The pebbles stop.

I lie perfectly still on my bedroom floor, wrapped in my grandfather's jacket, and wait for silence.

Instead, I hear my father's voice downstairs. Muffled, confused. Then the front door opening.

Then Felix's voice, warm and carrying even through two floors: "Hi, Mr. Reyes. I'm Felix Zhang. I'm here to see Margot."

I scramble to my window, press my face against the glass.

Felix stands on our front porch with a projector under one arm and what looks like a rolled-up bedsheet under the other. His hair is a disaster. He's wearing flannel pajama pants and a hoodie.

It's midnight on a Tuesday.

He's lost his mind.

"I'm sorry for the late hour," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even from here. "But this is kind of an emergency."

My father—bless him—sounds more amused than angry. "What kind of emergency requires a projector at midnight?"

"The film club kind, sir."

There's a pause. Then my father laughs, actually laughs, and says, "She's upstairs. First door on the right. Keep the door open."

"Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir."

Footsteps on the stairs.

I have approximately fifteen seconds to pull myself together.

I manage to sit up and shove my glasses back on my nose before Felix appears in my doorway, backlit by the hallway light, looking like some kind of deranged knight errant with his projector and bedsheet.

"You can't be here," I say.

"Your dad literally just let me in."

"Felix—"

"You've been avoiding me for a week." He steps into my room, and suddenly the space feels impossibly small. "You missed three club meetings. Priya's threatening mutiny. Marcus thinks you died. And you haven't responded to any of my seventy-three texts."

"I've been busy."

"You've been hiding."

He's not wrong.

I've been hiding in every possible way—skipping lunch to eat in the library, taking the long route between classes, even avoiding the film club room, which feels like cutting off my own oxygen supply. But being near Felix after that kiss, after the way my entire body had caught fire at his touch—

No.

Safer to suffocate than to burn.

"I need you to leave," I say, and I hate how my voice shakes.

Felix sets down the projector. Unrolls the bedsheet.

"Not until you watch a movie with me."

"Are you serious right now?"

"Completely." He starts tacking the sheet to my wall with the pushpins from my corkboard, covering my vintage Casablanca poster. The audacity. "You ran away after we kissed. You won't talk to me. So I'm going to do the one thing I know you can't resist."

"Felix—"

"Shut up and help me hang this screen."

The command in his voice does something unfortunate to my pulse.

I stay on the floor.

He finishes hanging the sheet himself, then sets up the projector on my desk, angling it toward the makeshift screen. His movements are efficient, confident. He's done this before.

"Where did you even get a projector?" I ask despite myself.

"Film club room. I have a key now, remember? You gave me one three weeks ago." He glances at me, and even in the dim light, his eyes are too knowing. "Back when you still trusted me."

The words hit like a slap.

"I trust you."

"Then why are you hiding from me?"

Because you kissed me and I forgot how to breathe. Because you make me want things I can't have. Because everyone I love leaves and I can't survive losing one more person.

I don't say any of that.

Felix feeds a film reel into the projector. The familiar mechanical whir fills my room, and despite everything, my heart lifts.

"What are we watching?" I ask.

"The Phantom of the Opera. 1925. Lon Chaney." He sits down on the floor beside me, close enough that I can smell cedar and orange zest, close enough that his shoulder almost touches mine. "Your favorite."

It is my favorite.

My grandfather showed it to me when I was twelve, the night my mother left. We watched it three times in a row while I cried into his cardigan, and he told me that the Phantom understood what it meant to love something so much you'd destroy yourself to keep it.

I never told Felix that.

"How did you know?" I whisper.

"You mentioned it once. During our first meeting. You said Lon Chaney could communicate more with his eyes than most people could with a thousand words." Felix looks at me, and his expression is unbearably soft. "I remembered."

The title card flickers onto my wall.

Felix hits play, and then he does something that breaks me completely.

He takes off his hoodie and drapes it over my shoulders.

It's warm from his body heat. It smells like him—cedar and citrus and something uniquely Felix, something that makes my chest ache.

"You're cold," he says simply.

I am. I've been cold since I ran away from him a week ago.

We watch in silence as the film begins. The Paris Opera House. Christine Daaé and her mysterious teacher. The shadow in the mirror.

I've seen this movie a hundred times.

I could recite every title card.

But watching it with Felix feels different. Sacred, somehow. Like we're sharing something more than just a film.

Halfway through the first reel, Felix speaks.

"You know what I love about silent films?"

"What?" My voice comes out rough.

"They can't hide. No dialogue to deflect with. No sound to fill the uncomfortable silences. Just truth. Raw and unfiltered." He pauses. "You can't quote other movies to protect yourself when there are no words."

My throat closes.

"That's a low blow, Zhang."

"I know." He shifts, turning to face me instead of the screen. "But you've been quoting Casablanca at me for a week through text. 'We'll always have Paris.' 'Here's looking at you, kid.' Even 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,' which doesn't even make sense in context."

"It makes perfect sense—"

"Margot." He says my name like a prayer and a reprimand all at once. "Talk to me. Please. No Bogart. No Stanwyck. Just you."

The Phantom is unmasking Christine on my wall.

I feel just as exposed.

"I can't do this," I whisper.

"Do what?"

"This. Us. Whatever this is." I gesture helplessly between us. "You kissed me, and I—I can't—"

"Can't what?"

"Can't let myself want you."

The words hang in the air between us.

Felix goes very still.

"Why not?" he asks quietly.

Because wanting things is dangerous. Because I wanted my mother to stay and she left anyway. Because I wanted my grandfather to live forever and he died. Because the film club is dying and I can't stop it and you're going to realize I'm not worth the effort and leave too.

Because I'm terrified.

But I can't say any of that. Can't let him see how broken I am, how the kiss shattered something in me that I've been desperately trying to hold together.

On screen, the Phantom is singing to Christine, his grotesque face revealed, his love laid bare despite knowing she'll reject him.

My grandfather's voice echoes in my memory: The Phantom understood what it meant to love something so much you'd destroy yourself to keep it.

"My mother left three years ago," I hear myself say.

Felix doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just listens.

"She didn't die. She didn't have some tragic reason. She just... left. Walked out one morning and never came back." My hands are shaking. I clench them into fists. "She left a note. Said she couldn't do this anymore. Being a mother. Being tied down. Said she needed to find herself."

"Margot—"

"I was fourteen. I thought—" My voice cracks. "I thought if I'd been better, smarter, quieter, louder, something, she would have stayed. That I wasn't enough to make her want to stay."

Felix's hand finds mine in the darkness. His fingers lace through mine, warm and solid and real.

I should pull away.

I don't.

"My grandfather was the one who held me together after she left. He let me move into his house, converted the basement into a film club room, taught me that silent films could say everything I couldn't." I'm crying now, hot tears sliding down my face. "And then he died two years later. Heart attack. Just... gone."

"I'm so sorry," Felix whispers.

"The film club is all I have left of him. His jacket. His projector. His love for these movies." I turn to look at Felix, and his face blurs through my tears. "If the club dies, I lose him all over again. And I can't—I can't lose anyone else."

"You won't lose me."

"You don't know that." My laugh is bitter. "Everyone leaves eventually. My mother. My grandfather. Even you—you'll graduate, go to college, realize that the weird girl who lives in old movies isn't worth—"

Felix kisses me.

Not like last time—not desperate or angry or explosive.

Soft. Gentle. Achingly tender.

He cups my face in his hands and kisses me like I'm something precious, something worth staying for, and I break apart completely.

I'm sobbing into his mouth, and he just holds me, kisses my tears, my cheeks, my forehead, my trembling hands.

"I'm not leaving," he says against my skin. "I'm not your mother. I'm not going anywhere."

"You can't promise that."

"Watch me." He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his eyes are blazing. "You want to know why I joined the film club? Really?"

I nod, unable to speak.

"My grandmother lives with us. She only speaks Mandarin. I only speak English. We can't communicate. At all." His voice is raw. "My parents are always working at the restaurant. My friends think I'm the funny guy, the class clown, the one who doesn't take anything seriously. And I'm so fucking tired of performing, Margot. Of being loud and entertaining and never being seen."

His hands are still on my face.

"Then you showed me The Kid. Charlie Chaplin and that little boy. No words. Just emotion. Pure and real and honest." He laughs, but it sounds broken. "And I realized that silence could say more than all my noise ever did. That maybe I didn't have to perform to matter."

"Felix—"

"I'm terrified," he says. "Every single day. Terrified that I'm disappointing my parents who gave up everything to come here. Terrified that I'm not smart enough, not serious enough, not enough. That I'm just a joke everyone tolerates."

I see him now. Really see him.

The boy beneath the charm and the laughter and the wild gestures.

The boy who's just as scared as I am.

"You're not a joke," I whisper.

"Neither are you." He brushes his thumb across my cheekbone. "You're not too quiet or too weird or not enough. You're—Margot, you're everything."

The film is still playing on my wall. The Phantom is losing Christine to Raoul, his world crumbling around him.

But I'm not watching.

I'm looking at Felix, at this beautiful, broken boy who showed up at midnight with a projector because he knew I couldn't resist a silent film.

Who remembered my favorite movie.

Who sees me.

"I'm scared," I admit.

"Me too."

"I don't know how to do this. How to let someone in."

"We'll figure it out." He rests his forehead against mine. "Together. One film at a time."

On screen, the Phantom is releasing Christine, letting her go because he loves her.

But Felix isn't letting me go.

He's holding on.

And for the first time in three years, I let myself hold on too.

We don't kiss again.

We just sit there, tangled together on my floor, watching Lon Chaney communicate everything without words.

Felix's arm around my shoulders. My head on his chest. His heartbeat steady against my ear.

The projector whirs.

The film flickers.

And somewhere around the final reel, I fall asleep wrapped in Felix's hoodie, his cedar-and-citrus scent surrounding me, his fingers tracing absent patterns on my arm.

I wake up to dawn light streaming through my window.

Felix is still here.

Still holding me.

He didn't leave.

His eyes flutter open, and he smiles—that warm, genuine smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes.

"Hi," he whispers.

"Hi."

"Your dad's going to kill me. I was supposed to keep the door open."

I glance at my door. It's still open. Barely.

"You stayed," I say, and I hate how vulnerable I sound.

"I told you I would." He brushes a strand of hair from my face. "I keep my promises, Reyes."

Something warm and terrifying blooms in my chest.

Hope.

Dangerous, fragile, impossible hope.

"We should probably get up," Felix says, but he doesn't move.

Neither do I.

"Five more minutes," I whisper.

He pulls me closer, and I let myself have this. This moment of trust. This feeling of safety.

This boy who sees me and stays anyway.

The projector sits silent on my desk.

The bedsheet screen still hangs on my wall.

And for the first time since my grandfather died, the film club room in my basement doesn't feel like a shrine to loss.

It feels like possibility.

Felix's phone buzzes. He groans, fumbles for it.

Then his entire body goes tense.

"What?" I ask.

He shows me the screen.

Seven missed calls from Priya. Twelve texts in the group chat.

The most recent one makes my blood run cold:

EMERGENCY CLUB MEETING. NOW. Sienna's making her move.

Felix and I look at each other.

The moment shatters.

Reality crashes back in.

"We need to go," I say.

He nods, already moving, helping me up.

But before we leave, he catches my hand.

"Whatever happens," he says, "we face it together. Okay?"

I think about the Phantom, alone in his opera house.

I think about my mother, who ran when things got hard.

I think about my grandfather, who taught me that the best films are about people who fight for what they love.

"Okay," I say.

And I mean it.

We run.