BEN POV

The villa was quiet when we returned from the lake. The kind of quiet that wrapped around your limbs and made it hard to move.

Everyone dispersed without saying much—Clay disappearing to his room with red eyes and a crumpled tissue in hand, Marcelo claiming the couch with his hoodie pulled over his head, and Nolan… well, Nolan lingered like a ghost in the hallway.

I closed my bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, letting the silence stretch.

The ceremony had ...