On the train, Andrew sat alone. The windows fogged from the warmth inside and the ice outside. As the engine groaned and began its slow crawl from the city, he closed his eyes.
Behind his eyelids, he saw them. Jason's arm around Emma. Emma's laugh. Her eyes—half lit with a fire he'd never managed to kindle. And beside them, his own shadow, always watching, never entering.
The snow thickened. The world turned white.
And Andrew Whitmore went home, not to rest, but to forget.
---
Chapter 21 - Pawn of Emotions
The week at home passed with a strange, suspended quiet. At the Whitmore residence, every creak of the wooden floorboards and the muffled hush of piano keys seemed to press more tightly around Andrew's thoughts. His father's voice was softer than usual, his mother's embrace longer. They noticed the changes—the way he paused before responding, how he no longer hummed under his breath, how his eyes had lost their light.
Marjorie prepared his favorite meals without asking, and Isaac left books on the arm of the couch, ones they used to discuss at length. But Andrew read them now only halfway, his thoughts wandering beyond their lines, not into imagination but into memory.
Emma's face. Her voice. Her fingers in her hair. The sound of her laugh carried by snow.
And Jason.
It took effort not to let that bitterness bloom. Jason had not stolen her. She had chosen him.
Every day, he wandered the neighborhood, his boots crunching softly over snow-packed sidewalks. The air was sharp with wood smoke and the smell of old chimneys. Once, he passed the old café where he and Emma used to exchange poetry books. It was closed for the holidays, its windows frosted over, but he still stood outside for several minutes, just staring.
On the fourth day, he received a letter from Elliot. A simple update about school, a quip about the silence without him, a line that made Andrew half-smile:
"Kate's threatening to burn down the art studio if they make her write another interpretation of Sylvia Plath. Thought you'd appreciate that."
He didn't write back.
Instead, he packed.
---
Returning to Saint Aramond felt like stepping back into a dream where the lighting had changed. The snow had thickened in his absence, blanketing the grounds in white sheets. The cold bit sharper. Students returned in waves, some with new coats, some with new attitudes. Gossip had frozen over but not vanished. People still whispered.
Emma and Jason were seen together, more publicly now. Their smiles sharper, their hands more comfortably entwined. Jason had toned himself down just enough for her. And Emma, Emma wore her affection like new skin—genuine, raw, and naïvely fearless.
Andrew saw them. Often. Passing in halls. Across the courtyard. He trained his eyes not to follow her. Trained his mind not to script poetry from the way her scarf twisted in the wind.
Kate re-entered his orbit with subtle patience. They sat together again in lectures, walked together across campus, shared quiet corners of the library. She never asked more than he gave. He never pretended to give more than he could.
"Do you feel better?" she asked once, one afternoon as they sat on a bench, sketching in silence.
He didn't answer.
---
One evening, he returned to the dorms to find a note pinned to his door.
Michael wants a word. Midnight. East lot. Come alone.
Andrew stared at it for a long time.
He thought of the bruises. The fists. The betrayal. The choice to wear a mask, and the decision to take it off.
Then, he folded the paper neatly and dropped it in the bin.
He had moved beyond Michael.
What he hadn't moved beyond was the ache.
Sometimes, late at night, he still wrote in his journal. Not poetry anymore, but confessions. Pages and pages that would never be read. Words that dripped like melted ice, like the residue of something once beautiful.
Kate noticed, but said nothing.
Jason looked at him differently now—sometimes wary, sometimes confused. But he never spoke. Emma, too, had changed. She smiled at Andrew when they passed. Soft, almost guilty. But she never stopped.
Andrew didn't blame her anymore.
By the end of the second week, he and Kate had become a quiet pair. Not lovers. Not quite friends. But something resilient. Something that would hold.
He didn't love her.
But he no longer loved Emma either.
And that, somehow, was enough to breathe again.
The thaw would come. Slowly.
But it would come.