The dorm room was too quiet.
Not the comfortable kind of quiet that came after midnight study sessions, but the heavy, suffocating silence that pressed against the walls and hummed in Liam Carter's ears.
He stood in the middle of the small room, the desk lamp the only light left on. Its thin beam cut across the floor, revealing a few things he couldn't look at for long, a cracked picture frame, a shoe turned sideways, and a hand he couldn't bring himself to touch.
He hadn't mean for it to happen. He told himself that again and again, as if repetition could change the truth.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Emily… you weren't supposed to"
He stopped. Even saying her name felt wrong now.
His heartbeat thudded so loud it filled the room. He tried to breathe, but every inhale felt shallow, strangled. He wanted to rewind, to unsee what had just happened. One second they were arguing, her voice shaking, her hand holding that tiny silver flash drive she'd pulled from his drawer. The next… everything blurred.
He'd only wanted to stop her from leaving.
Now she wasn't moving at all.
He backed up until his knees hit the bed, sitting down as his chest heaved. His hands were shaking, streaked with something he didn't want to recognize under the dim light. The smell of sweat and metal filled the air. He felt sick.
On the floor beside the desk, Emily's phone blinked faintly one last notification lighting up her cracked screen: "Mom: Are you home yet?"
Liam's breath hitched. He pressed his palms to his face, trying to block it all out. But behind his eyelids, he saw it again her eyes wide, shocked, afraid. The moment she realized what he'd been hiding.
He'd told her to always call him before coming over to his place .
He'd told her she wouldn't understand.
She saw something that looks like fluid on his is floor, the sounds she heard before entering his house wasn't normal. She'd pieced it all together faster than he'd expected.
"You're….," she'd said quietly, her voice breaking. "Liam! . You have to stop. I'm going to the dean. Or the police."
He'd panicked then. Not about the police but about everyone finding out. The team, the coach, his parents. The "Golden Boy" of St. Doyle College couldn't be seen for what he really was.
"Please," he'd begged her. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I know enough," she'd replied, backing toward the door. "If you won't stop, I will."
Now the words echoed in his head like a curse.
Liam stood and stumbled toward the small window. Outside, the campus was silent, blanketed in fog. The baseball field lights glowed faintly in the distance, where he'd spent so many evenings pretending to be invincible. Somewhere, an owl called. A car passed on the main road, then nothing.
He turned back to the room. It looked wrong broken, disordered. A half-empty cup of coffee on the desk, her scarf fallen by the chair, his textbooks still open to tomorrow's assignment. It almost looked normal, except for what wasn't.
A tremor ran through him. He had to do something. He couldn't just leave things this way.
He knelt down beside her, staring at the stillness, at how her hair spread out across the floor like spilled ink. He wanted to believe she might open her eyes, take a breath, tell him it was all just a mistake. But the longer he waited, the colder the air around her seemed to grow.
He forced himself to move. Slowly, methodically, like someone else was controlling him. He picked up her phone and turned it off. Then her bag he emptied it on the bed, his fingers trembling as a notebook fell open. A page of doodles, notes about their next game, and at the top in small, neat handwriting:
"Don't give up on him yet."
Liam's chest tightened. He shut the notebook quickly, staring at the words until they blurred. She had believed in him even after everything.
He whispered, "I didn't mean to hurt you," but the air gave no answer.
The hallway outside was silent. It was late; his roommate Noah had gone to his girlfriend's place for the night. No one would be back until morning. He had hours to fix this or at least try to.
He glanced at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. His face looked foreign: pale, hollow-eyed, the charming grin wiped away. The "perfect" Liam Carter the boy everyone wanted, the one teachers praised, the star athlete was gone. Only the truth remained, staring back at him.
He couldn't call the police. He couldn't call anyone. If this got out, everything would end his scholarship, his career, his family's reputation. He'd be another headline: College Star Caught in Scandal, Linked to Death.
He swallowed hard and pulled the blanket off the bed. His movements were robotic now, cold. His mind refused to connect meaning to what his hands were doing. He just kept telling himself: No one can find out.
When he finished, he stood still, staring at what he'd done what he'd become. The lamp flickered once, then steadied. He turned it off, plunging the room into shadow.
The only sound left was his breath sharp, uneven, human. He reached for the doorknob, hand trembling, then stopped. For a moment, he thought he heard something a whisper, a sigh, or maybe just his guilt echoing off the walls.
Then he stepped out, closing the door behind him.
Down the hall, a light flicked on someone in the common area, unaware of the secret sealed in Room 214. Liam slipped past, hood pulled up, eyes down.
Outside, the night air hit him like ice. The fog clung to his skin as he crossed the empty courtyard toward the parking lot. The moon hid behind clouds, as if refusing to watch.
He paused by his car, keys shaking in his hand. His reflection looked up at him from the window pale, frightened, and unfamiliar
For the first time in his life, Liam Carter was no longer the boy everyone loved.
He was something else now something he couldn't take back.
And as he opened the trunk, he whispered into the night,
"I'm sorry, Emily."