Chapter 4

We all piled into my dad' s SUV, the mood somber and tense. My dad drove, with Mark in the passenger seat navigating to the university campus. I sat in the back between my mom and a distraught Sarah, who was muttering prayers under her breath.

My mind was a battlefield. Every instinct screamed at me to tell them. To end this pointless search and expose Liam for the liar he was. It would be so easy. Just one sentence. "He's with Olivia."

But then I' d look at Sarah. I remembered a time a few years ago when Liam had gotten a bad flu and was hospitalized for two days. Sarah had been a wreck. She barely slept, refused to leave his side, and interrogated every doctor and nurse with a frantic, desperate energy. Her love for him was fierce, all-consuming, but it was also fragile. It bordered on obsession. She saw him as a perfect, golden boy, and she couldn't tolerate any threat to that image.

I knew, with chilling certainty, that telling her the truth right now would break her. It wouldn't just be about him cheating on me, it would be about him lying to her, disrespecting her, choosing another girl over his family's well-being. The shock might be too much for her to bear, especially in her current state of panic.

So, I made a decision. I would keep my mouth shut. I would play along with this charade until Liam was forced to face them himself. Let him be the one to shatter his mother's heart. It was his mess to clean up.

The drive to the campus felt endless. Mark called campus security, his voice strained as he explained the situation. They promised to check the library and the surrounding buildings, but they couldn't file a missing person report until he'd been gone for 24 hours. It wasn't helpful. The sense of helplessness in the car grew thicker.

My dad was driving carefully, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. We were approaching a busy intersection. The light was green. He proceeded through it.

I don't remember seeing the other car. I just remember the sound. A horrifying screech of tires, followed by a deafening, metallic crunch.

The world exploded into a vortex of shattering glass and twisted metal. Our SUV was thrown sideways, the force of the impact pinning me against the door. My mom screamed. Sarah let out a choked gasp. I saw my dad's head whip violently to the side before everything went black for a second.

When my vision cleared, the world was upside down. The car had rolled and was now lying on its side. The smell of gasoline and burnt rubber filled the air. Outside, I could hear the discordant symphony of a car alarm and distant, shouting voices.

"Is everyone okay?" a man's voice yelled from somewhere nearby.

I couldn't answer. My head was spinning. The only thing I could process was the chaos, the feeling of being trapped, and the horrifying, silent stillness of the people in the car with me.