"His handwriting was a battlefield."
The aftermath of his devastating confession—I love you, but I'd never choose you—had followed Eli through the snowy Gothic courtyards like a ghost that refused to be exorcised. The words had torn themselves from his throat with the violence of something that had been contained too long under too much pressure, leaving him feeling hollowed out and simultaneously more exposed than he'd ever been in his life.
The walk back to Jonathan Edwards College had been a blur of medieval stone and winter silence, his formal shoes creating the only sound in courtyards that seemed to absorb noise like the ancient walls absorbed secrets. By the time he'd reached his residential college, the reality of what he'd done—the confession and then the immediate destruction of any hope it might have created—settled into his bones like the particular ache that followed overexertion during crucial games.
