CHAPTER 2 – The Boy with No Roof.
Clinton did not own a house.
He owned a ceiling.
A ceiling with a hairline crack that stretched from one corner to another like a map of places he had never been.
On humid nights it sweated tiny droplets that fell onto his blanket with soft, irregular taps — the sound of a clock that did not measure time, only endurance.
The room behind the mechanic shop smelled of engine oil, metal dust, and the faint bitterness of burnt rubber that clung to the air even after midnight. It was not a home. It was a pause between struggles.
The single window was small, framed by rusted aluminum, and it faced a brick wall so close that daylight arrived like an apology rather than a gift. Sometimes he would stand there anyway, palms resting against the sill, pretending the narrow strip of sky above the wall was wider than it truly was.
Pretending he was not trapped inside circumstances that had chosen him before he could choose anything in return.
At night, the bulb above his desk flickered with the nervousness of a dying firefly.
It buzzed faintly, as if whispering complaints about being forced to work past its lifespan. Clinton studied beneath that light — textbooks open, pen dancing across margins, his shadow stretching behind him like a taller, more confident version of himself. He often wondered which one of them was real: the boy hunched over borrowed knowledge or the shadow standing upright as if already victorious.
By day, he lived multiple lives stitched together by exhaustion. In the mornings, he rode a delivery bike whose brakes shrieked like wounded birds. The wind slapped his cheeks awake as he wove through traffic, the city roaring around him with indifference.
At noon, he became invisible — a campus cleaner pushing a broom across hallways filled with laughter, overhearing conversations about vacations, weekend parties, and parents who sent money without being asked.
He swept around shoes that cost more than his monthly rent and learned how to smile without showing resentment.
He had no parents to call when his chest tightened with fear.
No inheritance waiting like a safety net beneath a tightrope.
No surname that opened doors before he even knocked.
All he had was a notebook.
It lay on his desk like a fragile treasure — its cover bent, its pages crowded with restless handwriting.
Business ideas filled it: sketches of apps, delivery systems, investment plans scribbled between equations and motivational quotes he wrote for himself on nights when hope felt thin.
The ink often smudged because his hands sweated when he wrote, as if his dreams generated their own heat.
But the most dangerous thing he owned was not that notebook.
It was a memory.
It lived in him like a hidden flame, quiet but relentless. He could be riding through rain or sweeping fallen leaves, and suddenly it would ignite — vivid, detailed, impossible to ignore.
The first day Laura spoke to him.
The sky had been swollen with clouds, heavy like a confession waiting to fall. His bike chain had snapped outside a luxury café whose glass walls revealed people sipping coffee priced higher than his daily earnings.
Rain began without warning — thick drops crashing onto the pavement, turning dust into dark stains. Clinton had crouched beside his bike, fingers greasy, frustration tightening his jaw. He remembered feeling small, exposed, as cars splashed muddy water onto his shoes.
Then an umbrella appeared above him.
Black. Elegant. Steady.
He had looked up, expecting annoyance or pity. Instead, he found her. Laura Whitmore stood there, her heels inches from a puddle she carefully avoided, her expression neither superior nor awkward. Simply… kind.
Rain traced delicate paths along the umbrella's edges, framing her face like silver threads.
"You'll get sick," she had said, her voice warm despite the cold air. "Come under."
He hesitated.
People like her did not pause for people like him. They passed by with polite distance or sympathetic smiles that dissolved before they reached the eyes. But she stepped closer, closing the space without ceremony.
The scent of her perfume — jasmine layered with something clean and distant — mingled with the smell of wet asphalt.
"I'm fine," he had murmured, though water was already dripping from his hair onto his eyelashes.
"You're not," she replied gently. "And pride doesn't stop rain."
He remembered the way her fingers tightened slightly around the umbrella handle when thunder rumbled — not fear, just reflex. He remembered how she bent slightly to match his crouched height, refusing to look down at him.
No one had done that before. No one had adjusted their posture to meet him where he was.
He didn't know then that she was a billionaire's daughter.
She didn't know then that he had skipped breakfast.
They stood in shared shelter, two strangers connected by nothing more than falling water and borrowed shade.
When the rain softened, she smiled — a small curve, sincere and unguarded. "Good luck with the bike," she said before stepping back into her world of polished doors and quiet luxury.
The umbrella memory lingered long after the pavement dried.
Weeks later, he learned her name. Months later, he learned she was married. The knowledge struck him like cold metal pressed against warm skin.
He went back to his notebook that night and stared at the page where he had written "Laura" in careless cursive, surrounded by doodled circles he had drawn without thinking. The letters looked childish, naive, a confession he had never intended to make.
He tore the page out.
The paper trembled between his fingers before he held it over a candle flame. Fire curled the edges inward, turning ink into smoke. He watched until nothing remained but ash resting in a chipped mug.
But feelings do not burn.
They transform.
They become fuel — volatile, invisible, capable of driving a person further than comfort ever could.
After that night, Clinton stopped allowing himself fantasies. He replaced them with calculations. Every hour became currency.
Every decision weighed against a single silent question: Will this make me worthy of standing beside her without shame?
He didn't chase her.
He chased success.
Because loving her without value felt like stealing something he couldn't repay.
Some evenings, exhaustion cracked his discipline. He would sit on his thin mattress, back against the wall, eyes closed, replaying her voice in the café — the way it held neither arrogance nor hesitation.
He would catch himself smiling and immediately frown, ashamed of how easily memory could soften him.
"You're foolish," he once muttered to his reflection in the small mirror above the sink. The mirror was scratched, distorting his face into uneven fragments. "Dreams are for people with cushions to fall on."
Yet even as he said it, he opened his notebook again.
His pen moved faster on nights when he felt her absence. Ideas multiplied like stars appearing after sunset — sudden, numerous, impossible to count. He wrote until the bulb flickered violently, threatening darkness.
He wrote until his fingers cramped. He wrote until the crack in the ceiling above him seemed less like a flaw and more like a line waiting to be crossed.
Imperfection lived everywhere in his life: mismatched plates, a shirt button replaced with thread of a different color, shoes glued at the sole. But instead of weakening him, these small flaws sharpened his hunger. He did not want luxury for comfort.
He wanted it as language — proof that he could speak in the same world where Laura existed without feeling like a translation error.
One night, the mechanic shop below played loud music while engines roared late into the evening. Clinton pressed a pillow over his ears, trying to concentrate on numbers dancing across his textbook. Frustration built until he laughed quietly at himself — a soft, humorless sound.
"This is temporary," he whispered to the empty room. The words floated upward, touching the cracked ceiling like a promise sent to a skeptical sky.
Temporary.
He repeated it until it felt almost true.
Before sleeping, he often opened his phone and scrolled past her social photos without stopping. He trained himself not to linger, not to zoom in, not to imagine conversations that did not belong to him.
But sometimes his thumb would hesitate, and he would see the faint tiredness behind her glamorous smile — the same exhaustion he carried, disguised differently.
Two different worlds.
Two identical silences.
He lay down, staring at the ceiling map above him, tracing the crack with his eyes as if it were a path leading somewhere beyond limitation.
Outside, a stray dog barked. A car honked. The city exhaled its restless breath. Inside, his notebook rested on his chest, warm from his hands, heavy with plans that felt both fragile and invincible.
The memory of the umbrella did not fade.
It did not weaken.
It steadied him.
And as sleep finally claimed him, Clinton held onto one quiet truth — not romantic, not reckless, but fiercely personal:
He would not chase her shadow.
He would build his own light.