Chapter 10

You Didn't Lose Me to Another Man

Winter settled over Oxford, turning the mornings silver.

My work became harder and more absorbing. I learned to use equipment I had previously seen only in textbooks, failed my first practical assessment and earned one of the highest marks on the second. Every result belonged to effort rather than Julian's approval.

Julian stopped appearing at the gates, but he continued sending messages through new accounts. Some begged. Some accused. One contained nothing except a photograph of the paper rose burning in a sink.

I sent each to Hannah and never responded.

The university welfare office helped me create a safety plan, and my college changed the contact details visible in student directories. Accepting that help once would have felt like weakness. Now I understood that agency also meant choosing systems strong enough to hold a boundary when I was tired.

In January, Maya Collins, an old classmate, asked to meet while visiting Oxford. Over coffee, she told me Julian was no longer at King's.

“He was caught with notes hidden inside his calculator cover during an examination,” she said. “After the disciplinary warning, the academic misconduct panel took it seriously. His appeal failed.”

“Was he expelled?”

“His enrolment was terminated.”

I waited for satisfaction.

None came.

“His father says you destroyed him,” Maya added carefully.

“I wasn't in that examination room.”

“I know.”

Maya stirred her coffee. “Some people at home finally understand. He told everyone you made the university punish him. Then the cheating report came out, and the story stopped fitting.”

“It never fitted.”

“People preferred the version where a heartless girl ruined a lovesick boy. It was easier than admitting he kept making choices.”

I asked her not to bring me further updates. Knowing his downfall did not help build my life.

After she left, I went to the laboratory and spent four hours repeating a failed test. When the final sample held, I felt more satisfaction than Julian's expulsion had given me.

Julian had tried to erase my answers, then destroyed his own future by cheating on his. The symmetry was almost too neat, but it had not been designed by fate. It was simply the same choice made twice: whenever reality threatened his pride, he tried to alter the evidence.

Three days later, he waited outside the science library.

His coat hung loosely from his shoulders. He looked older than eighteen and younger than the boy I remembered, as if failure had stripped him back to something frightened.

“Are you happy now?” he asked.

“No.”

The answer confused him.

“This is what you wanted.”

“I wanted you to leave me alone.”

“You reported me. I lost everything.”

“You received a warning. Then you cheated.”

“Because I couldn't concentrate after what you did!”

I looked at him for a long moment.

“That is the problem, Julian. In every version of this story, your choices belong to somebody else.”

He pulled a bundle of folded papers from his coat. Printed emails, photographs and old messages spilled across the pavement.

“Read them,” he demanded. “Tell me the boy who wrote those things wanted to hurt you.”

I picked up one page. It was a message from our first winter together: I want to be beside you when every dream comes true.

“Maybe you meant it then,” I said.

“I still mean it.”

“No. When the dream came close, you tried to stop it.”

He looked at the papers as though they had betrayed him too.

He stepped closer.

“I loved you more than anyone ever will.”

“You loved being necessary to me.”

“What's the difference?”

“Everything.”

He glanced towards the library doors, where Adrian had appeared but remained at a distance.

“You think he won?”

“There was no competition.”

“Then why him?”

“I haven't chosen him.” I paused. “But if I ever do, it will be because he respects who I am, not because he found a way to keep me beneath him.”

Julian's eyes filled.

“I changed universities for you.”

“I never asked you to.”

“I waited outside your house. I came here every day.”

“I asked you not to.”

“I kept everything you ever gave me.”

“And threw away the person who gave it.”

The words struck him into silence.

Security had already been called. When two officers approached, Julian did not resist. He only looked back once.

“You didn't lose me to Adrian,” I said. “You lost me to the version of myself who finally learned that love should never cost her future.”

He lowered his head and left.

That was the last time I saw him in person.

Hannah later secured a strengthened no-contact undertaking based on the repeated messages and campus incidents. King's confirmed that his termination resulted from the new cheating offence and his disciplinary history, not from any request by me to remove him.

The facts were written in places Julian could not revise: university records, solicitor correspondence and security logs.

I no longer needed the internet to agree with me.

I returned to the library. Adrian held the door open but asked no questions until we reached our usual table.

“Tea?” he said.

“Please.”

He set a cup beside my books and went back to his work.

Hours later, I realised I had stopped listening for footsteps behind me.

I submitted my first major laboratory report that evening. At the top of the final page, my tutor had written: Precise, independent thinking. Keep going.

I photographed it for Mum and Dad, then placed the report beside the disappearing-ink video on my laptop. One file represented the future chosen for me. The other represented the future I was making.

That night, long after my flatmates were asleep, my phone began to ring.

The name on the screen had not appeared in months.

Evelyn Hart—Ten Years Later.

I answered.

The older Evelyn stood in the centre of a bright room.

No wheelchair waited behind her.