Chapter 3: The Fallout

“How long?”

The question came out steadier than I felt.

For a moment, there was only the faint hiss of the connection and Mason breathing on the other end. He didn’t answer immediately, and the hesitation told me almost everything I needed to know.

“Mason.”

“Iris…”

“How long?”

A rough sigh crackled through the speaker. “A few months.”

From her spot on the other side of my dorm room, Ava stopped pretending to scroll through her phone. She already knew where this conversation was going. So did I.

A few months.

Not one stupid night. Not a drunken lapse in judgment. Months meant routines, excuses, carefully constructed lies. Months meant he’d looked me in the eye, talked about our future, and maintained an entirely separate relationship at the same time.

“Iris, please let me explain.”

I rubbed a hand across my forehead. “What exactly are you planning to explain? The cheating part or the lying part that came after?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

A short laugh escaped me. Somehow, every man caught doing something unforgivable seemed to receive the same script.

“It wasn’t like that,” I repeated. “Right.”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

Funny how intentions always arrived after the damage was done.

“Who is she?”

The question came out calmer than I expected.

There was a brief pause. “Tessa.”

The name landed immediately. One of the screenshots. One of the messages.

Tessa Quinn.

The redhead.

“Does she know about me?”

“Yes.”

The answer came quickly enough that I knew he wasn’t lying about that part.

Something settled inside me then. No surprise. I’d already burned through that. Just a cold, unpleasant certainty. I could almost understand someone getting involved without knowing the full story. People made bad decisions. Life got messy.

This wasn’t that.

She knew.

“Wow.”

“Iris—”

“No. Don’t.”

“Please just listen.”

“I have been listening.”

For two years, actually. Listening to plans about apartments after graduation. Listening to promises. Listening to him tell me he loved me while apparently building another life behind my back.

“Iris, it was a mistake.”

That finally did it.

I laughed hard enough that Ava looked up.

“A mistake?” I said. “A mistake is missing a deadline. A mistake is texting the wrong person.”

I pushed away from my desk and began pacing the narrow stretch of floor between my bed and the window.

“Having an affair for months isn’t a mistake, Mason.”

The silence that followed was almost satisfying.

Then he reached for the familiar weapon.

“I love you.”

A week ago, those words would have mattered. They would have softened me, slowed me down, made me search for a way to fix things.

Now they sounded worn out.

“Iris, please.”

“No.”

The answer came easily.

No bargaining. No negotiation. No desperate attempt to salvage what we’d built.

Somewhere during this conversation, I’d stopped trying to save us.

I was done.

“We’re over.”

The line went quiet.

Then, “What?”

“We’re over.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“You can’t seriously be ending two years over one mistake.”

I looked across the room at Ava. Her expression mirrored exactly what I was thinking.

One mistake.

Months of cheating. Months of lies. Months of making me look like a fool while I defended him to anyone who questioned him.

The absurdity of his argument drained away the last of my anger and left only exhaustion.

“I’m done, Mason.”

“Iris—”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re emotional right now.”

Of course, I was emotional. What he meant was that he hoped I’d calm down and become easier to talk out of it.

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Iris.”

“No.”

My voice remained steady, and for the first time since the conversation began, genuine panic crept into his.

Not guilt.

Not remorse.

Fear.

The realization that this wasn’t ending the way he’d expected.

“You’ll regret this.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them.

For a second, neither of us spoke. Even he seemed to realize how terrible that sounded.

Then I ended the call.

Just like that.

Two years reduced to a disconnected line.

The silence in the dorm room felt strangely loud afterward.

Ava slowly lowered her phone onto the bed.

“Are you okay?”

I shook my head.

“No. I’m really not.”

“Good.”

I blinked.

“Good?”

“If you told me you were fine, I’d know you were lying.”

Despite everything, a weak laugh escaped me.

Ava crossed the room and squeezed my wrist. She didn’t launch into a speech about fate or silver linings. She didn’t promise I’d find someone better. She just sat there with me while the reality settled in, and somehow that helped more than any motivational quote ever could.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking at my phone.

The screen exploded with notifications.

Messages.

Tags.

Mentions.

News alerts.

Campus gossip accounts.

Apparently, the entire internet had decided to weigh in on my breakup.

Some people were sympathetic. Others defended Mason. A disturbing number treated the whole thing like a reality show they were entitled to review.

Poor Iris.

She should leave him.

She should forgive him.

He’s famous. What did she expect?

I scrolled past dozens of comments until one stopped me cold.

At least she got a scholarship out of the relationship.

My stomach tightened.

Then I saw another.

And another.

Different wording. Same accusation.

As if everything I’d accomplished belonged to Mason somehow.

As if years of studying, writing, interviewing, and surviving on caffeine and stubbornness counted for nothing. As if my scholarship had been handed to me because I dated a football star. As if my position at the university paper had magically appeared without the countless articles, deadlines, and sleepless nights behind it.

I tightened my grip on the phone.

I’d earned every single thing I had.

Nobody had gifted me my future.

Certainly not Mason.

The comments kept multiplying anyway. Thousands of strangers suddenly acting like experts on my life, my career, my relationship.

Against my better judgment, I refreshed the video.

The view count updated instantly.

2.3 million.

I stared at the number while the dorm room seemed to shrink around me.

Two point three million strangers.

Watching the worst moment of my life unfold on their screens.

Ava leaned over, saw the number, and muttered a curse under her breath.

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

Because deep down, I already knew what she was thinking.

This wasn’t the end of the story.

It was the beginning.