Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 13

I pressed the thought down, hard.

James was already reaching for his phone when it buzzed again. The screen lit up between us.
Olive.

He didn’t answer.

“I’ll call her later,” he said, not even flinching. His voice was calm, but the silence that followed was sharp-edged.

I nodded, but something behind my eyes pulsed. Then the hairs on my neck rose, instinct before thought. I turned slightly, gaze shifting across the courtyard.

And there she was.

Olive.

Half-concealed behind a group of students laughing beneath the mango tree across from us. Her green ribbon looked brighter against the dappled light. Almost too bright. Like it was part of her armor, too.

She wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even pretending. Her eyes were locked on me, not on James, but me. And in that split-second stare, something passed between us. It wasn’t hatred. That would have been easier.

It was possession. Recognition.
The kind of gaze that says, I know who you are because I know what you’ve taken. Her eyes darted down to James, then back to me. And they burned. There was a silent truth in her posture, the way she didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t speak.
You only stare like that at something you’re not ready to lose. And I wondered, for the first time, if James even knew what he meant to her. Or if Olive had been hoping too, quietly, silently, from the shadows, all this time.

The library smelled like paper and lemon-scented floor polish, sterile and sharp and nothing like the heaviness clinging to my chest. We settled into a quiet corner table by the window, away from the scattered whispers of group study sessions and the occasional clack of a librarian’s shoes. I spread the review sheets out between us, trying to ignore the way my fingers shook just slightly.

“Okay,” I said, forcing brightness into my tone. “Let’s start with trigonometric identities. It’s bound to come out in the prelims.”

James groaned under his breath. “I swear those were invented just to mess with me.”

I smiled, even though my stomach was in knots. “Well, lucky for you, I happen to enjoy things that mess with me.”

His brow lifted, amused, or maybe just intrigued, but the moment was cut short when he leaned over the paper and frowned. “Wait... is this the thing with the secant and cosecant stuff?”

I blinked. My brain stuttered.
Oh. That lesson.

The one I’d completely tuned out.
The day my mind floated somewhere else, back into that dream where gravity didn’t hold me and everything felt like it was trying to tell me something important. I hadn’t taken notes. I hadn’t even listened. All I’d done was stare out the window and wonder if the boy in the dream was real or just a metaphor for wanting to be understood. And now James was staring at me, waiting for answers I didn’t have.

I swallowed. “Actually… I might need a refresher too.”

His eyes widened. “You? You need a refresher?”

“Just for this topic!” I said, laughing awkwardly, flipping through my notebook for something, anything, that made sense. “My mind was… elsewhere that day.”

He tilted his head. “Day dreaming?”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, my eyes flicked across the room, and there he was.

Matt.

Sitting by the tall bookshelf near the science section, alone, headphones half-on, scribbling intently in a notebook with that perfect, calculated calmness only he seemed to wear like a second skin.