Duke Brandon did not go straight home after leaving the café.
He drove instead to the narrow stretch of road that wound behind the old chapel on the far edge of campus, the one nobody used anymore except for forgotten weddings and the occasional faculty member who needed silence. He parked beneath the drooping branches of a willow tree, engine idling, headlights cutting pale tunnels through the gathering dusk. Rain had started again, soft and persistent, tapping against the windshield like someone asking to be let in.
He sat there for a long time.
Hands still on the wheel.
Breath fogging the glass in slow, uneven clouds.
He could still see Norman's face from the café—the wide-eyed shock when their bodies collided, the way his lips had parted on an apology he never finished saying, the faint tremble in his fingers as he accepted the napkins. Duke had touched him. Not by accident. Not by necessity. He had chosen to reach across the space between them and press paper into that shaking hand, letting their skin linger just long enough to feel the warmth, the pulse, the proof that the boy was real and alive and dangerously close.
Duke closed his eyes.
The memory played behind his lids like a film he could not pause.
He remembered the exact temperature of Norman's skin against his knuckles.
He remembered the faint scent of cedar that rose from the boy's damp hoodie, undercut with something sweeter, like rain-soaked cotton and youth.
He remembered the way Norman had looked at his mouth—like he was starving and too afraid to eat.
Duke's fingers tightened on the steering wheel until the leather creaked.
He should have walked away sooner.
He should have kept his distance the moment those blue eyes first locked on him in the lecture hall.
He should have remembered the rules he had carved into his own bones four years ago: no attachments, no risks, no more openings for pain to crawl inside.
But rules felt paper-thin now.
He opened the glove compartment.
Inside lay a small silver keychain shaped like a wedding band, the engraving worn smooth from years of being turned over and over in restless hands. He lifted it, let it rest in his palm. The metal was cold. It always was.
Four years, three months, seventeen days since the hospital monitors went flat.
Four years since the room smelled of antiseptic and lilies someone had brought too late.
Four years since he had stood beside a bed and watched the only person who ever truly knew him slip away without a fight, without anger, without anything but a quiet, exhausted smile that said I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer.
Duke had not cried at the funeral.
He had not cried in the months that followed.
He had simply stopped.
Stopped feeling.
Stopped wanting.
Stopped living anywhere except the narrow corridor of routine: teach, grade, sleep, repeat.
The house on Maple Street stood empty most nights. He slept in the guest room because the master bedroom still smelled faintly of the cologne his husband had worn. He kept the closet doors closed. He kept the photographs facedown in drawers. He kept himself locked so tightly that even grief had stopped knocking.
Until now.
Until a nineteen-year-old boy with too-wide eyes and too-honest words had looked at him like Duke was something worth breaking for.
The keychain burned against his palm even though it was ice-cold.
He pressed it to his forehead, hard, as if the pressure could force the memories back into their box.
It didn't.
Instead he saw Norman again—sitting across from him in the office, voice cracking when he spoke about his father leaving, about pretending the world wasn't broken. The boy had looked so young then, so fragile, so much like the version of Duke that had once believed love could outlast anything.
Duke had wanted to reach across the desk.
Not to comfort.
To claim.
The urge had been so sudden, so violent, that he had gripped his pen until it nearly snapped.
He opened his eyes.
The rain had thickened, drumming harder now.
He started the car again.
He drove slowly back toward the faculty housing, past the lit windows of student dorms where laughter spilled out, past the library where lights still burned late for kids who thought all-nighters could outrun failure. He parked in his driveway, killed the engine, and sat in the dark for another ten minutes.
The house was silent when he finally stepped inside.
He did not turn on the lights.
He hung his coat on the rack by the door, kicked off his shoes, walked straight to the living room. The fireplace had not been used in years; the hearth was cold and black. He sank into the armchair facing it anyway, elbows on knees, face buried in his hands.
He could still smell cedar.
He could still feel the ghost of Norman's hand against his.
He whispered into the empty dark, voice rough and broken,
"I can't do this again."
The house gave no answer.
Only the rain kept falling, steady and unrelenting, like tears the sky refused to stop shedding.
Across campus, in Hawthorne Hall, Norman lay on his narrow dorm bed staring at the ceiling.
Caleb was out again—some party in the engineering quad—and the room felt too big without the constant noise of his roommate's playlists. Norman had not bothered to turn on the lamp. Moonlight slanted through the half-open blinds, painting silver bars across his chest.
He touched his throat again.
The spot Duke had brushed days ago still tingled, as though the skin remembered better than his brain did.
He rolled onto his side, pulled his knees up, and hugged them tight.
He thought about the café.
The way Duke had said his name—low, intimate, like a secret shared in the dark.
The way those gray eyes had darkened when Norman looked at his mouth.
The way Duke had stepped back, giving space, but not before the air between them had turned thick with something neither of them could name.
Norman's breathing grew shallow.
He closed his eyes.
He pictured Duke standing alone somewhere—maybe in that office, maybe in a quiet house, maybe right now—fighting the same pull Norman felt.
He whispered into the pillow,
"I know you feel it too."
The words tasted like truth and danger.
He did not sleep for a long time.
When he finally drifted off, it was fitful, restless, filled with dreams of storm-gray eyes and cedar-scented skin and a voice that kept saying his name like a prayer and a curse at once.
In the silent house on Maple Street, Duke rose from the armchair at last.
He walked upstairs.
He did not go to the master bedroom.
He went to the guest room, the one with the single bed and the bare walls.
He lay down fully clothed.
He stared at the ceiling in the dark.
And for the first time in four years, he let himself imagine what it would feel like to let someone in again.
To let someone touch the fracture lines.
To let someone see the damage and stay anyway.
The thought terrified him.
It also felt like the first real breath he had taken since the monitors flatlined.
He turned onto his side.
He curled his fist around the silver keychain he had carried upstairs.
He pressed it to his chest, right over his heart.
And in the absolute quiet, he made no promises.
He simply admitted, to the darkness and to himself,
"I'm already lost."
Outside, the rain continued.
Inside both of them, something far more dangerous had begun to fall.
And neither knew how to stop it.