that though. Max always notices these things. But still, he does it. It brings him a weird sense of comfort.

“I assume you know why we’re here,” Max says once he’s seated.

Henry nods. And then remembers that’s not how this conversation is meant to go. “Yes.”

“I’m assuming I know who it this year, but I’d still like to confirm.”

The thing is, Max doesn’t know. And that’s what makes Henry so anxious. “I’ll be mentoring Tristan.”

“Of course.”

“And Camilla.”

Max stills. “Camilla,” he repeats.

“Yes.” Henry breaks eye contact first. He always has.

“She’s new.”

“You jumped through so many hoops to get her here,” Henry says, all his reasons that he had so carefully formed long forgotten as the need to keep them all safe clouds his judgement and overpowers everything.

“We jumped through many hoops for lots of people who will be joining in the coming years, will you automatically chose them as your mentees when we have no evidence of their skills?” It’s harsh and rude and mocking and Henry wishes the door was open. But it’s weakness to try and open it.

“Camilla is special.”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“I see it in her. The mentoring is my responsibility.”

“Because I allow it to be. I hope you’re not just doing this under some misguided notion of protecting them from your fate.”

“Of course not,” he says, but it’s weak.

Max doesn’t look convinced, but he ends up just sighing. “If she sets a foot wrong-“

“She won’t.”

“How defensive. You’re losing your touch. Although, it’s questionable whether you ever had one.”

Henry swallows, refusing to rise to the bait. “If that’s all?”

Max nods, and he leaves the room calmly. Except he cannot help but worry of what life will look like in five years time after they have both graduated.

For several years, Ari was the first to read whatever Camilla wrote. Whether she liked it or thought it was awful, the first draft was for her and for him. He never criticised the first draft of anything, aware that the most important thing was that it existed because it could be made beautiful later. All he ever did was ask questions about small details and tell her she was awful for letting someone die or for leaving him on a cliffhanger.

And then she left, and he didn’t even know if she still wrote. But she came back, even if he doesn’t understand why (although he has his suspicions once the fire alarm goes off, and they are confirmed when he finally decides to be brave and look up the school), and he still doesn’t know if she writes. He’s heard that people don’t always want to do the things they loved after trauma.

Despite the fact that she is always dressed for school, he scans her arms and legs for signs of burns and finds none. And he wishes that he could ask, but it’s not his place anymore. And it hasn’t been for a while.

But then it becomes his place once more and she tells him everything. And more than that, she writes. It takes her a little longer to start showing it to him, but once she starts, it is like she cannot stop. And once she starts, he realises just how much of her words are for him. He sees where he has bled into her characters, and it’s an honour he cannot repay.

Except for the fact that he thinks he can. Because Camilla loves him, and he knows that. And Camilla also knows that he loves her. But there is something about the way she’s able to say it that he wants to do too.

And he thinks about the words she wrote at twelve- awkward and stitled and probably terrible. But he thinks of the way she smiled whenever someone praised her. He thinks of the way she smiles when he brings her flowers, and how it’s never been about being good. It’s about being there.

He writes her a poem. It doesn’t rhyme and he’s not sure where the flow of it is and maybe it isn’t even a poem but it’s his and it’s for her and nothing else really matters.

He wants to flee from the room when he hands it to her to read, but he forces himself to stay. He’s glad that he does. Her mouth parts when she realises what she’s been given, and then breaks into a smile. Ari has no clue if she’s finished reading it, but none of that matters because her arms are around his neck and she’s pressing kisses all over his face.

“Thank you. I love you,” she whispers.

Ellias hides after Tristan ruins him.

He shouldn’t. He promised his parents he wouldn’t fall for it, and that even if someone targeted him, he would keep his head high. He would play along, because as much as everyone claims the opposite, it’s the Heartbreakers that have it worse.

But he hadn’t expected it to be Tristan who took an interest. And he had known the whole time how it would end, but it had been too easy to feel wanted and desired and loved. And he had known that Tristan would let him keep that final thing for someone else who actually wanted him.

He just hadn’t expected it to hurt as much as it did.

There’s movement outside the classroom and he tenses. When the light flicks on, he belatedly tries to hide. But it’s not a teacher. It’s a girl.

“I’m Viola,” she says, as though this is a normal meeting. “Do you need something?”

He whimpers. “I just want a hug.”

She settles beside him, pulling him close even though they’ve just met. “I want to destroy him.” It’s said so calmly that Ellias stops sniffling.

“What?”

“The system more than him, but he’s a representation of it all. If he falls, everything else comes tumbling down too. It would never work though. Even with Camilla on my side,” she sighs.

“Camilla? As in-“

“Yes.”

“Well what if it could?”

A small smile spreads across her face. “What if it could indeed?”

Ellias hides again after the police leave. Not that there are many places left where someone can hide, but this is always the part that he’s been good at. Escaping. Making himself smaller. Hiding away where nobody can find him.

He didn’t realise this would happen. Except that maybe he did. Because Tristan was falling apart when they met. Despite everything, Ellias didn’t have the full Nightingale-experience. His body shakes with the weight of his actions. If he had known, he thinks he would’ve still done it all, and he is terrified that makes him an awful person.

“You’re going to need to come back eventually. They need to speak to all of us,” Viola says.

He looks up at her. “I don’t know how to do that,” he whispers.

“One step at a time,” she says, settling next to him. “We did what we had to do.”

“I didn’t think-“ except that he did. “They disowned him.”

“They did.”

“What will he do now?”

“Live.”

Ellias thinks that they too will finally live. He bursts into tears.

When James closes the bedroom door behind him, he sees Victoria hastily wipe at her eyes and let out a shaky exhale, hands clenched into fists and resting by her side. For a moment, he lets himself hope.

“Love?” He asks, trying to be gentle.

“Have I raised a failure?” She asks, her voice wavering slightly.

Sometimes, James doesn’t recognise the woman he married. Except that he does. He knew this about her. He knew that she never wanted to be a mother, that it’s her least favourite title. He’s not sure he ever wanted to be a father. But they had an obligation to their bloodline. Hers more than his.

And now they can do what they would like. They just need Tristan to be good enough.

“Of course not. You’re not capable of that,” he says, hoping to placate her and hating that he feels sixteen again. Younger than his son. His son is so young. He suddenly feels sick. He wants to ask what happened when Tristan threw up moments after stepping through the door but the words get stuck. Ignorance is bliss after all.

“Are you?” She asks, the implications clear. Tristan is a boy.

“I’d like to think not. Victoria. He’s seventeen.”

“When we were seventeen-“

“We wouldn’t want that for him,” James snaps. He never snaps. He hates it.

“Of course not,” Victoria says, a little hurried. For a moment, it’s like she really loves him and not just the idea of him or the person he once was.

“It’ll be fine,” he promises, and it’s far from the first lie he’s told her, but it feels like the worst one.

Months later, they return to the manor again. Their son does not accompany them because he’s not that anymore. He’s just Tristan.

“You told me it would be fine,” Victoria whispers, as they stand in the room that holds all their portraits. Even when he’s been depicted by his parent’s side, Tristan still looks like an outlier.

“Because I really believed it would be,” James says. “We didn’t-we raised him to be good. At this.”

“Then what wrong?” She snaps. “At some point, our son became a failure. And I want to know why.”

“Why does it matter now? It’s not like we’re going to have another heir.”

She stares at him. “You’re just as bad as I am. You know that, right?”

Tristan’s fingers trace over the scar on Camilla’s shoulder. There’s another on her stomach, a third on her knee. He presses his lips to the skin. It’s healed. It probably doesn’t even hurt in the cold.

“Do you want to know about them?” She asks, her features illuminated by the lamp. She’d switched it back on when he’d started tossing and turning in the night, and now they’re sat in a comfortable silence as they lay entwined with each other, enjoying the slowness of the night.

They’ve wasted so much time.  They won’t waste anymore. He’ll kiss her a thousand times after this, and he doesn’t need to rush.

So he nods, threading his fingers through hers.

“I got this one,” she says, pointing at her shoulder, “when I wanted to impress the boy I had a crush on and fell off a skateboard. But I didn’t want to tell my parents I landed on concrete and had started bleeding because they’d told me I shouldn’t immediately start with the road. And he didn’t even like me back.”

Tristan laughs. “Well, he missed out.”

“I know. And the one on my stomach is from when I had my appendix out. It’s not funny but I didn’t realise it was that until I told mama the painkillers weren’t working and I still had period cramps. When the anaesthesia wore off, they were laughing with the other doctors about how bad my anatomy knowledge is. I felt so loved.”

She’s laughing at herself as she says it, so Tristan smiles and watches her without any shame. “And that last one?”

There’s a sigh. “I was dancing. And then I fell and I thought it would be fine but then I fell again. So.”

“I didn’t know you danced,” he says, thinking back to how she had to join the first years in their classes.

“I don’t,” she admits. “That was half the problem.”

They lapse into silence again. She traces her fingers over his skin, the touch light and hesitant as though she cannot believe this gets to be hers, but he doesn’t tense under it. The way that she touches him is gentle. Loving, he thinks. Not that he would know properly.

“You don’t have any,” she whispers.

It’s half true. There are no marks on his body. His scars are less visible and less healed.

“No.”

“There’s a mole on your leg. Have you head the theory?”

He shakes his head, even though he has, because he wants to hear her say it.

“There’s an idea that you have moles where you were kissed the most in a previous life,” she says, rolling over slightly. She presses a kiss to the area just below his eye. “I want to kiss you so much here that when I find you again next time, I’ll get déjà vu whenever I do.”

And she speaks so beautifully. He doesn’t know how to do that. So he just presses a soft kiss to her shoulder. “And I’ll do it here,” he whispers.

She smiles. “I’d like that.”

Camilla forgets sometimes, that what she writes is no longer contained to an audience of her closest friends and a few strangers on the internet. She forgets that what she writes can be easily found by unsuspecting strangers scrolling through their algorithm, or by someone looking for a book recommendation based on something else they liked.

She forgets that this new audience also includes her parents. She forgets that, although they don’t always like her posts, or necessarily understand why a piece of dialogue was so significant to so many of the people that read it, that they now read everything she writes.

She thinks they must be compensating. There was a time when she showed them everything she wrote, even the things about pretty boys in her class. And then she had stopped. And it wasn’t their fault, because it wasn’t anyone’s. It was just the way things had to be. Or the way she made them.

But that sounds too much like blaming herself.

So even though the expectations are different now, and she doesn’t have to, she enjoys the aesthetics of the account she keeps for her writing and book-related matters, and so every alternate post is a snippet. A short poem. A few lines that she loves.

It’s something she could automate, or get someone to do on her behalf. Those resources are now hers. But there’s a comfort that comes with doing it herself. It’s far more randomised now than it ever was before. She doesn’t post about the things she feels- good or bad.

But still. It catches her off guard when her parents ask if they can talk. It feels uncomfortable, when they ask about her feelings because she saw what she wrote. But she pushes past it, because it’s their way of showing they care. For compensating for all the years they missed out on when they just thought that she’d stopped writing and never thought to check the truth.

When Rafael thinks of Tristan, they think of the light. But maybe not the light that comes from the sun, blinding and blistering. Maybe the light that comes from stars stuck to the ceiling. It’s not always visible, but it is always there if you have enough patience to let it come on itself.

And Rafael has learned to be patient. With themselves and everything else.

And Tristan is beautiful when he shines. When he steps up to the table and their eyes meet, and there’s a soft smile before he launches into his prepared statements with hardly a glance at the notes. When he approaches the older man at the law fair even though his hands shake and speaks about the things that matter to him without worrying that he may sound wrong. When he leans into the touches rather than just allowing them, laughing and staying present and not worrying.

When Tristan thinks of Rafael, they also think of the light. But maybe not the light that comes from the stars stuck to the ceiling. Maybe the light that comes from the house without the curtains pulled closed. It’s visible, if you know how to look for it, and it’s also secret after a few moments.

And Tristan has learned to look. At everyone around them and at who they are inside.

And Rafael is perfect when they shine. When they raise their hand in class and give an answer that is right without fearing the way the words tumble from their tongue. When they reach out because they want to touch and they aren’t scared. When they refuse to hide their nails and their necklace, allowing both to be real.

It creeps up on her slowly, as it always does. One day, it is December, and she is dragging herself from bed like honey falling from a spoon, trying to forget all that this month commemorates. There are no candles before hers, and even on the day she would blow them out, her friends try to avoid the incidents of the previous years.

And every time she goes home, it’s dark, the sky so blue it’s almost black. Every time she goes home, the trees are bare and casting shadows on the footpath, the only light guiding the way the unnatural illumination coming from the streetlights.

As always, her parents come to help her move her things out. They arrive on a Friday evening, and it’s only years of driving down the final roads before their house that allow her to place where she really is without blinking the tiredness from her eyes and asking her parents how long it is till they’re home. Not because she needs the bathroom five minutes after they asked her this question, but because she just wants to know. She has assignments.

The new year begins, as it always must, with fireworks lighting up the sky, the only light left. She sits by the window and watches them, wondering what may be different this year. She thinks she coped better, but she’s not sure anyone else would agree.

She’s not sure how much that matters to her though. It’s a train of thought she doesn’t want to follow, so she focuses back on the flashes of colour. No time zone in America would have reached the new year yet. She wonders if they may be thinking of her, that way that she thinks of them every time something new starts.

Once more, it’s thoughts she’d rather not have. She tries to think of what song she wishes to start her year with, since it’s an important tradition of hers. Normally, she already knows, but this time, she’s not so certain.