The apartment feels hollow the moment Josh walks out.
Alice disappears into her room after promising she will be nearby if I need to scream into a pillow, and suddenly it is just me and the humming in my head.
I set my laptop on the coffee table. My hands keep shaking, so I sit on them until they stop looking like defective puppets.
Then I type:
Maria Blake.
The search page appears almost immediately, like it already knows I am not prepared for what will show up.
Articles appear in rows. Magazine features. Society interviews. Business profiles that smell like money and carefully curated lies.
I click the first one.
Maria Donovan, heiress to the Donovan textile empire.
The photo at the top shows her younger, smiling in a way that feels polished. The smile does not reach her eyes even in the old picture. There is an aristocratic distance there. A loneliness that looks inherited.
I scroll.
Wealthy heiress.
Only child.
Inherited half the company at twenty one.
Then a line that hooks my breath.
Once in a long term relationship that ended abruptly.
No details. No explanation. Just a door closed in the middle of a hallway.
Two years later she married Daniel Blake, a rising corporate figure and the kind of man headlines adore.
Then I see it, and something inside me stumbles.
Her son Samuel, welcomed by Daniel as his own.
The wording makes me pause.
Welcomed.
As his own.
I zoom in on the sentence even though I know more pixels will not change its meaning.
I keep digging.
Old gossip forums.
Half-dead threads.
Archived posts from people who typed faster than they thought.
Rumor says Daniel is not the biological father.
Old family scandal.
A breakup that aligns suspiciously well with the timeline.
Maria's family pushed her into the marriage.
Nothing confirmed.
Everything unsettling.
I lean back and stare at the screen. My chest feels tight, as if someone pulled a strap around my ribs and locked it.
Then something rises from the back of my mind.
A memory I have not visited in years.
I was eleven. Sitting at the dining table with Dad while Mom worked the late shift. The room smelled like soy sauce and warm takeout. Dad looked tired in an ordinary way, like he had lived a long week inside a single day.
He was stirring his noodles with a plastic fork when he said, quietly and without warning, "Before your mother, I loved someone."
I had stared at him, stunned.
Dad never talked about himself unless you tied him to a chair and bribed him.
"What happened?" I asked.
He gave this small, sad smile. Soft. Almost gentle. Nothing tragic. Just a kind of regret that fits in the spaces between words.
"We were young. Very stupid. The kind of love that makes you think you are invincible. I made mistakes. I hurt her. And I lost her."
His voice had no slur in it. No shame.
Just regret that felt clean and old.
I remember asking, "What was her name?"
He paused. A long, quiet pause that made the air feel heavier.
Then he shook his head.
"That is not important. She is gone. Life moved on."
I did not understand back then.
But the weight of it settles on me now.
A woman he loved deeply.
A breakup he blamed himself for.
A timeline that seems too perfectly aligned.
I press my fingers to my temples as if I can physically stop the pieces from locking together.
The certainty forming inside me is dangerous.
My phone lies beside the laptop. I reach for it.
I picture Dad's face. His tired eyes. His fragile hope last week when he told me he got the new job.
I picture the battles he is still fighting. The guilt he wears like heavy armor. The slow, delicate progress he is trying to make.
If I call him now...
If I ask him about this...
Would it break him?
Would it break me?
The phone feels warm in my hand. Heavy in a way that is almost alive.
I let out a slow breath and place it face down on the couch.
"I cannot do this to him," I whisper.
The apartment hums with the refrigerator, the city outside, and the thudding of my own heartbeat.
The dread in my stomach feels like cold metal, but I swallow it anyway.
Some truths can wait.
Some answers cannot be forced out of someone who is drowning.
I look at the screen one more time.
Maria Donovan.
The sudden breakup.
The child born after.
Samuel Blake.
My possible brother.
No.
Not yet.
Not like this.
The thought curls tightly inside me and refuses to leave.
Waiting.
⟡ ✧ ⟡
Being summoned to the dean's office feels like being sent to the principal in seventh grade.
Only difference is I am taller now and my nightmares have interest added to them.
The hallway outside his door smells like old carpet and someone's forgotten lunch. My palms are sweating again. I keep wiping them on my jeans like the anxiety will come off if I try hard enough.
The secretary gives me a polite smile before telling me, "You can go in."
Her eyes linger a beat too long. People keep looking at me like I am either guilty or radioactive.
I walk inside.
The dean finishes closing a file before looking at me. He adjusts his glasses and says, "Mr Ashton Bennett. Please sit."
His tone is neutral in the same way winter feels neutral. Cold. Blank. Waiting for a mistake.
I sit.
He folds his hands over the file.
"We have concluded the investigation regarding the allegation involving you and Ms Clarke."
My heartbeat lifts into my throat.
"Nothing inappropriate was found."
Relief hits so fast it almost knocks the air out of me. Four seconds of words to undo four days of misery.
But he continues before I can catch my breath.
"We do need to remind you," he says, leaning back with the confidence of someone who has never been accused of anything in his entire life, "that students with your history must be careful about the company they keep."
I blink. "My history?"
He gives a sympathetic smile that is not sympathetic at all.
"The arts department has been concerned about your emotional volatility in the past. Perceptions matter. We are glad this incident was resolved, but reputations can shift easily."
Reputation.
Volatility.
The words sting more than the actual accusation ever did.
I want to argue.
I want to ask how my emotional state is his business.
Instead I say, "Understood."
He nods and reaches for another file. I am dismissed before I even stand up.
The secretary gives me another too-long look.
I give her a thin smile because that is all I have left.
Outside, the hallway feels cooler and wider, like there is finally air again.
Alice leans against the vending machine with a cup of coffee like she owns the corridor. Her eyes search my face the second she sees me.
"Well?" she asks.
"I am cleared. The rumor was baseless."
Her shoulders fall just slightly.
"Good."
Then her expression turns sharp, like she is calculating exactly which weapon she would use if she needed to commit a felony.
"So I do not have to stab anyone today," she mutters.
A short laugh escapes me, real and unexpected. I rub my face, trying to hide the smile threatening to form.
"Please avoid stabbing people," I say.
"No guarantees," she replies, sipping her coffee. "Some of these people look like they are begging for it."