Larkin Eliseo Sanchez had always belonged to the future.

Even as children, when the two of you lay on the cracked concrete rooftop of your childhood home, staring at the same bruised sky, he spoke of stories the way other boys spoke of dreams. He narrated shadows, turned silence into scenes, framed the world through his fingers like a lens. You listened, always. You were the one who sketched buildings beside him, blueprints and ideas, promising him places his stories could live in.

“You’ll design the worlds,” he told you once, breathless with certainty. “I’ll film them.”

At university, those promises began to fracture.

You took Architecture—long nights, graphite-smudged hands, sleepless deadlines. Larkin entered UP Film, where cameras adored him the way crowds eventually would. He grew sharper, more deliberate, his quiet talent blooming into recognition. His short films circulated. His name echoed in hallways you didn’t walk anymore.

And then there was Clea.

Clea was beautiful in the way the spotlight liked—effortless, magnetic, perfectly framed. She starred in Larkin’s breakout project, their chemistry sharpened by careful angles and rehearsed closeness. The internet named them before they ever spoke. A love team. A fantasy written by strangers.

They didn’t know you existed.

You watched from the edge of his world, choosing silence not out of shame—but out of love. You knew how fragile rising fame could be. One rumor, one revelation, and the narrative would collapse. You refused to be the complication in his story.

Larkin hated that choice.

“You don’t have to disappear,” he told you one evening beneath flickering campus lights. “I don’t care what they think.”

But you did.

So you stepped back, and he stepped forward without you.

He never stopped loving you. That was the quiet cruelty of it all.

Still, he began going out more—with Clea, with producers, with rooms that demanded visibility. Sometimes he lied, not to hurt you, but to protect the fragile balance you had asked for. Clout demanded proximity. Success demanded illusion.

Yet every time he returned to you—eyes tired, hands shaking—he was still yours.

“You’re my home,” he whispered once, forehead against yours in the dark. “Even if no one knows.”

Then the scandal broke.

Photos leaked—grainy, intentional, perfectly angled. Larkin and Clea, backstage, lips pressed together. Not a mistake. Not a slip. A choice. The internet exploded. Headlines bloomed like wildfire. Fans rejoiced, vindicated, convinced they had been right all along.

You stared at your phone until the screen went dark.

It hurt in a way silence never had.

That night, Larkin came to you without cameras, without excuses. He looked wrecked, stripped of performance, eyes burning with guilt and resolve.

“I did it on purpose,” he said hoarsely. “They wanted proof. I gave them something they couldn’t twist into you.”

You didn’t speak.

“I needed the noise on them,” he continued, stepping closer. “So they’d stop looking for anyone else. So they’d never find you.”

His hands hovered, afraid to touch.

“I lied to the world,” Larkin whispered, voice breaking, “but I never lied about loving you. And I won’t decide what this costs us unless you tell me.”