Liam drove back to college through the cold Oregon rain, gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. The windshield wipers moved back and forth in a slow rhythm, but they couldn’t clear the storm raging inside his head.

He kept hearing Sophia’s voice.

“Don’t let people convince you that you’re broken just because you needed kindness.”

Those words stayed with him during the entire drive.

When he arrived at campus, everything felt the same — the noisy dorms, the crowded hallways, the fake laughter echoing through the building — yet Liam no longer felt like the same person who had left a week earlier.

But the rumors about Chloe still followed him.

The whispers started again the moment he walked into class.

“There he is…”

“Yo, careful around him…”

Laughter.

Muted, cruel laughter.

Liam clenched his jaw and kept walking, pretending not to hear any of it. But inside, every word cut deep.

That night, he sat alone in his dorm room staring at his phone. He had typed Sophia’s name into the message box at least twenty times, but deleted every message before sending it.

part2