Read Chapter 5: — MARCUS SAYS IT OUT LOUD

Marcus chose the worst possible time to confess that he loved Clara.

He and Daniel were walking toward the music building, where Clara was rehearsing for the winter concert.

"I'm going to ask her out," Marcus said.

Daniel kept walking.

"All right."

Marcus stopped. "That's it?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Something."

Daniel turned.

Marcus looked angrier than a man declaring love had any right to look.

"You don't care?"

"About you? Yes. About Clara? Yes. About whether the two of you date? That's your business and hers."

"You really don't see it."

"See what?"

Marcus laughed once, without humour.

"Nothing. Forget it."

He had spent months convinced Daniel and Clara were moving toward each other while Daniel remained genuinely uncertain whether he was even attracted to anyone. Daniel's parents had drilled one rule into him since childhood: study first. Relationships later. He had turned the rule into habit.

Marcus, meanwhile, had grown up in a village where people married early, stayed close to family, and treated professional status as proof that sacrifice had been worthwhile. His father had once lost most of the family's savings gambling, then recovered enough through an unexpected inheritance to keep Marcus at university. Money, security and respect had become tangled in Marcus's mind.

Clara represented something else: grace without humiliation.

When they reached the rehearsal room, Clara appeared in a white blouse, hair tied back, sheet music under one arm.

"Why do you both look as if someone died?"

Daniel's chest tightened at the word.

Marcus forced a smile.

"I was telling him you look good."

Clara rolled her eyes. "Groundbreaking medical observation."

Daniel said, "You do look good."

She glanced at him.

For half a second, Marcus saw the answer to a question Daniel had not yet learned to ask.

Clara's face softened.

"Thank you."

Marcus understood before Daniel did.

And resentment, still small enough to deny, took root.