Chapter 18: No Sleep
I didn’t sleep much.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it again. Justin’s voice, raised, sharp, completely unlike him. Nothing. That single word, thrown at me like I was the one who’d done something wrong.
By 3 a.m. I’d talked myself into being reasonable about it. People have bad days. He’d gotten a call. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t good. Maybe I was supposed to give him room instead of taking it personally. Maybe I was being too sensitive. Maybe I needed to stop making everything about me.
By 6 a.m. that reasonableness had worn thin.
I checked my phone before I even got out of bed. No message. No apology. Not even a simple "how did your mom’s surgery go." Just silence, sitting there the way silence does when it’s deliberate. The kind of silence that says everything without saying a word.
That silence hurt more than the shouting had.
I told myself it didn’t matter. I got up anyway.
Campus felt obnoxiously alive that morning. Students laughing on the quad, someone’s speaker playing too loud near the coffee cart, a group of hockey players shoving each other near the fountain like nothing in the world was wrong. Everyone moving through their day like it was just a normal Tuesday.
It wasn’t, for me. It hadn’t felt normal in a while.
I adjusted my camera bag strap and kept walking, keeping my head down, trying not to notice the few people who glanced my way a second longer than necessary. The video from the locker room was still circulating. Probably always would be. That was the thing about the internet. It never forgot.
I was crossing the lot toward the journalism building when I saw him.
Justin. Standing beside his truck.
Relief hit me before I could stop it. Maybe he’d come early to find me. Maybe he’d been waiting. Maybe this whole thing was about to dissolve into an apology and I could stop carrying it around in my chest like a stone.
For one stupid second, I actually smiled.
Then I noticed someone was standing with him. Not standing near him. Standing close. A hand resting on his arm like it belonged there.
I slowed down without meaning to.
She was the kind of pretty that looked expensive. Effortless in a way that made you suspicious of how much effort had actually gone into it. She laughed at something, leaned in slightly, touched his arm again like it was nothing. Like she’d touched it a hundred times before.
Ethan’s voice came back to me before Justin’s ever did. Playboys don’t change. You’re just another girl.
I’d told myself that was bitterness talking. Now it didn’t sound quite so ridiculous.
Justin wasn’t smiling, though. That was the strange part. He looked tired. Irritated, even, the way he got when he was trying to end a conversation he hadn’t wanted to be in. He kept glancing past her shoulder, distracted, answering in short clipped sentences. He hadn’t even looked toward the lot.
He hadn’t seen me at all.
She did, though.
I watched her gaze drift past him and land directly on me. Something shifted in her expression, quick and knowing. She didn’t look surprised. If anything, she looked like she’d been expecting me.
"Ah," she said, just loud enough to carry. "The fake girlfriend."
She didn’t wait for a reaction. She simply shifted half a step closer to him, casual, easy, nothing anyone watching could call out. Nothing he’d even notice.
But I noticed.
A week ago I would have turned around and walked the other way. I would have told myself it wasn’t worth the embarrassment, convinced myself I’d misread the whole thing, gone home and replayed it until I’d talked myself out of caring. I would have shrunk. I always shrunk.
I took a breath instead. Straightened my shoulders.
My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my throat. I walked toward them anyway.
"Excuse me."
She turned first, unhurried, one eyebrow lifting like she found the interruption mildly entertaining. "Yes?"
"Could you give us a minute?"
A short laugh. "Why?"
"I’d like to talk to my boyfriend."
She studied me for a second, then smiled, slow and unbothered. She looked me up and down once, the way you’d size up something you already knew you’d win against. I held her gaze and didn’t flinch.
"Cute," she said. Then, quieter, almost kind, almost not, "You should really ask him who I am."
She walked off without waiting for a response, like she’d already gotten exactly what she came for.
Justin finally turned, and I watched the moment land on him, watched him realize what this must have looked like from where I was standing. His expression shifted, something between guilt and exhaustion crossing his face before he could stop it.
"Harper—"
"What was that?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. I could see him trying to figure out where to even start, and underneath that, something heavier sitting behind his eyes that had nothing to do with her at all. Whatever phone call he’d taken last night was still there, pressing down on him.
He looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with practice.
"That wasn’t anything."
"It looked like something."
"It wasn’t."
I didn’t say anything else right away. I just looked at him. He looked back. For a long moment neither of us spoke, students moving around us like we were furniture in their way.
Then, very quietly, "What the fuck was that, Justin?"
He glanced around. Players walking past. A few heads already turning our way. Whatever he’d been about to say, he swallowed it back down.
"Not here."
I don’t know what I expected him to say. But it wasn’t that.
Because what I heard wasn’t let me explain somewhere private. What I heard was there’s something to explain at all.
I stepped back before I even decided to. My chest felt tight in a way I couldn’t name, somewhere between fury and something closer to heartbreak, and I genuinely didn’t know which one was winning.
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