Now Amelia stood on the familiar stone pathway, the afternoon sun warm against her skin. Students moved past in clusters—laughing, arguing over notes, scrolling through phones, completely ordinary in their obliviousness.
She absorbed every detail as if it might dissolve at any second, as if the whole scene were made of smoke and she would blink and find herself back in that darkness.
Is this a dream?
The place she had been certain she would never see again. The arches, the ivy, the worn stone steps where she had sat a hundred times with a coffee and a textbook. It all looked the same. Nothing had changed.
Everything has changed, she thought, and the weight of it pressed down on her ribs. I’ve changed. I’m not the same person who walked out of here a month ago.
"Amelia!"
She turned.
Kate was walking towards her, brown hair bouncing with each hurried step, backpack half-zipped and threatening to spill its contents. Her eyes were wide—pure disbelief, pure relief—and she stopped just short of Amelia, breathless and searching.
"Where have you been?" Kate’s voice came out in a rush, tumbling over itself. "Everyone’s been saying the wildest things. Some people said you were dead. A few even claimed you died twice. Like you came back from the dead just to die again. It’s been insane."
Amelia managed a small, tight smile. Dead twice. Not far from the truth, really.
"It’s nothing no one needs to worry about."
Kate studied her face carefully, those sharp brown eyes missing nothing—the hollows beneath Amelia’s cheeks, the new pallor of her skin, the way her hands hung limp at her sides like she’d forgotten what to do with them.
"Are you sure?" Kate’s voice dropped, softer now. "I heard about what happened at Dylan’s wedding... before that strange storm hit. Sorry about that."
Amelia looked away, gaze fixed on a distant tree at the edge of the courtyard. Its leaves rustled in the breeze, indifferent to her suffering.
Kate’s voice softened further "I know how much you loved him. I heard the rumors about him and Jade, but a lot of things can be false. People talk. They make things up. I had no idea it was really real."
"I don’t want to talk about it."
Amelia said it firmly, and watched Kate’s face shift—from curiosity to concern to careful retreat.
"Okay." Kate shifted the strap of her bag, adjusting her grip. "That’s fine. That’s completely fine. But do you need help? You missed a whole month, and midterms are coming up fast. Like, fast fast. Professor Hartley has already sent three passive-aggressive emails about the syllabus, and I swear if I hear one more person mention the word ’exam’ I’m going to scream."
Amelia knew she needs help. The weight of lost lectures and unread Chapters settled over her, a reminder of everything she had fallen behind on while the world had spun on without her.
She nodded once, a small, resigned gesture, and followed Kate into the flow of students. The rhythm of classes pulled her along for the rest of the day—lecture halls with their familiar low murmur of whispered conversations. She moved through it all like a ghost, present but not present, taking notes she wouldn’t remember writing, nodding at questions she wouldn’t recall hearing.
When the final bell rang—a sharp, shrill sound that cut through her daze—she made her way to the dean’s office.
The older man looked up from a stack of papers when she entered, wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Surprise flickered across his lined face before it settled into something steadier.
"Miss Kroff. Sit."
She did, lowering herself into the worn leather chair across from his desk. The springs creaked beneath her.
He folded his hands on the table, studying her over the rims of his glasses.
"I don’t know what kept you away for an entire month," he said finally. "And I won’t pretend to understand the circumstances. But you need to take your life seriously now. You’re a brilliant student—one of the best this college has seen in years. I’ve been here for three decades, Miss Kroff, and I don’t say that lightly. You have a mind that comes along once in a generation. Don’t let this second chance go to waste."
The words landed somewhere deep in her chest, unexpected and unwelcome. A second chance.
she nodded anyway. "Thank you, sir."
They spoke for a few more minutes—make-up assignments, adjusted schedules, about the approaching exams she would need to cram for in half the time everyone else had been given. He handed her a packet thick with papers, and she accepted it with hands that felt numb.
When she finally rose and left the office, Kate was already waiting outside—leaning against the wall with two bottles of water and a bag of chips half-open in her hand.
"Took you long enough," Kate said, handing her one of the bottles. "I was starting to think you’d been buried with paperworks."
Amelia took the water, the cool plastic grounding her.
They walked out into the courtyard, the late afternoon light stretching long across the stones. The air had cooled slightly, carrying the first hint of evening.
Amelia’s feet suddenly stopped on the path.
No.
Walking toward her with the same easy confidence he had always carried, was Dylan.
He looked exactly the same—that familiar gait, those broad shoulders, that way he had of moving through the world like it belonged to him. His dark hair caught the golden light, and his eyes were fixed on her with an intensity that made her stomach drop.
No, no, no.
Kate followed her gaze and went still beside her. "Oh," she breathed. "Oh, that’s— that’s not good right?"
Amelia couldn’t answer. Her throat had closed up, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Why is he here? why is he walking toward me like he has any right to be in my line of sight?
She should move. She should turn around. She should walk away and pretend she hadn’t seen him.
But her feet wouldn’t obey.