Chapter 390: The odd girl
SARAH
If only Aria understood what she meant to me... how far I’d go to keep it that way.
The room didn’t fall silent; it folded in on itself. A heavy, living quiet that pressed against my skin until every breath in the ballroom felt like it belonged to me. Two hundred people caught mid-inhale, waiting, watching, sensing the fracture before it appeared. I kept my hand loose on the microphone, because if I didn’t, they’d see it... the tremor, the truth.
The first thing I looked for was her.
Aria.
Her expression shifted in increments so slow they almost defied time. The color drained first, then her lips parted, a tremor of breath leaving her as if the air itself had betrayed her. She looked weightless, as though the ground beneath her had quietly disappeared. Even from the stage I could see the pulse at her throat, beating in small, desperate rebellion.
Then came Kael.
The fury blooming behind his eyes was something exquisite... pure, unfiltered rage dressed in restraint. His jaw tightened, his shoulders locked, every muscle begging for violence he couldn’t yet afford. For one charged second, I thought he might break decorum, cross the distance between us and end it all right there. I almost wanted him to. It would have been simpler.
Much easier.
But he didn’t move.
No one did. The crowd held itself in suspension, a thousand tiny judgments forming behind polite faces. Pity. Disgust. Curiosity. I smiled.... measured, composed, deliberate.
I wasn’t cruel.
I was honest.
Someone had to be. Someone had to drag truth into the light, even if it burned. Kael was rot wrapped in charm, and Aria... sweet, naïve Aria... was too blinded by the illusion to see it. I was only accelerating the inevitable, sparing her the agony of discovering it years from now, when it would already be too late.
She would hate me for it. Of course she would.
But hate fades. Need doesn’t. And she always needed me. I was the constant. The quiet gravity she always came back to once the world finished disappointing her.
A whisper rippled through the crowd, a collective exhale someone tried too late to contain. A glass shattered... bright, brittle punctuation against the tension. Marcus, ever the loyal corporate savior, tried to intervene with a voice too smooth to sound human:
"Let’s all take a moment—"
But I wasn’t finished.
I leaned closer to the microphone, my reflection fracturing in the chandelier’s crystal.
"I know this is difficult, Aria," I said softly. "But you deserve the truth. You deserve better than a man who builds his love on lies."
That was enough.
Words didn’t need to be repeated when silence could carry them further. I watched her hand slip from Kael’s arm, her body moving with eerie calm through the maze of eyes and whispers. She didn’t cry. Didn’t flinch. She simply walked away, each step so composed it felt rehearsed.
Kael followed... slow at first, then faster, fury sculpting every movement. Just before he vanished through the doors after her, he turned and looked at me.
There it was. Murder, naked and human.
I smiled. Small. Almost tender.
He could hate me all he wanted.
As long as she came back, it would all be worth it.
---
I was always an odd child.
Not the kind of odd that inspired pity or fascination... no harmless quirks, no imaginary friends. Just wrong. Too quiet. Too still. The sort of quiet that made adults exchange glances and lower their voices when they thought I couldn’t hear.
My parents noticed before anyone else. My mother, with her careful cheer, asking questions in that bright, trembling tone. My father, studying me over dinner like I might suddenly make sense if he just stared long enough.
They took me to "specialists." Rooms that smelled of disinfectant and disappointment. People with practiced smiles and clipboards that filled up too quickly.
"Do you feel sad, Sarah?"
No.
"Do you feel happy?"
Sometimes.
"When?"
When people do what I want.
My answer always made them write things down. Long, careful notes while their expressions stayed neutral, professional. But I could see the shift in their eyes, the way they’d glance at my parents after, something heavy passing between them that they thought I couldn’t read.
I learned quickly not to be so honest.
They sent me away when I was ten. A "facility," they called it, though it was just a hospital with better landscaping and locked doors. My parents told me I’d be coming home soon, that I just needed a little help, that everything would be fine.
I knew they were lying.
Not because I was hurt by it—I wasn’t. But because I’d learned to recognize the particular rhythm of adult dishonesty, the way their words didn’t quite match their faces. They were relieved to have me gone. I could see it in the way my mother’s shoulders relaxed when she kissed my forehead goodbye. In the way my father wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
They were afraid of me.
Good. Fear meant they’d be careful. And careful parents were useful parents.
The facility was... instructive. That’s the best word for it. They gave me pills that made me tired and therapy sessions that taught me what I needed to know: not how to change, but how to perform. How to cry on cue. How to soften my voice when I spoke. How to arrange my face into expressions that approximated what they wanted to see.
Remorse. Empathy. Understanding.
I studied the other patients like specimens. Watched how they moved, how they spoke, what gestures made the doctors nod approvingly. I became a mirror, reflecting back what they needed to believe about me.
After three years, they decided I was "stable enough" to go home.
I wasn’t stable. I was just better at lying.
I returned to a world that expected normalcy, so I gave it to them. Kept my head down through middle school, high school. Made acquaintances... not friends, never friends... but people who could be useful. Who could provide something worth keeping or information or simply fill the space around me so I didn’t stand out.
It was exhausting.
Every interaction was a performance, every conversation a calculation. I had to remember which emotions to fake and when, which topics were safe, which questions would make people suspicious. I became very good at it. So good that by the time I graduated, even I sometimes forgot where the performance ended and whatever I actually was began.
College was supposed to be different. A fresh start. A place where no one knew me, where I could build a new identity from scratch.
And then I saw her.
Orientation was held in the auditorium, rows and rows of nervous freshmen filling the space with their anxious energy. I sat near the middle, three rows behind a girl wearing clothes that looked like they’d been pulled from a donation bin. Faded blue jeans with a patch on one knee. A t-shirt two sizes too big. Scuffed sneakers that had seen better days.
Cheap. That was my first thought. Everything about her screamed poverty in a way that should have made her invisible.
But she wasn’t.
People gravitated toward her without seeming to realize it. The girl next to her kept leaning over to whisper things that made her laugh.... this loud, unself-conscious sound that cut through the murmur of conversation. Two guys in the row ahead kept glancing back, trying to catch her eye. Even the orientation leader seemed to focus on her when addressing the crowd, as if she were somehow more present than the rest of us.
I didn’t understand it. She wasn’t the most beautiful, not in any conventional sense. Her features were too sharp, her frame too thin. But there was something magnetic about her, some quality I couldn’t name that made people want to orbit her.
She caught me staring.
I looked away immediately, but not before I saw her smile, this small, genuine thing and lift her hand in a half-wave. I pretended I hadn’t seen it, focusing instead on the orientation packet in my lap until the heat in my face subsided.
I told myself that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t.
I was walking back to my dorm that night, alone as always, when I noticed him.
A man, maybe in his thirties, keeping pace about twenty feet behind me. At first I thought it was coincidence, but when I turned left at the next corner, so did he. When I sped up, he matched my rhythm.
My heart should have raced. I should have felt fear, panic, something. But all I felt was a cold, analytical awareness: this man meant to hurt me, and I needed to get away.
I cut into an alley, hoping to lose him in the maze of campus buildings. Instead, it dead-ended. By the time I realized my mistake, he was already blocking the exit.
"Give me your bag," he said, pulling out a knife. "Phone too. Don’t scream."
I handed them over without protest. They were just things. Replaceable. My life, however inconvenient it might become without them, was not worth risking over a phone and fifty dollars in cash.
He was rifling through my bag when she appeared.
The girl from orientation. Aria. I knew her name now because she’d introduced herself to half the auditorium that morning. She moved silently behind the man, finger pressed to her lips, telling me to stay quiet. In her hand was a brick, rust-red and heavy-looking.
She swung it before he could turn.
The crack of impact was sickening, final. He dropped like a puppet with cut strings, and Aria grabbed my belongings from his slack hands, then grabbed my wrist.
"Run!"
We ran.
Through alleys, across streets, past confused pedestrians and closed shops. We didn’t stop until we were blocks away, collapsing against the gates of my dorm, both of us breathing hard.
"Are you okay?" she asked between gasps. "Did he hurt you?"
I stared at her, trying to process what had just happened. She’d followed me. Tracked a stranger through dark streets because she’d noticed I was in danger. Risked herself for someone she didn’t know.
Why?
"Why did you help me?" The question came out sharper than I intended.
She looked confused. "Why wouldn’t I?"
I didn’t have an answer. In my experience, people didn’t help unless they wanted something. They didn’t put themselves at risk for strangers. They especially didn’t do it for odd, quiet girls who’d never given them a reason to care.
"Thank you," I said stiffly, and bowed.... an awkward, formal gesture that made her blink in surprise.
Then I turned and walked through the gates, leaving her standing there in the lamplight.
Once again, I thought that would be the end of it.
I was wrong.