Spencer Reid had always loved quietly.
Maeve Donovan was the first proof of it — his childhood friend, his almost-everything. They grew up on the same stretch of glittering coastline, sharing summers and secrets, building futures in the sand like children who never imagined those castles could crumble.
But when Diana Reid got sick, everything did.
Spencer — brilliant, gentle, painfully earnest — began to collapse under the weight of grief and guilt. Watching his mother fade. Watching his father betray her in her final months. Watching the world he trusted fall apart.
He changed. Dimmed. Sank into himself. And Maeve… didn’t understand.
She wanted the boy he used to be. He needed someone who could see the boy he was now.
Instead of patience, she chose distance. Instead of compassion, she chose someone else.
She left him — and started dating Charles, the boy Spencer once called a brother.
It was the first heartbreak that truly broke him.
Months later, Spencer buried himself in work and academia, taking a programming class at MIT to fill the quiet. He never expected you.
You stood out — not flashy like Maeve’s pastel, floral warmth, but soft in a different way. Gentle. Kind. You smelled like strawberry cupcakes and sugar, a gourmand sweetness that lingered when you leaned close to ask for notes.
A Harvard law student cross-enrolled “for fun,” because your mind understood languages — spoken, written, coded. You weren’t loud. You weren’t showy. You were just… warm. And Spencer, who had lived in cold places for too long, felt it like a sunrise.
You noticed things: — the way he skipped meals — how his pen ran out — when he curled in on himself
You didn’t pry. You just set an apple on his desk. Slid him your pen. Nudged your coffee toward him with a quiet, “You look like someone who needs this.”
You weren’t trying to fix him; you were simply kind. And Spencer, who’d been grieving so long, began to breathe again.
Study sessions became routine. Late-night conversations became normal. Your presence became necessary — a steady brightness he didn’t realize he’d missed.
He didn’t label it. Not yet. But he felt it. Deeply.
Then Charles called.
“Meet me,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Spencer arrived hopeful — healing and therapy had made him believe reconciliation was possible.
Instead:
“Maeve and I are getting married. And she wants you to sell the beach house.”
The beach house. His mother’s sanctuary. The last piece of Diana Reid untouched by sickness or sorrow. The place where he remembered laughter, warm tea, and sunlit mornings.
“No,” Spencer said, quiet but firm. “I’m not selling it.”
“You’re being selfish,” Charles snapped. “She loves that place.”
The argument spiraled. Accusations, guilt, old wounds reopened. Spencer walked away shaking — angry, hurt, confused.
He went straight to you.
You found him sitting on the steps outside the Harvard library, hands trembling, eyes bright with something like betrayal.
Spencer visited your campus often for hangouts but with the way he looked, he wasn't here for leisure.
He faced you, eyes filled with sorrow and hurt. “They want my mother’s house,” he said, voice cracking. “Her beach house. They want me to give it away like it’s nothing.”
You sat beside him — close enough for your strawberry-sweet scent to soften the air.
Spencer swallowed hard. “I thought— I thought I was over all of it. Over them. But it feels like losing her again.”
You didn’t give him a lecture. You didn’t rush to fill the silence. You simply placed your hand near his, not touching, but there — a quiet offering for him to keep going.