Chapter 14
Everyone’s faces went ashen. Rosalia looked like she was about to collapse.
Fragments of memory crashed through Rosalia’s mind, including something Aurelia had said to her once:
“I don’t care if he wants me or not. He’s not exactly pure either.”
She stared at Luigi in horror. “That night when Aurelia didn’t come home… she was with YOU?”
Luigi’s voice was dead calm. “Yeah. It was me.”
Then he turned to scan the room with eyes like winter storms, his tone somewhere between a promise and a death threat.
“If any of you ever talk shit about Aurelia again, we’re fucking done. All of us.”
He stood and walked out without another glance, but the rage radiating from him was so intense it felt like the temperature had dropped twenty
degrees.
The truth was, Luigi had never once said he liked Rosalia-that had always been bullshit rumors and wishful thinking.
t all started at some stupid class party when they’d been randomly paired for a game. He’d just been polite, nothing more.
But somehow that single interaction had spawned years of gossip about them being destined for each other. He’d never bothered correcting it
because he hadn’t given a shit.
Rosalia wasn’t the only girl people had tried to link him to anyway.
uigi shoved all the toxic thoughts from his head, went home to pack his life into boxes, and booked the first flight to New Mexico.
But when he reached New Mexico Tech, the classified nature of the school hit him like a brick wall.
NO unauthorized personnel allowed on campus!” The security guard looked at him like he was a potential terrorist.
I’m looking for a student named Aurelia Cooper. Could you please just call her out so I can see her for five minutes?” Luigi stood at those imposing ¡ates, his voice cracking with desperation.
The guard practically snarled at him.
This is a military installation, kid. We don’t give out information about personnel. I don’t know any Aurelia Cooper, and I don’t care. Get the hell out c
ere!”
Luigi felt like his world was crumbling, but he refused to give up.
For an entire month, he camped outside those gates every single day, hoping against hope for just one glimpse of Aurelia walking by.
But she never appeared. Not once,
Eventually, the authorities lost patience with him.
“Unauthorized individuals cannot loiter near this facility. Leave immediately or we’ll have you arrested!”
With his own college semester starting, Luigi had no choice but to abandon his vigil and return to Boston.
For four agonizing years, he bombarded every platform he could think of with messages for Aurelia-Snapchat, Instagram, email, even tried LinkedIn.
He poured his heart out in thousands of texts, telling her about his classes, his hockey games, how empty everything felt without her.
The silence was deafening. Every unanswered message felt like another nail in his coffin.
Those four years of rejection and longing finally crystallized something Luigi had been too stupid to understand before:
Chapter 14
He was completely, devastatingly in love with Aurelia Cooper.
He wanted to spend his entire life making up for how badly he’d fucked things up.
Every winter break, every summer vacation, Luigi would fly back to New Mexico and rent cheap motels near the school, wandering the surrounding area like a ghost, praying for a miracle encounter.
It never came.
By senior year, Luigi was losing his mind with desperation. He made a decision that shocked everyone who knew him: he applied to New Mexico Tech’s graduate program.
Luigi locked himself in his dorm room and studied with the intensity of someone whose life depended on it. Sixteen hours a day, surviving on energy trinks and pure willpower. When exhaustion threatened to break him, he’d stare at old photos of him and Aurelia, imagining the moment he’d finally ee her again.
n May, just before graduation, the email notification appeared in his inbox: “Your Admission Decision is Available.”
uigi’s hands trembled as he clicked the applicant portal link. When the page loaded and he saw those life-changing words-“Congratulations on Your Admission to the Advanced Research Program!”-he actually broke down sobbing.
August couldn’t come fast enough.
fter five years of being locked out, Luigi finally walked through the gates of New Mexico Tech as a legitimate student.
His eyes devoured every inch of the campus, searching desperately for any sign of the girl who’d haunted his dreams.
wo days in, and still nothing. No trace of Aurelia anywhere.
o when his first graduate seminar started, Luigi couldn’t focus on anything except scouring the campus online forums on his phone, looking for any nention of her name.
young woman walked into the classroom, causing the typical stir that attractive female instructors always generated. Luigi didn’t even glance up
rom his screen.
Welcome, everyone. Congratulations on your acceptance to New Mexico Tech’s graduate program. I’ll be your teaching assistant for the next three
rears.”
The voice hit Luigi like lightning.
That voice he’d been dreaming about, missing, aching for through four years of hell.
Luigi’s head snapped up so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash.
Standing at the front of the classroom, looking sophisticated and confident in a way that took his breath away, was Aurelia.
The woman he’d been searching for. The love he’d lost and spent years trying to find.
She was right there.
