Everything We Hide

POV

Family is made up of the people you didn’t choose, but friends are the people you choose and trust even more than your own blood. They become your chosen family. They are the people you trust the most—the ones you tell everything to and the ones you never hide from.

Friends should be the people you can always count on when it matters. They should be the people you never expect to stab you in the back.

But when you look back and realize that one of your closest friends was the one holding the knife…

What do you do?

Chapter 1 — Mei’s POV

“Good morning, Mei!”

“Ugh, why are you so loud, Maya? Can you please lower your voice?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes.

“I guess you stayed up way too late watching anime again to get any sleep,” Maya teased.

“Yeah…” I yawned. “I just finished the second season of Black Clover.”

“No way! But you just started it!”

“I know, I know, but I couldn’t help it.” I tried to sound completely normal. “Anyway, where’s Leo?”

“Oh, he’s getting coffee,” Maya replied.

“Oh, tell him to get me one too, please.”

As Maya turned away, my heart did a guilty flip.

Oh my God.

I just lied straight to my best friend.

I wasn’t watching anime the whole night.

I was talking to this guy I met online.

His name is Zach, and oh my God, he is such a sweet talker—and so hot. I couldn’t stop talking to him the entire night.

I love anime, but finding a hot guy who likes it too?

That’s a dream come true.

I actually met Zach about a year ago online, but I hadn’t met him in person yet. It all started when our friend group was talking about a dating app. Maya had been saying she was going to download it just to make Leo jealous.

I figured, You know what? Let me download it too.

And that’s how I met Zach.

It turned out he loved anime and manga just as much as I did. We started talking about our favorite shows, and one thing led to another. Before we knew it, we were completely hooked on each other.

At first, it was just texting.

Then it turned into voice notes.

Now we were doing full phone calls, yapping to each other until six in the morning.

Zach worked in the afternoon, so he could sleep in late.

But me?

I had to go to school.

I’d gotten maybe three hours of sleep, and now Maya was yelling directly into my ear.

“Mei, seriously, you need to stop this,” Maya lectured, crossing her arms. “The term just started. We’re in college now.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Maya, I’ve always been like this.”

Right then, Leo walked into the room holding two cups of coffee and one cup of tea. He caught the tail end of our conversation.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking between us.

Maya instantly smiled at him, her tone softening.

“It’s nothing. Just girl talk. Can I please have my tea?”

I rolled my eyes again, secretly amused by how quickly she changed her tune around him.

“Just give me my coffee,” I muttered.

I took the cup, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and started walking toward our building. Maya and Leo quickly fell into step behind me.

We had about thirty minutes before our first class started.

Maya glanced around the crowded campus quad.

“Hey, where’s Victoria?”

“She’s running late,” Leo answered, taking a sip of his coffee.

Maya sighed and checked the time.

“But we have class in thirty minutes!”

“She knows. I texted her before I went to the coffee shop,” Leo explained. “She said she’s about twenty minutes away.”

I stared down at my phone, navigating past a notification.

“Of course she’s late,” I scoffed. “She’s always late.”

“It was always like this in high school,” I muttered to myself. “She was always late.”

I unlocked my phone, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw a text message from Zach.

Zach: Hey, beautiful. How’s your first day of college? Are you enjoying it?

I smiled at my screen and quickly typed back.

Mei: You have no idea. All I want to do is go back to my room, talk to you, and watch more anime. What is school even good for anyway? All I see are these old men and women yapping in my ears, pretending they’re teaching us something.

Zach replied almost instantly.

Zach: Oh, beautiful, I know. But education makes your family proud of you.

I giggled softly.

Mei: You’re hilarious. Anyway, I have to go to class. Talk to you tonight.

Zach: Yes, beautiful. Okay, bye.

I smiled, locked my phone, and slid it back into my pocket.

But when I looked up, I caught Leo staring right at me.

He had this look on his face—I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but it felt really weird.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to break the tension.

He forced a quick smile.

“Oh, nothing.”

But his smile looked incredibly tense.

Fake.

Not real at all.

A wave of confusion washed over me.

I had known Leo for a very long time, and he had never looked at me like that.

Before I could think about it any further, a loud voice cut through the campus quad.

“Hey, guys!”

I turned around and saw Victoria running toward us.

“Why are you so late?” I asked as she caught her breath. “Girl, it’s our first day of college!”

“Oh my gosh, sorry! It’s all because of my mom,” Victoria complained, throwing her hands in the air. “She is so annoying. You have no idea! I put this outfit on, and she kept nagging me that my clothes were too tight and this and that. Like, come on! I’m not in high school anymore. I’m a grown-ass woman. I’m twenty!”

I just smiled and rolled my eyes at her.

“Yeah, yeah, right. You’re twenty, but you’re still showing up late.”

Victoria looked at the three of us, then glanced down at our hands.

“Uh, where’s my coffee? All you guys have drinks, but where’s mine?”

“Well, you were late, so no coffee for you,” I told her bluntly. “You should’ve gotten here earlier.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Whatever. Let’s just go to class.”

As we walked toward the lecture hall, I was looking down and completely plowed right into a guy.

“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to,” I stammered, steadying my coffee.

“It’s okay. No worries,” the man replied smoothly before walking past me.

I froze right there in the middle of the hallway.

Why did that guy look so incredibly familiar?

I stood perfectly still, staring at his retreating back. I knew I had seen him somewhere before, but my brain couldn’t place him.

Victoria stopped walking and looked back at me.

“What are you staring at?”

“It’s nothing,” I muttered.

Victoria smirked.

“Oh, please. He’s a hot guy. That’s why you’re staring at him.”

“You’re crazy. That’s not why I was looking!” I protested. “He just bumped into me.”

Victoria laughed.

“Well, he is hot.”

Leo glanced back, his brow furrowed.

“Yeah, I guess he is.”

“He definitely has a nice back,” Maya chimed in.

Except she wasn’t looking at the stranger at all.

She was staring directly at Leo’s back.

I looked at her and shook my head internally.

This girl is so obvious.

How did Leo not see that she liked him?

Honestly, he probably did know and was just ignoring it.

“Let’s go, guys,” Leo called out. “We’re going to be late.”

We finally rushed into the classroom and took our seats just as the professor walked in.

My jaw practically hit the desk.

“Isn’t that the guy who bumped into me earlier?” I whispered frantically to Maya.

Maya squinted at the front of the room.

“Yeah, I think so.”

I stared as the man turned toward the whiteboard and began introducing himself to the class.

Then he wrote his name in big, clear letters.

Zach.

My heart did a violent flip.

No way.

This was a total coincidence.

He had the exact same name as the guy I had been talking to online.

I stared at him so hard my eyes began to hurt.

Sneaking my phone out from under my desk, I quickly snapped a picture of him and zoomed in.

He looked so much like the photos my online Zach had sent me…

Just older.

Is this his father?

Panic started rising in my chest.

Then I shook my head.

What the hell is wrong with you, Mei? You’re losing it.

Still, I couldn’t stop staring at him for the entire class.

My mind was completely warped with confusion.

I couldn’t handle the suspense anymore, so I secretly opened my messages and sent a text to the online Zach.

Mei: Hey, does your dad happen to work as a professor at my college?

I waited.

One minute.

Five minutes.

The whole lecture passed.

He never texted back.

I sat there in the silence of the classroom, completely terrified and confused.