Prologue
My arrival at this university was supposed to be the start of our perfect story. I’d pictured cozy evenings, the comfort of knowing our future was set in stone, and the sheer joy of finally, truly being together.
Reality, however, had a different scent: burning autumn leaves and my own, slow-mounting despair. I was nothing more than a naive freshman who’d believed that if I followed my boyfriend hundreds of miles across the country, our relationship would find its footing instead of crumbling into ruins.
To him, this university was his personal kingdom. A sophomore “big man on campus,” a star on the football team, he navigated the grounds like he owned them, trailed by a posse of guys just as arrogant as he was, basking in the glow of admiring gazes. His life was honed to perfection, a flawless mechanism where there was suddenly no room for me.
We lived on the same campus, yet our worlds barely intersected. With every passing day, a wider chasm grew between us. I had hoped that moving here would be the decisive step that finally fixed everything that had broken during our time apart. Instead of the reunion I’d craved, I was met with ice. I tried to break through his detachment, but I remained a wallflower in the shadow of his popularity. He looked right through me, as if my presence had become a tedious reminder of a past he’d already moved on from.
The conversation that had taken place in my dorm room right after class still pulsed in my temples with a dull, throbbing ache.
“Explain it to me—why are you the last one to leave the lecture hall every time? What exactly are you doing in there once everyone else has cleared out?”
He blocked the door, giving me zero chance to retreat. His gaze—heavy, suffocating—slid over my face as if he were hunting for confirmation of his filthiest suspicions. What I saw in his eyes wasn’t just anger; it was a possessive rage that scared me more than any words could.
“I’m hearing reports that the professor lingers on you a little too long,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper that sent a shiver down my spine. “Why is that? Do you owe him some kind of debt I don’t know about, or do you just love the feeling of eyes all over you?”
I slowly looked up at him, my insides turning to ice at the sheer absurdity of it.
“Ethan, what are you even talking about?” I leaned forward, gripping the arms of my chair until my knuckles turned white. “This is a university. I’m here to attend phonetics lectures, not to study a professor’s gaze. Are you seriously buying into this trashy gossip?”
“You’re lying!” His fist slammed into the doorframe with a dull thud that made me flinch. “After everything we’ve been through! I was the one who insisted you come here, I carved out a place for you in this world, and you act like you have the right to keep secrets from me!”
He took a step closer, invading my space, and the scent of his cologne—expensive, sharp, almost suffocating—hit me.
“Why is it that whenever I invite you to the bar, you’re always hiding behind your textbooks?” He cast a mocking glance over my modest clothes. “What’s with these pathetic pennies from your translation gigs, Roni? Are you trying to prove to me you can be independent? It’s ridiculous. You’re just trying to be perfect, but in all that perfection, you’re nothing but white noise to me.”
Bitterness flooded my chest like acid. I had bent over backward trying to fit into his new life, into the shine of his status and his elite inner circle, but in the end, I was always the one at fault. I was guilty simply for existing, for being here, and for still expecting something—anything—other than the cold shoulder.
What hurt the most was how easily he took gossip as gospel, ignoring my words entirely. He had promised that once I arrived, this suffocating jealousy over every man I crossed paths with would be a thing of the past. But reality hit like a sucker punch: here, in his world, his paranoia hadn’t just remained—it had flourished, turning my life into an endless interrogation. I had come to be closer to him, but I’d landed in a cage where every move I made became grounds for a new accusation.
After sitting in the silence of my room for hours, I realized I couldn’t breathe in that vacuum. The tension between us felt tangible, sticky. I began dialing his number. Once. Five times. Ten. I wanted to apologize, though I didn’t know for what. I just wanted to hear, “It’s fine, Roni, come over.” But he wouldn’t pick up.
On the twentieth call, someone finally answered. In the background, music was deafeningly loud, punctuated by screams and the clink of glass.
“What do you want?” a loud, vulgar female laugh rang out.
I froze for a second, trying to suppress the urge to hang up. That laugh was all the proof I needed of everything I’d feared.
“Where’s Ethan?” My voice trembled, betraying me. “Put him on.”
“Are you serious, babe? That’s the twentieth time tonight. Do you have zero self-respect, or are you just that bored?”
“Where is he?” I whispered, clutching the phone.
For a split second, the background noise dimmed—she must have pulled the phone away. Her voice drifted back to me, careless and deliberately loud:
“Walker, you want to talk to your little mouse?”
Then she returned to the line, dripping with mockery. “He’sveeeerybusy,” she drawled, and I heard someone else burst out laughing beside her. “He doesn’t have time for your boring drama. Go find yourself a hobby instead of hounding us.”
The dial tone followed. I stared at the screen, feeling something inside me finally snap.
The world around me fractured. This wasn’t just a fight. It was a lesson. A public punishment for daring to have my own interests, for not tagging along with him the night before.
With trembling fingers, I dialed Sophie, my roommate who knew every secret of campus nightlife.
“Sophie, please, tell me you know where Ethan is right now?”
“Veronika?” The bass was thumping so hard in the background that I could hear drunken shouting. “We’re at Sigma Alpha. This party is insane!”
“Is Ethan there?” I cut her off, my stomach twisting.
“Ethan?” She paused for a second, and there was a rustle of noise, like she was turning away from the crowd. “Yeah, he’s here, somewhere by the bar. Steven and I are at the beer pong table. Listen, get over here! Forget about your translation work!”
“Is he... is he alone?” I didn’t know why I asked, but the words tore out of me against my will.
“Roni, don’t start,” Sophie sighed, her voice laced with irritation. “You know he’s always the center of attention, he’s got a crowd around him. Seriously, let it go! Get over here and dance—don’t be a buzzkill.”
“I... I get it,” I whispered, hanging up before she could give me any more “advice.”
Running on pure adrenaline and hurt, I shoved my sneakers on, pulled a shirt over my tank top, and bolted into the warm night. I raced across campus, past loved-up couples and laughing groups, seeing nothing. Tears blurred my vision into jagged, colorful smears. I had to see him. I had to understand why his “place for me” had become a cage he was now so demonstratively kicking me out of.
As soon as I hit the Sigma Alpha house, the chaos hit me like a physical blow. The mansion vibrated with bass; the air was a thick, suffocating blend of booze, sweat, and cheap cigarettes. Half-naked bodies blurred together in a frantic dance. I shoved through the crowd, being shoved and looked at with mockery in return.
And then I saw him. In the center of the living room, on a large leather sofa.
On his lap, arms locked around his neck, sat that same girl. I recognized her instantly—the same arrogant, sharp tone that had come through the phone speaker now echoed in my mind as she shrieked something, tossing her head back. Ethan, echoing her, roared with laughter as he poured tequila from the bottle directly into her mouth. She writhed in his arms, and the crowd around them whooped in approval, egging them on.
“Ethan!” I screamed, closing the distance. My voice cracked into a rasp.
He turned his head slowly. In his eyes, glazed with alcohol, there wasn’t a hint of remorse—only cold, calculated rage. He pushed the girl aside like a toy he was bored with and stood up, towering over me.
“Ethan, what is happening? What are you doing?!” I was choking on tears, feeling my last shred of dignity dissolve onto the filthy floor.
“I’ll tell you what’s happening,” he spat, his voice so laced with contempt that I instinctively took a step back. “I’m sick of your games with professors. I’m sick of your fake, holier-than-thou act. And you know what pisses me off the most? That pathetic attempt of yours to be ‘the one’ for me. Did you really think you’d move here, slap on a mask of a ‘good girl,’ and I’d carry you on a pedestal?”
He stepped into my space, looking down at me with such coldness that something inside me froze solid.
“You came here, leaving everything behind like a kicked dog, and waited for me to be your savior? Forget it, Roni. You’re a mistake to me. A bland, unbearable mistake I made because I was bored. And now? You’re in my way. Go run to your professor—let him console you with his novels if you’re so desperate for his lectures. To me, you’re a nobody.”
He turned, took that girl by the hand with proprietary confidence, and without a backward glance, led her up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
I stood there in the center of the room, under the crosshairs of dozens of mocking eyes.
“Look, the nerd got dumped!” some blonde girl shrieked.
“Hey, Moore!” a guy from his team bellowed, blocking my path and grabbing his crotch. “Why do you need old man Reed? Come to us—we’ll show you a much better time!”
I spun around and bolted from the house, stumbling and gasping for air. The night air felt like molten lead—it burned my lungs, making it impossible to catch a breath. My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the curb at the side of the road.
Sobs tore from my chest in ragged, gut-wrenching heaves. The person closest to me—the one who had sworn I was his life and begged me to follow him—had annihilated me in a single night. Instead of trust, he’d chosen blind faith in dirty rumors and cheap gossip. Not a single attempt to listen, not a flicker of a desire to look me in the eye. Just a cold, contemptuous accusation that put a final period on our “us.” Fighting for the truth had been too exhausting for him; it was so much easier to trample me and toss me out of his life.
I sat on the cold stone, curled in on myself, trying just to stop the shivering. My nails dug painfully into my shoulders, but the sharpness was almost welcome—it distracted me from what was happening inside. Nearby, cars hummed, laughter cut through the air, and that alien noise only made it worse. The world was living its life, absolutely oblivious to the fact that I’d just lost everything I believed in.
Gathering the last scraps of my strength, I forced myself to stand. My knees buckled, the world swimming before my eyes, but I ran. I ran to my only sanctuary—the quiet of my dorm room. A place where I could finally fall apart in the dark, where no one would see my shame.
