The week after we stopped pretending was louder than the s*x.
People stared on campus. Tessa’s friends went quiet when I walked into the coffee shop. Someone in my lecture whispered homewrecker just loud enough for it to land. Noah heard it anyway. He didn’t make a scene. He just took my hand in front of everyone and kept walking, like the rumor was too small to deserve a speech.
That helped.
It also made it real in a way the apartment never had.
We were not a secret anymore. We were the story.
Friday night he drove me out to the overlook we used to visit as friends—cheap snacks, bad playlists, the city spread out below us like it belonged to other people. He parked, cut the engine, and sat there with his hands on the wheel.
“I used to bring you here so I wouldn’t do something stupid
