Chapter 3

Mia's POV

A chilly weekend in late autumn. Cold wind swept dead leaves across the street corner.

I sat in my usual corner café, a cup of long-cold Americano sitting untouched before me. My eyes were still slightly rimmed in red, shadowed by dark circles I couldn't conceal. I had sat on the sofa all night; every time I closed my eyes, that face in the black sketchbook flashed through my mind.

"Did you drag me out here in a rush just to watch you zone out?" My close friend Chloe pushed the door open, dropped her designer bag onto the couch across from me, and slid into the booth.

Snapping out of it, I forced a faint smile. "It's nothing. Just a little tired. What have you been up to lately?"

"What else? Getting roped into planning that annoying alumni reunion," Chloe rolled her eyes, picking up my water glass to take a sip. "Though, on the alumni prep chat yesterday, I saw Logan's class roster. The top-ranked architecture graduate back then is practically the school's walking billboard now."

At the mention of Logan's name, my fingers tightened around my coffee cup.

Not noticing anything off, Chloe kept talking. "Honestly, though, Logan was a real wild card back then. Someone in the chat brought up an old college rumor yesterday, and that was how I found out how he got that scar on his left wrist. He almost ruined his entire hand over it."

My head snapped up, my voice shaking. "What scar?"

"The one on the inside of his left wrist, about two inches long. You've been with him for three years—don't tell me you've never seen it?" Chloe looked at me, puzzled.

How could I not have seen it?

It was a deep scar, like an ugly centipede resting against his fair skin. Once, while we were in bed together, my thumb had brushed over the raised tissue. Logan's entire body had stiffened instantly, and he had smoothly, wordlessly pulled his hand back.

Later, aching for him, I had asked, "How did you get that scar? It must have hurt so much."

Logan had been standing by the window smoking. He exhaled a ring of smoke, his voice completely flat: "I slipped with an X-Acto knife while building a model back in school. It stopped hurting years ago."

I had never brought it up again. But every time I helped him put on his watch, my touch was always impossibly gentle, terrified of hurting that old wound.

"He said... it was an accident with a knife," I said, my voice dry.

"He was totally lying!" Chloe let out a scoff. "A senior from his old studio group in the chat said that wasn't it at all. Sophomore year, an art major girl was rushing an assignment in the studio. A plaster bust on the shelf beside her gave way and started falling. Logan happened to be there. Seeing that heavy plaster bust about to crush her skull, he threw himself over her without a second thought."

Chloe gestured with her hands. "The bust shattered, and a jagged shard sliced right into Logan's wrist. They said blood literally sprayed everywhere. It took over a dozen stitches! The doctor said if it had been a single millimeter deeper, it would have severed the nerve, and he wouldn't even be able to hold a pencil today. And he told you an X-Acto knife did that?"

A wave of pure ice crashed over me. My chest felt as if it had been struck by a blunt weapon, a dull ache throbbing so violently that even breathing tasted like iron.