Chapter 56: The Things He Notices

Roxanne found her favorite drink waiting outside her dorm door the next morning, condensation already beading on the cup in the early chill. No note this time. She carried it to breakfast still turning the mystery over in her head, and when she reached the table, Roshan’s seat sat empty.

"Where’s Roshan?" she asked.

Liam shrugged, mouth full of toast. "Library. Something about an early assignment."

Roxanne glanced down at the drink in her hand, wondering if it had been him after all, and decided not to ask. The small uncertainty followed her through the rest of the morning like a loose thread she couldn’t quite pull.

The wolf control instructor announced partner assignments before their first session, and Roxanne expected to be paired with one of the brothers she usually trained alongside. Instead, her name was called next to Roshan’s, and he appeared beside her a moment later, quiet and composed as always.

The exercise required them to navigate a room deliberately flooded with competing scents and layered sounds, testing their ability to filter distraction and stay grounded. Roshan moved through it with the same effortless precision he brought to everything, though Roxanne noticed something odd threaded through his concentration. Every few seconds, his attention flicked toward her, checking her balance, her breathing, whether she’d lost the thread of a particular scent.

"You do that a lot," she said, once the exercise ended.

"Do what?"

"Watch me."

He didn’t deny it. "You notice everything too."

Something settled between them at that, quiet and a little too intimate for a training room full of other students.

After class, Roshan asked if she wanted to walk to the library with him, and she agreed, curious despite herself. Inside, tucked into a corner table he clearly claimed as his own, sat a stack of notebooks filled with dense, careful handwriting. Not about her. Academy schedules, competition patterns, small observations about routines and habits that seemed almost obsessively thorough.

"Why do you keep all this?" she asked.

Roshan considered the question longer than it seemed to warrant. "When you’re one of four brothers, people assume someone else is already paying attention. If Lucien noticed something, I didn’t need to. If Liam spoke up first, I didn’t need to. If Kai acted, I didn’t need to." He closed the notebook gently. "So I became the one who watched instead."

It wasn’t delivered like a wound. Just a fact, worn smooth from years of repetition.

"That sounds exhausting," Roxanne said.

A faint smile crossed his face. "Sometimes."

She found herself watching him more deliberately after that, cataloguing small things she’d overlooked before. He always ate last at every meal, letting everyone else fill their plates first. He gave Liam the better cut of meat without comment. He remembered every brother’s schedule down to the hour, quietly rearranging his own day around theirs whenever something conflicted. He fixed problems before anyone else noticed they existed, and never once mentioned it afterward.

"Who notices you?" she asked.

Roshan didn’t answer right away, his eyes fixed on the notebook in front of him.

"Usually," he said finally, "no one."

The words landed heavier than his tone suggested they should.

"I do," Roxanne said.

It wasn’t a declaration. It wasn’t meant to be. But something shifted in his expression, subtle and unguarded for just a moment, like a door cracking open that had been shut for a very long time.

Liam found them shortly after, breezing in with his usual energy before slowing down the moment he registered the atmosphere between them.

"Did I interrupt something?" he asked, glancing between the two of them.

"No," Roshan said, already folding back into his usual reserve.

Roxanne noticed the shift instantly, the way he retreated behind the same calm exterior he always wore, and said nothing about it.

Later that evening, Liam cornered Roshan in the hallway, curiosity clearly getting the better of him. "What were you two talking about earlier?"

"Nothing important," Roshan said.

Liam narrowed his eyes, unconvinced, but let it drop when Roshan offered nothing further. Across the room, Kai watched the exchange without comment, though something in his expression suggested he’d noticed more than he let on.

That evening, Roxanne found something else waiting on her desk. Not a drink this time, but a small handmade bookmark, carefully cut and stitched along the edge, a single line inked on the back in neat handwriting.

For the pages you haven’t reached yet.

She knew immediately who it was from.

Instead of simply keeping it, she went looking for him and found him outside the library exactly where she expected, a book already open in his hands.

"You made this?" she asked, holding it up.

Roshan nodded, saying nothing.

"I like it," she said.

He looked at her a second longer than usual before answering. "Good."

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small item she’d noticed him eyeing more than once during study sessions, a specific pen he always borrowed and never seemed to own for himself. She held it out to him.

Roshan stared at it, genuinely caught off guard. "You noticed that?"

"I notice things too," she said, echoing his own words back to him.

For the first time since she’d known him, he seemed unsure what to do with being seen so clearly.

They walked back toward the dorms together, the evening quiet around them, neither one bringing up what had passed between them earlier. Roxanne held the bookmark loosely in one hand, and Roshan carried the pen she’d given him like it mattered more than its size suggested it should.

At the hallway split, Roshan stopped.

"Roxanne."

She turned toward him.

He looked as though he might say something more, something that had been sitting behind his careful composure all day. Then he simply said, "Thank you."

"You’re welcome," she said, smiling.

He walked away without another word, disappearing down the corridor toward his own room.

Roxanne glanced down at the bookmark in her hand, turning it over one more time before heading toward her door. In the dim hallway light, she caught something she’d missed before, tiny letters inked beneath the original message, so small she had to tilt the bookmark to read them clearly.

— R.

She stood there for a long moment, the quiet of the hallway settling around her, wondering exactly how long Roshan had been paying this kind of attention to her without saying a single word about it.