LOGINChapter 5Two weeks after the wedding that never happened, the noise thinned enough for the real quiet to arrive.It was worse.The group chats slowed. The passive-aggressive posts stopped getting as many likes. Mutual friends decided, one by one, whether they were still speaking to us. Some were. Most weren’t. Lena’s sister blocked Julian. Claire never unblocked either of us. Ben sent a short, awkward text that said I don’t hate you, I just can’t be in the middle, and then silence.Julian’s mother called once. She cried. She said she loved him. She also said his father still wouldn’t say his name at the dinner table. Julian listened, thanked her, and hung up with his jaw locked so tight I heard it click.He moved a duffel of clothes into my place without calling it moving in. We didn’t label anything. Labels felt dangerous while the ground was still shifting.On a Thursday evening the last confrontation found us anyway.We were coming back from the grocery store—normal errands, the k
Chapter 4The message from Lena arrived at 11:47 p.m. on the third day.Julian was in my kitchen wearing one of my shirts and nothing else, eating cold leftover takeout straight from the container because neither of us had the energy to pretend we were functional adults. His phone lit up on the counter. He glanced at it, froze, then turned the screen so I could see.Lena: I keep replaying the moment you walked into that room with him. You looked relieved. That is the part I can’t stop seeing. You looked relieved to be done with me. I hope whatever you found in that hotel room was worth the year I wasted loving a man who was already gone. Don’t reply. I mean it. This is the last thing I’ll send.Julian put the phone face down.He didn’t cry. He just stood there with a fork in his hand and his shoulders locked like someone had reached into his chest and closed a fist.I took the container from him and set it aside.“Come here.”He didn’t move.“Julian.”“I did that to her.” His voice wa
Chapter 3The house looked the same as it had when we were twenty.Same brick. Same rose bushes Julian’s mother still over-watered. Same brass knocker that had watched us stumble in drunk after exams and after breakups and after every version of “I’m fine” we ever sold each other.Today it felt like a mouth waiting to bite.Julian’s hand was cold in mine when we walked up the path. He didn’t let go. I didn’t make him.The door opened before we knocked.His mother stood there in a cardigan the color of old pearls, eyes already red. Behind her, his father filled the hallway like a verdict.No greeting.Julian’s mother looked at our joined hands, then at my face, then at the faint mark Lena’s slap had left on my cheek.“Come in,” she said. Voice thin. “Both of you. Before the neighbors start taking notes.”We stepped inside.The living room still smelled like lemon polish and the candle she always burned when she was trying not to cry. Julian’s father didn’t sit. He stood by the fireplac
Chapter 2At 6:19 his brother knocked on my door.“Jules? You in there? Planner’s losing her mind. Lena’s already in hair.”Julian sat up so fast the sheet slipped to his hips. My come was still a shine on the inside of his thigh. His phone was a stack of missed lives on the nightstand.I put a hand on his chest and held him there.“Don’t answer like that,” I said.He looked at the door. Then at me. Then he did the stupid, brave thing anyway.“I’m here,” he called. Voice wrecked. “Give me ten.”Silence on the other side.Then, slower: “Why are you in Silas’s room?”Julian closed his eyes.“Because I needed to talk to him.”Another pause. His brother, Nate, has never been slow.“Open the door.”“Nate.”“Open the fucking door.”I got up, pulled on last night’s trousers, and opened it myself.Nate took in the room in one sweep. The wrecked bed. Julian bare-chested. The shirt on the floor with half its buttons gone. Me, shirtless, standing between him and his brother like a man who had al
Chapter 1The knock came at 1:12 a.m.I knew that knock. Same three beats he used on my dorm door twelve years ago when he couldn’t sleep. Same pause after the second one, like he was giving me a chance to pretend I hadn’t heard.I opened it in a towel.Julian stood in the hotel hallway in his rehearsal-dinner shirt, collar wrecked, tie gone, eyes blown wide and shining like he’d been crying in a bathroom stall and then decided crying wasn’t enough.Tomorrow at four he was supposed to marry her.Tonight he looked at my mouth like it was the emergency exit.“Don’t talk,” he said.Then he walked in, shut the door with his heel, and kissed me.It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t drunk-clumsy either. It was twelve years of don’t breaking in one shove. His hands fisted in my hair. His teeth caught my lower lip. He made a sound into my mouth that I had jerked off to in silence for a decade and never let myself name.I should have stopped him.I put him against the door instead.The towel dropped.
Chapter 5Marcus was waiting on his couch with the TV off.That was the first wrong thing. Marcus never sat in a quiet room. Quiet meant he had already decided the conversation was going to hurt.Theo walked in behind me and shut the door. He didn’t hide. He stood at my shoulder in a fresh shirt that was actually his this time. His hand brushed mine once, then dropped.Marcus looked at that.Then he looked at me.“Say it,” he said.I didn’t dress it up.“I’m sleeping with Theo.”The words hit the room and stayed there, ugly and plain.Marcus didn’t move for a full five seconds. Then he laughed. One short sound that had no joke in it.“No you’re not.”“Yes I am.”His eyes went to Theo.“Tell him he’s full of shit.”Theo’s voice came out steady.“He’s not. It started Friday night. I went to his place after the breakup. I kissed him first. He tried to stop it. I didn’t let him. It’s been happening since.”Marcus stood up so fast the couch scraped.“He’s thirty-three.”“I’m twenty-two.”“
Chapter 1: Caught in the ActThe bass from Jordan’s speakers thumped through the walls as I slipped out of his room, heart hammering like a damn traitor. The party downstairs was still raging—cheap beer, shitty EDM, and too many people crammed into his parents’ living room. But I wasn’t going back
Chapter 4: Shadows and Surrender The crack outside the cabin window jolted me awake before dawn, my body still sore and marked from Damien’s relentless claiming the night before. I lay tangled in the heavy blankets, his arm draped possessively over my waist, his breath warm against my neck. For a
Chapter 3: Cabin Fever The family cabin loomed ahead like a trap wrapped in pine trees and fresh snow. Mom and Dad had insisted on the weekend getaway to bond us all together, but they bailed at the last minute with some excuse about a work emergency back in the city. Convenient. Or maybe suspicio
Chapter 1: Caught in the Dark I never thought I would see my stepbrother like this. The house was supposed to be empty. Mom and Dad had left for their anniversary weekend, and I had planned to spend the night buried in my books, finally getting some peace from Damien’s constant noise. Hockey prac







