Chapter 2No Longer Your Silent Knight

I squeezed the crumpled note in my pocket until the edges bit into my palm.

I’ve never been the type to suffer in silence. I found Noah by the bleachers after school, my throat tight with a dozen questions. What does the note mean? Why are you lying to me?

But when he saw me, he just raised his hand, signing something simple and soft while looking at the Band-Aid on my finger.

“Does it still hurt?”

I shoved his hand away, the bitterness finally boiling over. “If you’re sick of me, Noah, you can just say it. You don’t have to play these double games.”

His eyes shifted, landing on the corner of the note sticking out of my pocket. He didn’t look panicked. Instead, a look of profound exhaustion washed over his face—the look of someone who had expected me to make a scene over "something small."

“It’s not what you think,” he signed. “But Sadie… don’t you think we’re a little too close?”

He hesitated, his fingers hovering as if the next thought was too heavy to carry.

“Just say it,” a bright voice interrupted. “If you don’t tell her, she’ll never change. People need to know when they’re overstepping.”

Serena appeared out of nowhere, her hand resting lightly on Noah’s shoulder in a gesture that looked intentionally protective.

I felt a surge of nausea.

I’ve always been stubborn. When I first met Noah, he had lost his voice after a traumatic accident. He was the quiet, broken boy everyone bullied. I was the girl who grew three inches over the summer and fought the kids who tripped him in the hallway.

When the counselor asked where Noah wanted to sit, he just pointed to a chair.

I stepped in. “He said he wants to sit with me. He said he can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

In calculus, when the teacher asked who could solve the bonus problem, I saw Noah’s notebook filled with perfect equations, yet he sat there like a statue. I raised my hand. “Noah has three different ways to solve it, Mr. Harrison.”

Eventually, Noah wasn't the boy hiding in the shadows anymore. People started talking to him. He got into the Honors program. On the day he received his acceptance letter, he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and handed me a slip of paper: “I’ll tutor you. Let’s go to the same college, okay?”

That was the first time my heart skipped for him. I thought we were a "we."

Until Serena arrived.

A few weeks ago, I had begged Noah to go see a revival screening of Interstellar. He’d smiled that weary smile and signed that he wanted to go to the library to organize his notes.

I did what I always did. “Oh, so we’re on the same page? You want to see the sci-fi flick too!”

It was our routine. I never thought twice about it.

But Serena had been standing there, her brow furrowed. “Can’t you just respect him for once?” she asked, her voice dripping with "sincere" concern. “He clearly signed that he wanted to go to the library. Why do you constantly choose to ignore what he actually wants?”

The air went still.

Me? Hurting Noah?

The worst part was Noah’s reaction. He looked like a man waking up from a trance. He nodded at Serena and signed a slow, deliberate “Thank you.”

The unspoken bond, the shared jokes, the years of "protecting" him—it all shattered in a second. Serena became the heroine of his story, the one teaching him "boundaries."

And now, standing by the bleachers under her watchful eye, Noah found his courage. He signed, one slow movement at a time:

“I think… I need some personal space.”