Chapter 1

The screen of my phone glowed in the dark room. Ethan Reed' s face stared back at me, a cocky smile playing on his lips. Next to him, Tiffany Chen leaned in close, her expression a mix of innocence and triumph. The caption below the photo was a punch to the gut.

"100 likes and we're done!"

My thumb hovered over the screen. The like count was stuck at 99. It had been there for an hour, a digital cliffhanger orchestrated by the man I' d spent years loving. A public spectacle for his amusement.

My heart didn't race. It didn't ache. It felt unnervingly still. I pressed the heart icon.

99 likes became 100 likes.

It was done.

I took a screenshot, saved it, and then blocked Ethan' s number. I blocked his social media accounts, one by one. I removed every digital trace of him from my life, a systematic cleansing that felt long overdue.

My phone rang almost immediately. Mark Johnson' s name flashed on the screen. Ethan' s best friend. Ethan' s messenger.

I let it ring.

He called again. And again. On the fourth try, I answered, but said nothing.

"Sarah? What the hell did you just do?" Mark's voice was a frantic buzz in my ear. "Ethan is just messing around, you know how he is. He doesn't mean it."

"He got what he wanted," I said, my voice flat.

"Come on, Sarah. He's waiting for you to call him, to beg him like you always do. Just call him and fix this."

"No," I said. "I'm busy. I have to pack."

"Pack? Pack for what? Are you coming over?" Hope crept into his voice.

"No, Mark. I'm packing for college. I got a scholarship to a university abroad. I'm leaving."

Silence. Then, a muffled curse from his end of the line. Before he could say another word, I hung up.

The fight that led to this had been like all the others. It started three days ago, over something small, something Tiffany had engineered.

I remembered walking into the living room. Ethan was on the couch, scrolling through his phone. He didn't look up. The air was thick with a tension I knew all too well.

"Ethan, we need to talk," I had said, my voice shaking slightly.

He finally looked at me, his eyes cold. "Talk about what? About you being a jealous psycho again?"

"She did it on purpose," I insisted. "Tiffany spilled that coffee on my portfolio on purpose. All my designs for the university application are ruined."

"Oh, for God's sake, Sarah," he scoffed, throwing his phone onto the cushion beside him. "It was an accident. Tiffany felt terrible, she was crying. You' re the one who made a scene."

"She wasn't crying, Ethan. She was smirking at me when you weren't looking. She hates that I have a future, a plan to get away from all this."

My voice cracked on the last words. I was pleading with him to see what was right in front of his face, the same way I had been pleading for months.

"Get away from what? From me?" He stood up, towering over me. His wealth and privilege gave him a confidence that bordered on arrogance. "You think you're too good for this life? Too good for me?"

"That's not what I'm saying." My words were a whisper.

"It's exactly what you're saying," he sneered. "You're just jealous of Tiffany. She's sweet and she needs me. You're just...needy."

The word hung in the air, a cruel, sharp thing. All those years of loyalty, of forgiving his games and his moods, and it all came down to that. I was needy.

"Maybe we should just break up," he said, his voice dropping to a low, threatening tone. It was his favorite weapon. The one that always worked. "Maybe we're just not working anymore."

In the past, this was my cue to cry, to apologize, to promise I' d try harder, to do anything to stop him from walking out the door. My world had revolved around him for so long that the thought of it stopping was terrifying.

I used to think my silence was weakness, a sign that I was giving in. This time felt different. I just stared at him, my heart a leaden weight in my chest. I had nothing left to say.

My lack of a reaction seemed to infuriate him more than any argument could. His face twisted in anger.

"Fine," he spat. "Have it your way."

He grabbed his keys and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed through the large, empty house.

I stood there for a long time, just listening to the silence. I replayed every fight, every hollow apology, every time I had taken him back believing his empty promises. I had been a fool, shrinking myself to fit into his world, hoping one day he would finally see me.

That night, alone in the room we used to share, I found his old tablet lying on the nightstand. It was still logged into his accounts. I don't know what I was looking for. Maybe just another reason to feel the pain, to punish myself. I found a voice memo he' d recorded for Mark, dated from earlier that day, before our fight.

His voice, casual and cruel, filled the quiet room. "Dude, Sarah is getting on my last nerve with this college shit. And the whining about Tiffany is just pathetic. Honestly, I'm getting bored. She' s like a puppy that' s always underfoot. If she doesn' t drop it, I'm gonna have to put her back in her place. Maybe another public breakup threat? That always gets her crying and begging."

The recording ended. The silence that followed was absolute. It was the sound of my world finally, completely, shattering.