Chapter 2 The Fallout

I was still panicking when I woke up—or rather, when I finally accepted that I was already awake and this wasn't a nightmare.

"No, no, no, no—" The words tumbled out of my mouth like a prayer someone had forgotten how to say. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold my phone. The screen kept blurring through my tears.

"Sia!" I screamed, my voice cracking*.* "SIA, WAKE UP*!"*

She jolted awake like I'd physically yanked her out of sleep, her hand flying to her head. For a moment, she just stared at me, confused and terrified, trying to figure out why I was waking her like the dorm was on fire.

"What happened? Why are you—" she started.

"You!" I spat the word like it was poison. "This is your fault!"

"What? Elara, what are you talking about? Calm down and tell me—"

I didn't let her finish. I shoved my phone into her hands, my entire body shaking with a mixture of rage and despair.

Sia's hand flew to her mouth. Her face went pale. And then she started whispering, over and over: "Dammit. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Elara, I'm so sorry."

But I was done with apologies. I was done with everything. The shame that had built up over years—every time someone had made fun of me, every time I'd felt invisible, every moment I'd tried so hard to be perfect and invisible and good—it all came crashing down in one moment. In one video of me dancing on a hot biker's lap like some desperate, drunk fool.

I threw myself on the bed and started crying. Not the quiet, dignified kind of crying. The ugly, gasping, broken kind.

"Oh God," Sia whispered, her own eyes filling with tears. "Oh God, Elara. I hope... I really hope your mom hasn't seen this."

My stomach twisted.

My mother. Middle-class, appearance-obsessed, always lecturing me about elegance and presentation and how I needed to be perfect to access the right world, the right connections, the right people. She had one rule for me: Don't embarrass the family.

And I'd just done exactly that. On camera. For the entire college to see.

I grabbed my phone back from Sia with trembling fingers and checked my messages. Nothing from my mother yet.

But it was only a matter of time.

The alarm on my phone went off—10 AM. Our test.

"Shit," I muttered. "The exam."

"Elara, maybe we should skip—" Sia started.

"No." I stood up, wiping my eyes roughly. "We're going. I'm not hiding."

It was a lie. I wanted to hide. I wanted to disappear entirely. But Elara Thane didn't hide. Elara Thane was a straight-A student. Elara Thane got through things.

Even if Elara Thane was currently the subject of viral humiliation.

The shower was scalding.

I scrubbed my skin until it turned red, trying to wash away the feeling of his hands on my waist, the moment before he'd pushed me away, the impact of hitting the floor. The water couldn't wash that away. Nothing could.

Sia and I got dressed in a blur of movement—me in jeans and a hoodie, trying to make myself as small and invisible as possible. Not that it would help. Everyone had already seen me.

The walk to the exam hall felt like walking through a gauntlet.

Whispers followed us. Giggles erupted as we passed. I caught snippets: "That's the girl from the video," and "Did you see what she did?" and "With Viktor Stone, too—what was she thinking?"

I kept my eyes forward. My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack.

The hardest part was when I actually saw him.

Viktor was walking with his friend—the same cold-eyed guy from the party—and they were heading in the opposite direction. For one split second, our eyes met. His expression didn't change. Didn't soften. Didn't show a single flicker of recognition or guilt or anything.

He just looked at me with those piercing eyes, and I felt every camera flash from last night, every whisper this morning, every ounce of shame crash over me all at once.

A part of me—the angry, wounded part—wanted to march right over there and confront him. Because what he'd done was cruel. What he'd done was unnecessary. I'd been drunk and stupid, yes, but he could have been gentle about rejecting me. He could have just said no.

Instead, he'd humiliated me in front of hundreds of people.

But I couldn't confront him now. Not in front of everyone. Not when I was already the talk of the college.

So I looked away and kept walking.

The exam was a blur.

I sat in the lecture hall, staring at the questions, my mind completely unable to focus. But muscle memory carried me through. I'd been a straight-A student my entire life—even when my brain was screaming, my hands seemed to know what to write. Chemistry formulas. Essay structure. The safe, knowable world of academics.

By the time I was done, I'd written something coherent. It wouldn't be my best work, but it would be enough. It always was.

The professor called me back as I was submitting my test.

"Elara, I need you to meet with the Vice chancellor before you leave campus today."

My heart sank. Of course. Of course they were going to make this worse.

The VC's office was cold and sterile.

The VC—a woman in her fifties with sharp features and sharper eyes—looked up from her desk as I entered. She gestured for me to sit.

"Elara," she said, her voice calm but with an unmistakable edge of annoyance underneath. "I wanted to speak with you about the video that's been circulating."

I said nothing. What was there to say?

"You're one of our best students. Consistently excellent grades, good behavior record, no disciplinary issues." She folded her hands on her desk. "I need you to understand that this kind of behavior—public intoxication, inappropriate conduct—is not what we expect from our students. Especially not from you."

"I know," I whispered.

"It's a warning, Elara. I'm telling you this as someone who wants to see you succeed. Don't let me find you wanting like this again." She paused, and her expression softened slightly. "I'm going to speak with the tech department and see if we can get the video taken down from the college servers. But I can't control what's on social media. That's out of my hands."

"Thank you," I said quickly, standing up before she could say anything else. "Thank you for trying."

I was out of her office before she could finish speaking.

And that's when I saw him again.

Viktor was walking down the hallway with his friend, heading toward the administration building. For some reason, he was here—probably for some reason I didn't understand and didn't care about.

But seeing him again lit something hot and angry inside my chest.

Before I could think about what I was doing—before common sense could catch up with wounded pride—I walked toward him.

"Viktor."

He stopped. His friend looked at me with curiosity, but Viktor's expression remained perfectly neutral. Cold. Untouchable.

"I..." I started, and immediately my voice shook. I could feel everyone in the hallway watching. Could feel the weight of their attention. "I'm sorry about last night. I was drunk and I shouldn't have... I mean, what I did was wrong, but what you did was also..."

I trailed off, losing my nerve.

Viktor stared at me for a long moment. His piercing eyes seemed to look right through me, into me, seeing something I didn't even know was there.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and cold—the kind of cold that made my skin break out in goosebumps.

"Next time you drink like that," he said, his words careful and deliberate, "be more careful about what you do. Because if you ever touch me like that again, I won't just push you away." He leaned slightly closer, and I could smell leather and something dark and dangerous. "I will literally tear you into pieces."

The words hung in the air between us.

For a moment, I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything except stare at him and realize that whatever I'd thought I saw in him before—whatever had made him seem attractive and mysterious—had been a fantasy.

This was real. This was the actual person. Cold. Cruel. Capable of saying something like that without a single flicker of emotion.

I stumbled backward, my legs suddenly unable to support my weight.

Viktor turned away without waiting for a response, his friend following him with an expression I couldn't quite read. But I could have sworn I saw something dark flash across that other guy's face as they passed.

The hallway erupted in whispers the moment they were gone.

I stood there, frozen, aware that every single person had seen that exchange. Every single person had heard his threat. Every single person was now staring at me with a mixture of pity and fascination.

I turned and ran.

I made it to the bathroom before the sobs came—the kind of crying that came from somewhere deep and broken inside. My hands gripped the edge of the sink and I stared at my reflection, barely recognizing the girl looking back at me.

This girl was pathetic. This girl had humiliated herself. This girl had approached someone who clearly despised her, and he'd responded with a threat so casual it was almost worse than if he'd actually hit her.

I will literally tear you into pieces.

The words echoed in my skull.

And the worst part—the absolute worst part—was that even after hearing those words, even after the humiliation and the shame and the threat, there was still a small, traitorous part of me that found him impossibly attractive.

There was still a part of me that wanted to know what he'd meant.

There was still a part of me that was drawn to the darkness, even now that I could see how dark it truly was.

I splashed cold water on my face and tried to convince myself that I was done. Done with Viktor Stone. Done with parties. Done with anything that wasn't quiet and safe and invisible.

But even as I made that promise to myself, I knew I was lying.

Because being drawn to darkness wasn't something you could just turn off, no matter how many times it hurt you.

No matter how many times it made you bleed.