chapter 2
A soft knock on the glass door broke my trance.
I looked up to see Maya standing outside the study room.
When she caught my eye, she tapped again and motioned for me to come out.
I pushed the door open, and a cool draft from the hallway hit my face. Maya took half a step closer, her voice sweet enough to rot teeth.
“Ava? Hey. Hope I’m not bothering you.” She tilted her head, her expression carefully innocent. “I was just talking to Liam about me joining student government, and he seemed a little down. Said he needed some air.”
She paused, watching me.
Then her lips curved.
“So I wanted to ask you. Would it be okay if I go with him?”
She said it so politely, so gently, as if she were sincerely asking permission.
But the triumphant glint in her eyes gave her away.
I stared at her, my gaze moving across her pretty, harmless-looking face, and felt a coldness spread through my chest.
Liam. When had he changed enough to fall for someone this transparent?
At first, he had thought she was clingy. But when he sprained his ankle during a basketball game and I wasn’t around, Maya took care of him for a week. After that, everything shifted.
The two of them grew close fast. Too fast.
Maya started calling him her big brother, half joking, half serious, at a crowded party. Liam never stopped her. He just laughed.
The story spread across campus overnight.
Liam, the brilliant and kind student government president, had an inseparable little sister.
And I, his actual girlfriend, got handed a nickname in all the whispers and jokes.
The official sister-in-law.
Every time I heard it, my stomach twisted.
It was humiliating, and worse, it felt wrong in a way I couldn’t fully explain.
But Liam always brushed it off. He would ruffle my hair and smile.
“Don’t listen to them. You know you’re the only one for me.”
Looking at Maya now, with that sweet face and that smug little gleam in her eyes, I wondered if he could still say that with a straight face.
I let out a cold laugh.
She kept smiling. “Ava, are you mad at me?”
Before I could answer, Liam appeared behind her.
“Maya, I told you to wait for me in the library. Why’d you come all the way over here?”
She twisted the hem of her shirt and looked down. “I wasn’t sure if I should say yes to going for a walk with you. So I wanted to ask Ava’s opinion.”
Liam’s expression softened immediately.
“I want you to keep me company. Why would you need someone else’s permission?”
Maya kept her head lowered, but I caught the fleeting smile at the corner of her mouth.
Then Liam looked at me.
His impatience was obvious.
“Maya is being more than respectful, don’t you think?” he said. “She’s coming to you for permission just to take a walk with me. And you? You can’t even take a simple joke.”
A joke.
He still thought all of this was a joke.
And I was the problem for not laughing.
A sharp laugh slipped out of me.
“Respectful?” I said. “Are you really so blind you can’t see the game she’s been playing with you for the last six months?”
His eyes narrowed.
I turned fully toward him.
“Leaving you breakfast with notes in front of your whole class, clinging to you and acting cute, pestering you until you let her call you her sister. You think that’s respectful? It’s not sweet. It’s fake.”
Maya’s face went white.
A second later, tears filled her eyes.
Liam’s face hardened.
“Ava,” he snapped, “why are you being so cruel?”
Cruel.
I almost laughed again, but it got stuck behind the ache in my throat.
He looked at me with open scorn.
“With an attitude like that, you’re not just a bad girlfriend. You can’t even be a decent friend.”
The words hit like blades.
I had never imagined Liam—my Liam—would humiliate me like that in front of her.
I stared at him, blinking once.
His expression flickered for a second, but only for a second.
Then he looked away.
“Maya is a good person,” he said stiffly. “She won’t take this to heart. Just apologize to her and we can move on.”
That sentence shattered five years in a single breath.
I shook my head.
“I’m not apologizing.”
His tone darkened. “Ava, are you really going to be like this?”
“Like what?”
I was suddenly too tired to argue. Too tired to explain.
“This is who I’ve always been,” I said quietly.
Then I turned, walked back into the study room, and shut the door behind me.