Drowning looks different when you’re doing it on dry land.

Here’s what I’m currently juggling: a faceless stranger who took my virginity and vanished into a sea of identical Scream masks.

A stepbrother whose mouth I can still taste when I close my eyes, no matter how many times I brush my teeth or chug scalding coffee.

A nice boy who wants to date me while I flinch every time he reaches for my hand, because his fingers feel wrong in ways I can’t explain without sounding certifiably insane.

Parents who beam at me across the breakfast table, blissfully unaware that their perfect blended family is one confession away from spectacular implosion.

I’ve read three hundred pages of constitutional law in four days.

The library has become my bunker, my fortress, my carefully constructed excuse to avoid every space where Caleb might appear and shatter whatever composure I’ve managed to glue back together.

Study groups that once felt optional now fill every gap in my schedule. Office hours become lifelines I cling to with fingers that ache from gripping too hard.

Anything to keep my mind occupied with something other than the weight of his body between my thighs, the sound of his voice cracking when he called me the only beautiful thing he’d ever touched.

“You look like someone ran over your cat, resurrected it, and ran it over again.”

Mia drops into the seat beside me with all the subtlety of a car alarm at three in the morning. Her bag hits the table hard enough to scatter my color-coded index cards across the scratched wood surface like confetti at a funeral.

She’s wearing scrubs from her morning clinical rotation, the fabric wrinkled in ways that suggest she hasn’t slept since Tuesday.

Dark circles bloom under her eyes that rival mine in their purple magnificence, and her expression says she’s about to perform surgery on my emotional state whether I consent or not.

“Thanks for that vivid imagery.” I don’t look up from my textbook, tracing the same sentence for the fourth time without absorbing a single word. “Really appreciate the poetry you’ve blessed me with today.”

“I’m being serious right now, Serena.” She steals my coffee and takes a long sip without asking, because boundaries are a foreign concept to her and honestly, I love her for it. “You’ve been weird for days, and don’t think I haven’t noticed every single red flag you’re waving.”

Mia Snyder notices everything. It’s what makes her terrifying and invaluable in equal measure.

She grew up the middle child of five in a household where attention was currency you had to fight for, and she learned to read people the way most kids learn to read books—with obsessive dedication and an almost supernatural intuition.

“I’m just tired from all this studying.” The excuse tastes stale on my tongue, recycled and unconvincing. “I want to maintain my GPA.”

“That’s complete bullshit and you know it.” She sets down my coffee with a thunk that rattles the table. “You maintain your GPA in your sleep.”

I finally meet her gaze, and the concern I find there makes my chest ache with the weight of secrets I cannot share.

“Is this about the mystery guy from the race?” Her voice drops to a whisper that somehow carries more weight than her normal volume. “Did something happen that night?”

The words climb my throat like prisoners staging an escape from maximum security.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mia.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence.” She leans back, arms crossed over her wrinkled scrubs in a pose that means business. “I saw your face that Monday.”

“Even if something did happen, I wouldn’t know how to explain it without sounding completely unhinged.” I drag my fingers through hair that hasn’t seen a proper wash in two days. “Some things are too tangled to put into words.”

“Try me.” She nudges my arm gently, her touch grounding me in the present moment. “I’ve heard worse things than you can possibly imagine. My older sister once confessed to sleeping with her professor, and I kept that secret through two Thanksgivings and a family reunion.”

But how do I explain that the mystery guy from the race is the same boy I’ve been secretly in love with and who then became my stepbrother, the same boy who tormented me for years since we were thirteen?

How do I articulate love that transformed into hatred and then into hunger the moment his mouth found mine in our parents’ kitchen?

“It’s complicated,” I manage finally, and the understatement nearly chokes me with its inadequacy.

“Complicated usually means interesting, in my experience.” Mia tilts her head, dark hair falling across her shoulder. “The messiest situations always make the best stories afterward.”

“This isn’t a story I want to tell anyone, ever.” I close my textbook with more force than necessary. “This is a disaster…”

She looks like me. Shit!

Unknown: Had so much fun that night. Can’t wait to do it again, kitty.

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