My knuckles hover inches from the door, trembling like leaves in a storm.
One knock. That's all it would take to announce my presence, to step into whatever surprise Liam has waiting for me. One simple rap of my knuckles against the wood, and this perfect weekend can finally begin.
But Madison's laugh is still echoing from inside the room, sharp and unmistakable, winding around my ribcage like barbed wire. Each peal of laughter feels like it's physically cutting into me, carving out pieces of the certainty I've been clinging to since I left Sacramento this morning.
I press my ear closer to the door, straining to hear more, to find some explanation that doesn't lead to the dark place my mind is trying to drag me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not her at all. Maybe it's just someone else, some random college girl who happens to have a laugh that sounds exactly like my sister's. Maybe I'm being paranoid, letting Zoey's warnings and Madison's cryptic comments from last night twist my perception of innocent sounds.
But then I hear it again, higher this time, more delighted, followed by a low male voice that I would recognize anywhere, even in my nightmares. The voice that has whispered sweet things in my ear, that has called me beautiful, that promised me a surprise this weekend.
Liam.
My stomach lurches violently, like I'm on a roller coaster that's just crested the highest peak and is about to plummet toward the ground. The iced coffee I drank on the drive suddenly feels like acid in my throat.
I can't breathe. The hallway feels like it's closing in around me, the cheerful sounds from other dorm rooms fading to white noise as my entire world narrows to this single moment, this single door, this single choice.
I could walk away. I could turn around right now, march back to my car, drive the three hours home, and pretend this never happened. I could text Liam later and say something came up, that I couldn't make it after all. I could preserve whatever illusion I have left, protect myself from whatever truth is waiting on the other side of this door.
But I can't. Some masochistic part of me, some deep need to know, forces my hand forward. I grip the doorknob before I can talk myself out of it, the metal warm and slick against my sweaty palm. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my throat, behind my eyes, in the tips of my fingers.
And then I push.
The door swings open on a burst of afternoon light streaming through the window and the sound of surprised voices, and the image that greets me sears itself into my retinas so fast, so brutal, it feels like someone has set my entire nervous system on fire.
Liam.
My boyfriend. My first love. The person I drove three hours to surprise.
In bed.
With her.
With Madison.
My sister's platinum hair fans out across his pillow like spilled champagne, catching the light in a way that would be beautiful if it weren't destroying my entire world. Her dress—that expensive champagne-colored silk number she wore to my graduation party last night—is bunched up around her waist, wrinkled and disheveled in a way that tells me exactly what they've been doing. His shirt is gone, his tan skin bare and gleaming with a light sheen of sweat, his arm thrown possessively across her waist like she belongs there, like this is natural, like this is where she's supposed to be.
The sheets are twisted and pulled apart, the comforter half on the floor. The air is thick with the scent of sweat and expensive cologne and something else—something intimate and wrong that makes my stomach turn. Empty beer bottles sit on his desk alongside what looks like the remnants of takeout containers. His laptop is still open, some movie paused on the screen like they got distracted halfway through.
This isn't a moment of passion. This isn't a mistake that just happened. This is comfortable. This is familiar. This has been going on for a while.
My whole world stops.
For what feels like an eternity but is probably only seconds, none of us move. Madison's laugh dies abruptly in her throat, her mouth falling open in what might be surprise if I didn't know her well enough to recognize the calculation in her eyes. Liam's easy grin falters and crashes completely, his face cycling through confusion, recognition, and pure panic in rapid succession.
And I'm standing there in the doorway like a ghost, like an intruder in my own relationship, staring at the two people who were never, ever supposed to touch each other. The two people who have just destroyed everything I thought I knew about my life.
My sister. My boyfriend. Together.
"No." The word falls out of my mouth in a whisper, thin and strangled and broken. "No, no, no—"
Liam jolts upright like he's been electrocuted, panic flooding his features as the reality of being caught crashes over him. His hair is mussed, sticking up in ways that would be endearing under different circumstances. There are scratch marks on his shoulder that I know I didn't put there.
"Avery—" He scrambles backward against the headboard, his voice cracking. "Wait, I can explain—"
But Madison doesn't flinch. She doesn't scramble to cover herself or stammer out apologies or show even the slightest hint of shame or remorse. She just lies back against his pillow like she owns the place, completely at ease, and lets a slow, satisfied smirk tug at the corners of her lips like this is all some elaborate joke that only she understands the punchline to.
The sound of my pulse is deafening, drowning out everything else. My hands shake violently at my sides, my vision blurs around the edges, but I can't look away from the scene in front of me. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion—horrifying and devastating and impossible to turn away from.
I feel everything at once: the sharp sting of humiliation burning in my cheeks, the white-hot rage building in my chest, the hollow, crushing ache of heartbreak spreading through my entire body like poison. It's like the ground has cracked open beneath my feet and I'm falling, endlessly falling through space, while the two of them just watch me plummet.
Liam swings his legs off the bed, his movements frantic and uncoordinated as he searches for his shirt. "It's not what it looks like, I swear—"
The words are so incredibly cliché, so insultingly predictable, that I actually laugh. A sharp, broken sound that doesn't even feel like it belongs to me, like it's coming from some other girl in some other nightmare.
"Not what it looks like?" My throat feels raw, scraped clean, but somehow the words still manage to cut through the air with surgical precision. "You're in bed with my sister. You're both half-naked. There are scratch marks on your back. Tell me, Liam, what else is this supposed to look like?"
His mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for air, but nothing comes out. What could he possibly say? What explanation could there be for this?
Madison sits up slowly, deliberately, making no effort to fix her dress as it slips further down her shoulder. She doesn't bother to look embarrassed or caught or sorry. If anything, she looks triumphant. Her hazel eyes—the same hazel eyes we inherited from our mother, the same eyes that look back at me from every mirror—lock onto mine with laser focus.
And then she smiles.
That same cold, calculated smile she's been perfecting since we were children. The smile she wore when she told our parents I was the one who broke Mom's favorite vase. The smile she flashed when she "accidentally" deleted my entire senior project the night before it was due. The smile that has haunted every major moment of my life when she decided I was getting too much attention.
"I guess you were just practice."
The words slice through me clean and final, like a blade pressed straight to the bone. Not just the words themselves, but the casual cruelty in her tone, the complete lack of regret or sisterly affection. Like I'm nothing. Like I've never been anything more than a placeholder, a warm-up act for the main event.
And in that moment, standing in the doorway of my boyfriend's dorm room with my sister's laughter still echoing in my ears and the smell of their betrayal thick in the air, I know with absolute certainty that nothing will ever be the same again.
The girl who drove down here this morning full of hope and excitement and romantic dreams is gone. Dead. Replaced by someone harder, colder, angrier.
Someone who's finally learned that the people you love most are the ones with the power to destroy you completely.