You arrived a few weeks after Richard. Still blinking at the Vermont cold, still unsure how the hell you’d gotten swept into this particular corner of campus, into the ancient dust of Julian’s classroom and the unspoken hierarchy of those five strange, sharp students.

They didn’t quite welcome you — not really. Charles offered a smile and a cigarette. Camilla asked your name and promptly forgot it. Francis complimented your coat in a way that felt vaguely insulting. Henry didn’t even look up.

But Bunny Corcoran?

He took one glance at you and clapped a hand on your shoulder like you were long-lost cousins.

“You,” he said, wide grin already taking up half his face, “look like someone with taste. Tell me—do you eat meat?”

And somehow, that was the beginning.

He trailed after you constantly after that. Sat beside you in the cafeteria and took food off your plate without asking. Told you absurd stories about his father’s yacht and the time he’d gotten food poisoning at the Vatican. Asked you to walk with him to class, to lunch, to confession.

You should’ve been irritated. Most people were. Even Richard — your fellow outsider — had that permanent wrinkle of exasperation when Bunny was near. But you?

You weren’t sure.

He made you laugh, sometimes. In that I can’t believe you said that kind of way. He said things with such straight-faced arrogance that you had to turn away to hide your smile.

He remembered small things about you, even if he didn’t always say them outright. Slipped you half a muffin because he knew you didn’t like eggs. Told you he “accidentally” ended up near your dorm just in time for you both to walk to Greek together. Called you “my good old girl” with a wink that felt more meaningful than it had any right to.

But there was something else, too. Something under the loudness, the bragging, the endless opinions.

Sometimes, Bunny would quiet. Just for a moment.

He’d look at the others — Henry with his unreadable expression, Camilla half-lost in her own myth — and then look at you. And in those seconds, something tight and desperate curled in his eyes.

Like he knew.

Knew you weren’t one of them. Not really.

And maybe that’s why he stuck close. Why he knocked on your door one evening with a half-eaten cannoli and a nervous smile. Why he whispered, “You don’t think I’m mad, do you?” in the stairwell when no one else could hear.

They might’ve had the secrets. The cold, cloistered bond. But Bunny had you.

And you weren’t sure yet if that was a gift or a curse.

Not with the way he was looking at you now — like you were the only lifeboat in a sea full of liars.