(Aaron's POV)
The bass from the speakers was vibrating right through the floorboards, pulsing up through the soles of my shoes and rattling my ribs. All around me, the house was a sweaty, suffocating blur of end-of-the-year chaos.
People were screaming over the music, clinking plastic cups, and laughing in these loud, effortless waves.
And then there was me. I was practically glued to the living room wall, gripping a lukewarm red solo cup like it was a anchor keeping me from drowning. I was trying to turn into molecular dust. I was trying to be invisible.
"Hey, Aaron! Catch!" someone yelled, tossing a crumpled-up chip bag at me.
I didn't even move to catch it. It hit my chest and slithered to the floor. My eyes were completely locked on the opposite corner of the room, trapped in the epicenter of my own ruin.
Liam and Linna.
They were tucked away in this dimly lit little alcove by the hallway, completely insulated from the party. It was like they had their own private atmosphere. Linna was throwing her head back, her red hair catching the strobe lights, laughing at something he'd said. But it was the way Liam was looking at her that did it.
He was leaning in so close his lips were practically brushing her ear, his eyes crinkling with that soft, radiant warmth.
That specific light in his eyes. The one I had spent ten years convincing myself belonged only to us—only to our secret castles and childhood woods. Seeing him gift it to her felt like a rusted dagger driving straight through my sternum.
A toxic, white-hot knot of jealousy and five years of hoarded longing slammed into my throat. My brain completely short-circuited. I couldn't breathe the air they were sharing.
Before my mind could even register a command, my feet were moving.
I didn't navigate the crowd. I cut right through it. I shoved past shoulders, broke up conversations, completely blind to the annoyed groans of the people around me. My heart was thumping like a heavy war drum signaling a slaughter. I closed the final distance in a reckless, breathless rush, reached out, and gripped the fabric of his shirt at his shoulder.
"Hey, Aaron—" Liam turned, a casual, easy smile starting to form on his face.
I didn't let him finish the sentence. I lunged forward and slammed my lips against his.
The universe fractured. For a split second, it was a collision of pure, explosive violence disguised as passion. It was every unsaid word, every choked-back sigh from high school tearing free. He tasted exactly like the boy from the woods, but laced with the sharp, terrifying reality of the present.
Then, the fantasy didn't even last for a breath. Reality crashed down on me.
I pulled back, and the blurred room violently snapped into focus. The music seemed to abruptly die. The laughter evaporated into an eerie, suffocating silence. Dozens of eyes were pinned to us.
"What the hell, Aaron?!"
Liam's voice didn't just slice through the silence; it disemboweled me. He stumbled backward, hitting the wall, his hand flying to his mouth. His face was twisted in an immediate, defensive fury.
"What the fuck was that?!" he shouted, his voice cracking, his dark eyes blazing with a mixture of shock and utter violation. "Why the hell did you do that?! I can't believe you'd betray me like this!"
Shards of freezing ice rushed through my veins. The crowd was beginning to murmur, a wall of judgmental stares closing in on me.
"I loved you!" My voice ripped from my throat, raw, tumultuous, and way too loud. It echoed off the walls of the silent house, an ugly, bleeding confession. "I've always loved you, Liam! For 4 years!"
"I can't believe you'd do this to me!" he yelled back, his face flushing red, his chest heaving with mounting rage. "How could you think that was okay? How could you do this to us? To our friendship?!"
The decade of affection, the castles of sticks, the late-night star-gazing, the house we had just built in the woods two weeks ago—it was all crumbling right in front of me, shattering into millions of irrecoverable pieces. It was a permanent, sickening realization: I had poisoned everything we ever shared.
"Liam, please, just listen to me—" I scrambled, my hands shaking as I reached out toward him.
"No! Get away from me!" he choked out, waving his hand frantically as if to push me out of his sight. "I can't do this, Aaron! I can't even look at you right now! How could you do this?!"
The monstrous gravity of what I had done settled deep into my bones. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stand there under the weight of his hatred and the whispers of everyone we grew up with. Turned on pure animal instinct, I bolted.
I tore through the living room, hit the front door, and burst out into the humid spring air. My lungs were burning as I ran blindly across the manicured front yard, the distant laughter leaking from the open windows behind me sounding like a deliberate, mocking taunt.
I ran until the streetlights faded into blackness and the pavement turned to dirt. I hit the jagged edge of our woods—the sanctuary that was supposed to belong only to us. I threw my weight against the rough bark of a sturdy oak tree, gasping erratically for air that wouldn't come.
"What did I do?" I whispered into the dark, my forehead pressing so hard against the rough bark it stung. "What the fuck did I just do?"
My knees finally gave out. I sank heavily into the damp dirt, hot, silent tears burning my cheeks. My mind played the execution on a loop, Liam's shouts echoing in the shadows of the trees. I had crossed a sacred, forbidden line. I had retroactively destroyed the innocence of our entire history. In that freezing darkness, the absolute enormity of my loneliness enveloped me, pulling me down into a bottomless night from which I knew, with devastating certainty, there was no escape.