Violet’s POV
Campus swallows me back like I never left.
The familiar weight of my bag against my shoulder, the particular smell of aged brick and fresh-cut grass, the rhythm of students moving between buildings with purpose I used to share—all of it closes around me with the efficiency of something designed to make me forget.
I want to let it work. God, I want to let it work.
Gemma is waiting when I push through our dorm room door, cross-legged on her bed with a half-eaten bag of pretzels and an expression that tells me she's been rehearsing questions.
"You look like someone ran you over." She sits up straighter, studying my face with the intensity of a detective. "Emotionally. Not physically. Physically you look annoyingly perfect as usual."
"Thanks for the clarification." I drop my bag and sink onto my own bed, letting the familiar lumps in the mattress remind me where I am. "Long few days."
"Family stuff." She says it like the words themselves are suspicious. "That's all you gave me. Three days of vague texts and now you show up looking like you haven't slept since you left."
"My best friend had a baby." The truth feels safer than the lies I'm not ready to construct. "I have a godson now. Elijah. He's perfect and tiny and I didn't want to leave him."
Gemma's expression softens slightly. "That's actually sweet."
"I know. It's disgusting how maternal I'm becoming." I force a smile that doesn't reach my eyes. "Three days of baby cuddles and I've gone completely soft."
"Uh huh." She tilts her head, and I see her cataloging the things I'm not saying. "And that's all that happened? Just baby cuddles and bonding with your friend?"
"What else would happen?"
"I don't know." She tosses me a pretzel like a peace offering. "You tell me. You've been weird in your texts since you left. Shorter. Like you were typing with half your brain somewhere else."
The observation lands closer to truth than I want to acknowledge. I catch the pretzel, buying time.
"Sleep deprivation." The lie tastes easier than truth would. "Newborns don't believe in schedules. And Adison's apartment has too many windows. Hard to rest when the whole city is glowing at you."
Gemma watches me for another long moment, then shrugs. "Fine. Keep your secrets. But when you're ready to actually talk, I make excellent hot chocolate and I'm a vault."
"Noted." I lie back on my mattress, staring at the ceiling I've memorized over months of nights exactly like this one. "How was your week?"
She launches into a story about a disastrous group project and a professor who apparently lost his mind over a misplaced citation, and I let her voice wash over me like white noise. Safe. Familiar. Grounding.
This is my life now. This is where I chose to build something.
Classes the next day demand attention I force myself to give. I sit in lecture halls where no one cares about the Snyder name, where I'm just another student scribbling notes and pretending to care about economic theory.
The intellectual engagement provides the relief it always has—a place where my mind can work on problems that have solutions, unlike the impossible mathematics of my heart.
I see Marvin on my second day back.
He's crossing the quad with that easy confidence that makes heads turn, surrounded by people who orbit him like he's generating his own gravitational field. Golden and uncomplicated and everything Zachary isn't.
He catches my eye across the grass, and his smile hits me somewhere I wasn't prepared to feel.
I look away first.
But the awareness lingers like warmth from a fire I'm standing too close to. He's been circling for months now—patient, persistent, never pushing harder than I allow. Interest without the devastating weight of history. Warmth without the ache.
"You know he's looking at you, right?" Gemma appears at my elbow, following my gaze with obvious interest. "Like, really looking."
"He looks at everyone."
"Not like that." She bumps her shoulder against mine. "That's his 'I'm actually paying attention' face. Very different from his 'I'm being charming for the cameras' face."
"You've studied his faces?"
"Everyone has studied his faces." She grins. "But that particular one? That's rare. You should be flattered."
"I'm overwhelmed with honor." Sarcasm is my weapon.
"You should talk to him."
"I'm not ready for that conversation." The admission slips out before I can catch it, and Gemma's eyebrows rise.
"Conversation about what? Coffee? The weather? Whether the dining hall is serving something edible for once?"
"About anything that might become something else."
She goes quiet, and I feel her recalibrating. Fitting puzzle pieces together in ways I'm not ready for her to see.
"Violet." Her voice softens. "What actually happened while you were gone?"
"Nothing." I start walking toward my next class, and she falls into step beside me. "Everything. I don't know how to explain it."
"Try."
I want to. God, I actually want to tell someone the truth—that I spent one night in Zachary's arms and six months of careful distance shattered like it never existed.
That walking away from him felt like leaving pieces of myself scattered across his apartment floor. That I came back here hoping this life would feel like enough, and instead it feels like a costume I'm not sure fits anymore.
"I met my godson." I settle for the partial truth. "And I remembered how complicated love can be."
Gemma nods slowly, accepting what I'm offering even though we both know it's incomplete.
That night, I lie in my narrow dorm bed and try not to think about Zachary's sheets.
Try not to remember his hands mapping my body like territory he was reclaiming. The way he said my name like it was breaking something open in his chest. The weight of his arm across my waist while he slept, anchoring me to a moment I knew wouldn't last.
I try not to compare the ache in my chest to the quiet calm Marvin's smile produced across the quad. The difference between drowning and floating. Between fire and warmth.
The ceiling offers no answers.
I think about what Adison said—that feelings don't follow logic, and pretending they do only delays the reckoning. About Jake standing on that balcony, admitting that loving his family doesn't make the city feel like home.
They're figuring it out together. Building something that honors both worlds.
But Zachary and I don't have a together to build from. We have heat and history and a chasm neither of us knows how to cross. He's downtown managing Adison's empire, and I'm uptown pretending I'm just another Columbia student without complications.
Same city yet different universes.
Sleep comes slowly, interrupted by dreams I won't let myself remember.
When I wake, the ache is still there—lodged somewhere beneath my ribs like a splinter I can't reach.
This is my life now. The one I built and the one I chose.
I just have to convince myself it's enough.