My Mouth Before 26

“I heard Ethan dropped out.”

Cleo’s voice hit me mid-step, slicing through the late afternoon haze. I blinked, almost stumbling on the stairs outside the library.

“What?”

She barely looked up, thumbing through her phone like she was scrolling past a weather update. “Gone. Packed his stuff. Dorm’s empty. Just… vanished.”

My breath caught. “Seriously?”

“You didn’t know?” Her eyes flicked to me, curious. A little too curious.

“No,” I said, too fast. “Why would I?”

She studied me for a second. I forced a neutral expression. A shrug.

“Looked like hell last week,” she muttered. “Didn’t think he’d bail just ’cause of a breakup.”

I swallowed hard, trying to hold the indifference in my voice. “Not my fault he ghosted me first.”

“Mmm.” She tapped something on her screen, gaze drifting. “Some people just can’t handle watching their ex glow up.”

I smiled, tight-lipped. “Guess not.”

But my stomach coiled. Because I had known.

I’d seen Ethan’s face that night, wide-eyed, broken, duct-taped and bound to a chair, when Adrian tied me to the table and took me apart piece by piece.

When he leaned in close behind me and whispered, “Let him see what he threw away.”

And apparently, he did. He saw everything. The way I begged, the way I screamed. The way I came undone, over and over, for someone else.

He watched me choose it and now he was gone. Just like that.

I was halfway to class when the hallway turned arctic. I didn’t even have to look.

“You did that.” Dr. Vaughn. Because apparently my day wasn’t fucked enough already.

I turned. Her heels clicked against the linoleum like a countdown to my academic execution, arms folded, jaw sharp enough to cut glass.

“He’s gone because of you.”

I lifted my chin. “You don’t know what happened.”

Her laugh was bitter enough to strip paint. “I do, I know Lewis very well. I know his patterns. You think you’re in control, Sophie? Well that’s adorable.”

“I didn’t force Ethan to leave.”

“You didn’t have to.” She stepped closer, and I could smell her expensive perfume mixed with barely contained rage. “You let that man get inside your head. Let him convince you that surrendering your agency was empowerment. Classic manipulation 101.”

“I—” My stomach clenched. “He didn’t make me—”

“Don’t.” Vaughn’s voice went sharp. “That man feeds on damaged girls who think they’re special. He makes you believe you chose it while he’s pulling every string. That’s what he did to me. That’s what he’s doing to you.”

“I’m not you.”

She smiled—slow, cold, devastating. “You will be. Or worse.”

“Why do you even care?” I asked, because this felt personal in ways that went beyond academic concern.

“Because I hate him,” she said, voice trembling with barely controlled fury. “And I’m not going to let another girl get psychologically dismantled while this university pretends inappropriate relationships don’t destroy students.”

My breath caught. “You’re going to report him?”

“Not just to the board. I’m going public. Everything he did to me. The pattern of predatory behavior. The way he targets vulnerable students and calls it mentorship.”

My pulse hammered against my ribs. “Don’t.”

“He’s not going to ruin one more girl,” she said, voice shaking with conviction. “Not on my watch.”

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. Instead, I turned on my heel and walked away without looking back, pushing through the afternoon crowd like my skin was on fire.

I stormed across the quad, past the gaping students and, through the southern corridor with the walls pressing in around me. Up the stairs two at a time, fury building with each step like static under my skin.

I didn’t knock and didn’t pause. I threw the door open hard enough for it to crash against the wall.

Lewis looked up from the whiteboard, all calm edges and ice-cold poise, as if he hadn’t been part of the chaos erupting beneath my skin.

Students froze, a few flinched, most stared—because of course they did.

He raised a single hand, smooth and unbothered, and dismissed the entire room with the authority of a god grown tired of worship.

They scattered, whispering, glancing back at me like I was an open wound.

“Close the door,” he said, his voice a low command that wrapped around my spine.

I didn’t move. “She’s threatening you.”

His gaze sharpened, curiosity cutting through the coolness. “Who?”

“Dr. Vaughn.” I stepped forward, fists clenched, pulse hammering in my throat. “She said you traumatized her. That you’re doing the same thing to me. That you let her fall apart under you and called it power.”

He said nothing, and the silence stretched like a wire pulled taut. My hands were shaking now.

“Did you?” My voice cracked, too raw. “Did you do it to her, too?”

Still, nothing. That same unreadable stare that made me feel like a specimen. Like a test.

“Say something, damn it!”

Lewis took one step forward, slow, calculated, like he had all the time in the world to dismantle me.

“What exactly do you want to hear, Sophie? That it was a mistake? That I regret what I did to you? That you’re not just another broken girl I collect and gut until she forgets how to breathe without me?”

My mouth opened, then closed. Rage warred with something hotter, darker, pulsing low in my belly. I didn’t know what I wanted from him.

Forgiveness? An apology? Something clean. Something that didn’t ache.

“You’re angry,” he said quietly.

“Oh, you think?” I snapped, stepping closer to him.

He tilted his head, studying me like he was reading beyond my words, peeling away my defenses with his silence.

“You made Ethan watch,” I hissed. “You tied me down and made him watch every second while you ruined me. And now he’s gone, Adrian. He’s gone. And she’s coming after you, after everything. She’s going to destroy you. She’s going to destroy us.”

“And you care?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

“Of course I care!” My voice cracked with it. “I’m the one unraveling. I’m the one drowning in this, the one losing control of my whole life—”

He moved closer, stepped in. Closer. Closer still until my back hit the door.

“Then end it,” he said.

“I want to.” Tears stung my eyes. “God, I want this to stop. I want to stop needing this.”

Adrian didn’t even blink.

His voice dropped, low and dark—rough with command and something deeper, something addictive. “Then kneel.”

And just like that something inside me shattered wide open.