The table goes silent.
Adrian’s jaw flexes hard, all captain and loyalty. “He pinned him. By the throat. Against the lockers.”
Gio nods, his jaw tight. “Rylan was turning purple. Declan didn’t even raise his voice. He just… ended it.”
Zoë looks between them, processing. “So… Declan’s not a psycho?”
“No,” Adrian says, voice low. “He’s Declan.”
The finality in those two words makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
Cole finally speaks, barely above a mutter. “Rylan keeps acting like that, he’s lucky he walked away.”
Dante sets his fork down with a soft click, and Cole’s mouth snaps shut.
Maya finishes, “I didn’t print it. None of this goes in the article. This is for you.” Her gaze pins mine. “Declan didn’t snap at random. He snapped because someone talked aboutyou.”
The cafeteria blurs at the edges. My fingers go numb around my spoon.
Clara sees it first. “Talia—”
The clang of the spoon hitting the bowl detonates the past in my skull.
The doorknob. The lock. The voice behind me. The smell of beer and sweat.
My breath stutters. Everything glows too bright. Too close.
“T,” Clara whispers, the sound barely a thread.
Weak. Exposed. Seen. I hate it. Hate that one word—slammed—can rip me open.
I blink hard, forcing my feet flat on the tile, forcing air in. “I’m fine,” I say, brittle as glass. “Just… not hungry anymore.”
No one believes it, but no one pushes. Adrian looks away, jaw tight. Maya closes her notebook without a sound. Gio stabs a fry like it insulted him personally. Dante watches me, unreadable, predator-still, as if he’s deciding whether I’m prey or something dangerous pretending to be fragile.
The table feels like a pressure cooker.
“Library,” I say, the word scraped out. “If I don’t go now, I’ll never get that paper done.”
It’s flimsy, but it’s the only way to escape without shattering.
No one stops me. Adrian gives Clara a tiny nod—let her go.
Even though I don’t need to go, I head there anyway. It’s a retreat. A failure. I’m furious at myself for running, but the need for silence, for safety, is a physical claw in my throat.
The freezing air on the walk is a sharp shock that cuts through the anxious fog. I pull it deep into my lungs, my boots crunching on salted paths. The cold is good. It makes me feel alive. It stings my cheeks, making my eyes water for reasons that have nothing to do with memory.
I take the long way around the quad instead of cutting through the center, skirting the edges where I can pretend I’m choosing the scenic route—not avoiding people. A couple of students in Titans beanies cut past, voices carrying.
“Reid’s a freak, man. Who chokes a guy over nothing?”
It wasn’t nothing,a voice in my head whispers.It was you.
I walk faster.
The library is a sanctuary, warm and dim, the noise a low murmur compared to the cafeteria’s chaos. It smells like paper and dust and stress. I hide in the stacks, finding a carrel in the back where the silence wraps around me like a heavy shroud. The walls of the little study cubicle hug my shoulders on either side, and something in me finally loosens, just a fraction.
I open a textbook, but I’m not reading. The quiet gives the thoughts more room to spiral, a tempest just waiting to break.
