Chapter 35
Emily's POV
Eleven months had carved out a life I barely recognized as my own.
The university campus sprawled across rolling hills twenty miles outside the city, all red brick buildings and manicured lawns that looked nothing like the cracked pavement of Graystone. My dorm room was small but mine—really mine, not a place I had to share with the ghost of violence or the stench of stale beer.
The narrow bed with its standard-issue blue comforter, the secondhand desk lamp I'd bought at the thrift store, the accounting textbooks stacked beside my laptop—every object felt like proof that I'd actually made it out.
Classes consumed most of my mornings and early afternoons. Introduction to Financial Accounting, Business Law, Microeconomics, Calculus II. The workload was brutal in a way that felt almost luxurious compared to the survival calculations that used to fill my head.
Instead of measuring the precise angle to avoid my father's fist, I calculated depreciation schedules and analyzed tort liability. Instead of memorizing his drinking patterns, I memorized case law precedents and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
This was my second semester now, and the rhythm of university life had settled into something that almost felt natural. I knew which library carrels got the best light in the afternoon, which vending machines were most likely to jam, which professors would accept late work if you had a decent excuse and which ones would dock you a full letter grade for being thirty seconds past deadline.
Ethan's campus was about twenty to thirty minutes away by car, just like he'd promised back in high school—close enough that the distance felt manageable, far enough that we each had our own space to grow. He'd floated the idea of renting an apartment near my university back in August, presented it like it was the most logical solution in the world, like the extra cost was just a minor detail he'd already factored in.
I'd shut that down immediately.
"It's not fair to you," I'd said, sitting across from him. "Rent here is expensive, and you'd be paying for a place you'd barely use since you still need to be on your campus for morning practices and team meetings. We can see each other once or twice a week. You drive here, or I take the subway to you."
"But I want to see you more than that," he'd argued, that stubborn set to his jaw that meant he was about to dig in.
"Distance makes the heart grow fonder," I'd replied, keeping my tone light even though part of me wanted to say yes, wanted him close enough to reach whenever the nightmares got bad or the loneliness felt too heavy.
But I'd meant what I said. The expense wasn't justified, and more than that—I needed to prove to myself that I could do this on my own. That I could build a life that didn't require someone else to rearrange theirs around my needs. That I was strong enough to handle the space between us without falling apart.
He'd finally agreed, though I could tell he wasn't entirely happy about it. But he'd honored it, had never pushed for more than I was ready to give, and somehow the rhythm we'd found—once or twice a week, trading off who made the trip—had settled into something that felt sustainable.
The restaurant job came through a flyer posted in the student union back in September. Luciano's Italian Kitchen, a family-owned place just off campus that served oversized portions of pasta to undergrads too broke or too lazy to cook.
The food was legitimately good—not just good for the price point, but actually good, the kind of cooking that came from decades of muscle memory and genuine pride. Marco's marinara had a depth that came from San Marzano tomatoes simmered for hours with fresh basil and garlic.
His pasta was always cooked exactly al dente, never the mushy cafeteria version most students had resigned themselves to. And the portions were generous enough that even the hungriest athlete could leave satisfied without destroying their budget.
The combination of quality and affordability made Luciano's perpetually packed. During my first week, I'd served a guy from my Microeconomics class who sheepishly admitted he'd eaten there ten times in the past seven days because his meal plan had run out and Marco's carbonara was cheaper than the sandwich shop.
The regulars had their usual tables, their usual orders, their usual nights. You could set your watch by the philosophy majors who showed up every Tuesday for the early-bird special, or the nursing students who descended on Thursday nights after their clinical rotations, still in scrubs and desperate for carbs.
The popularity had spawned a weird rumor sometime last semester—whispers that Marco must be putting something addictive in the food, some secret ingredient that kept people coming back.
It was obviously ridiculous, the kind of conspiracy theory bored students invented when they had too much time between classes, but it had spread enough that someone actually reported it to the health department.
I'd arrived for my shift on a Wednesday evening to find Marco pacing behind the kitchen line, his face flushed an alarming shade of red as he gestured violently at his phone. The barrel-chested man in his fifties, who usually had flour perpetually dusted across his forearms and whose accent thickened when he got excited about his grandmother's sauce recipe, looked ready to commit violence.
"You see this?" he demanded the moment I walked through the door, not bothering with hello. "You see what they are saying?"
I glanced at Olivia, my coworker who'd been at Luciano's since her freshman year and had trained me when I'd first started. She was already in her apron and setting up the drink station. She mouthed "rumor" and made a helpless gesture.
"Someone—" Marco's accent thickened as his volume rose, "—someone with nothing better to do, they go online, they say I put drugs in my food! Drugs!"
He was scrolling furiously through what looked like a student forum on his phone, reading snippets aloud in increasingly agitated Italian and English. "They say the carbonara tastes 'too good to be natural.' Natural! What does this even mean? Is a ricetta from my nonna, is butter and eggs and guanciale and—"
He cut himself off, breathing hard. "And now I have inspector coming tomorrow because someone makes anonymous complaint to health department. Anonymous! Codardo! Coward who will not say these lies to my face!"