“I don’t know,” I whisper, glaring at him. “And I don’t care anymore.”
He stares.
Jamie exhales, long and slow, and then grabs my arm—not hard, but firm enough that I stop. “Chloe. Just… don’t make this worse.”
I yank my arm back. “Too late.”
For a second, none of us moves. Then I shoulder past them and walk away, heart pounding, eyes burning. Behind me, I hear Miles curse under his breath and Jamie say something low and angry, but I don’t look back.
By the time I reach the exit, my chest aches like I’ve run a marathon. The sunlight outside feels too bright, too real. I keep walking until the noise of campus swallows me up—students laughing, the hum of conversation, the scrape of skateboard wheels on pavement. All of it moving on without me.
They can have their secrets. Their lies. Their half-truths whispered in locker rooms. I’m done being part of their damage.
Except… I’m not sure I believe that.
Because no matter how hard I try, I can still feel the ghost of Miles’s hand on my skin, Jamie’s voice in my ear, both of them tangled in something I’ll never understand.
And for the first time, I wonder if maybe walking away won’t save me at all.
I’m tired.
That’s the first thing that hits me when I wake up. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes, but the kind that seeps into your bones and tells you it doesn’t matter how long you rest—you’re still not coming back from this.
It’s been three days since the locker room. Three days since I said I was done. And for once, I actually mean it. I moved back in the sorority house, thinking things would be different. And that maybe I wouldn’t be so alone if I came back here.
The world keeps spinning—lectures, cheer practices, gossip, late-night laughter floating through dorm windows—but mine stopped somewhere between Miles’s glare and Jamie’s voice sayingyou were a consenting adult.
I keep thinking about that sentence. How small it made me feel. How it stripped everything down to biology, to skin and mistakes, like there wasn’t any ache or confusion or care underneath it. Maybe there wasn’t. Maybe I was just fooling myself.
Either way, I’m done.
I should’ve never come back to the sorority house. I should have stayed at my lonely stupid apartment instead of coming back here. So, I start packing. And this time I can pack everything I own and never come back.
My bed is unmade and the lipstick wordslutstill faintly bleeds through the paint on the wall. The maintenance crew said they’d fix it “when they could.” They never did.
I fold clothes into an old duffel, shove notebooks and textbooks into a box. My fingers shake when I pick up the frame from my desk—me and Dad on the lake, the summer before everything fell apart. He’s smiling in that way that fooled everyone but me. I wrap it in a sweater and toss it into the box before I can think too hard about it.
Leslie knocks once, then peeks her head in. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah.” I force a smile. “Just… need space.”
She bites her lip, glancing around the room like she’s looking for the right words. “You don’t have to quit, you know. The team, the house—things will blow over.”
“I don’t want them to blow over,” I say softly. “I want them gone.”
She nods, maybe understanding, maybe not. “You’ll still text me, right?”
I offer a smile. “Yes.”
When she’s gone, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the mess. All of this—the friends I tried to make, the reputation I ruined, the people I trusted—has been rotting for a while. I just didn’t notice until now.
The truth is, I never should’ve joined the cheer team. I never should’ve thought I could outrun my own shadow. The one thatfollows me from school to school, whispering that I’m too much like my father and too broken like my mother.
I came here to fix myself. Instead, I got tangled in two men who tore each other apart and took me down with them.
Enough is enough.
I drag my bags down the hallway. The few girls I pass don’t look at me. Brielle whispers something to Maggie, and they both snicker. I keep walking.
