Serena's POV
There are questions you can only ask when the person you're asking about isn't in the room.
I track Rachel down without telling Caleb, without mentioning it to anyone.
Her number sits in my phone from weeks ago, when she first reached out about Lucas, and my fingers hover over the contact for a long time before I finally press call.
She sounds surprised to hear from me but agrees to meet without hesitation.
The café is a quiet place off-campus, tucked between a bookstore and a vintage clothing shop, the kind of establishment that attracts grad students and people who want to disappear into their work.
I arrive early and claim a corner booth where no one will overhear, ordering a tea I don't intend to drink just to have something to do with my hands.
Rachel slides into the seat across from me ten minutes later, her auburn hair pulled back from her face, those green eyes carrying the same quiet steel I noticed the night she showed up on our doorstep.
"You came alone." She glances toward the door, as if expecting Caleb to materialize. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine." I wrap my fingers around the warm ceramic of my mug. "I just had some questions I wanted to ask without him here."
Understanding flickers across her features. She nods once and settles back into the booth. "Ask whatever you need to."
I start with the plan. "The girl you found, Jessica, how solid is her testimony? What does the case actually look like right now?"
Rachel walks me through it methodically, her voice low enough that only I can hear.
She explains the timeline she's been building, the patterns of behavior she's documented, the digital paper trail connecting Lucas's various victims across multiple universities.
Jessica is willing to testify if she's not alone. Two other women have responded to Rachel's outreach—not ready to come forward yet, but watching, waiting to see if anyone else is brave enough to speak first.
"It's not airtight," Rachel admits. "Lucas has been careful. His family has been careful for him. But careful doesn't mean perfect. He left traces, and I'm following every single one."
"What happens next?"
"We keep building. We keep documenting. And when the time is right, we present everything to someone who can actually do something with it—Title IX, a journalist, maybe both."
Her jaw tightens with resolve. "People are starting to talk, Serena. The silence is breaking."
I absorb this information, filing it away, but it's not the only reason I came.
"Can I ask you something personal?"
Rachel's expression shifts, curiosity replacing the clinical focus. "Of course."
"You and Caleb." The words feel strange in my mouth, weighted with implications I'm not ready to examine. "I only know pieces. I'd like to understand what actually happened between you."
She's quiet for a moment, studying me with an intensity that makes me want to look away. Then she nods, apparently deciding not to hold anything back.
"We met sophomore year of high school. Mutual friends, a party neither of us wanted to be at, the usual story."
A faint smile crosses her lips at the memory.
"He was different then—lighter, more open, quicker to laugh at himself. He didn't have all those walls up yet."
Lighter. Open. Quick to laugh. The description seems impossible to reconcile with the guarded, sharp-edged man I know.
"He pursued me with this sweetness that seems almost unbelievable now."
Rachel's voice softens.
"Showing up at my locker with terrible poetry he'd written. Learning my coffee order and surprising me with it between classes. Small things that added up to something bigger."
"You were happy together."
"We were." She meets my eyes. "Really happy. He loved me deeply, and I loved him back, and for a while it seemed like we might be the kind of couple that survives all the chaos of growing up together."
"What changed?"
The warmth drains from her expression. "Lucas happened. And everything shattered."
She doesn't elaborate, and I don't push. I already know enough about what Lucas did to Rachel to fill in the gaps.
"Do you think…" I stop myself, unsure how to phrase the question burning in my chest.
"Do I think we could rekindle what we had?" Rachel finishes for me, her perceptiveness cutting straight to the heart of what I'm afraid to ask.
"Could you?"
She considers the question carefully. "There was a time, right after I came back, when I wondered the same thing. Being around him again, working toward something that matters—it stirred up old feelings."
Her gaze drops to her coffee cup. "But feelings aren't the same as reality. And the reality is that Caleb isn't the same person I fell in love with at sixteen."
"People change."
"They do." Rachel looks up at me again, and something in her expression makes my breath catch. "But that's not the only reason it wouldn't work."
"What do you mean?"
"I've watched him, Serena. These past few weeks, working together, planning how to take Lucas down."
She leans forward, her voice dropping even lower.
"I've seen the way he looks at you when he thinks no one is watching. The way his voice changes when he talks about you. The way his whole demeanor shifts the moment you walk into a room."
Heat floods my cheeks. "Rachel…"
"I recognize that look." She doesn't let me interrupt. "It's the same way he used to look at me, except it's more. Deeper. More desperate." Her smile turns bittersweet. "I don't think Caleb ever loved me the way he loves you."
"It's complicated." The denial comes automatically, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Whatever exists between us can't go anywhere. We've both agreed to leave it in the past."
"You can agree to whatever you want." Rachel shrugs. "It doesn't change what I've seen. He loves you, Serena. Deeply, desperately. In a way that I'm not sure he's capable of hiding, no matter how hard he tries."
The words settle into my chest like embers, warm and dangerous.
"It doesn't matter." I force the response through a throat that's suddenly tight. "Even if what you're saying is true, there are reasons, good reasons why we can't be together."
"I'm sure there are." Rachel's expression carries no judgment, only understanding. "But reasons and feelings don't always align. Trust me—I learned that the hard way."
We talk for another hour about logistics, about timing, about the careful choreography required to bring Lucas down without giving him the chance to retaliate.
But my mind keeps drifting back to what she said about Caleb. About the way he looks at me. About the love she claims to see written across his face.
I leave the café with my thoughts tangled into knots I don't know how to untie.
There's a spark of something warm in my chest—hope, maybe, or validation I didn't know I needed. Someone else has seen it. Someone else has noticed what exists between us and named it out loud.
But the warmth is tempered by the heavy weight of reality pressing down on my shoulders.
It doesn't matter how Caleb looks at me. It doesn't matter what either of us feels. We share a last name. We share parents. We share a family that would be devastated to learn what we've been doing behind closed doors.
Some things aren't destined to happen, no matter how much you want them to.
And wanting has never been our problem.