My Mouth Before 29

The second Adrian was escorted out, the classroom went full fucking nuclear. Chairs scraped back like students were evacuating a disaster zone. Whispers flew across rows like ammunition, phones materializing faster than you could say “academic scandal.”

“Did you see his face?”

“Someone said he was sleeping with a student.”

“Is it true? Is it her?”

I sat frozen, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth, hands curled into fists that could probably punch through my desk.

My pulse was doing this thing where it forgot how to function normally, but I heard Cleo’s voice cutting through the chaos like a foghorn.

“What the actual fuck does Dr. Vaughn have on him?” she asked, eyes wide as dinner plates. “Like, what did she even report? And does she— Oh fuck, does she know about you two?”

I swallowed what felt like broken glass and lied, “I don’t know.”

Cleo leaned closer, voice dropping to that stage whisper that somehow carries better than regular talking.

“Sophie. Babe. I know we joke about your thing for masks and emotionally unavailable men with possible criminal records, but this is serious. The police took him away. In actual handcuffs.”

“I fucking know that,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to.

Her expression crumpled like I’d just kicked her favorite puppy.

I exhaled slowly, trying to find some semblance of human decency in my emotional wreckage. “I’m sorry. I just— I need a minute.”

She nodded, but I could see the worry radiating off her like heat from asphalt. “Okay. Just… be careful.”

I grabbed my bag and practically sprinted from the room, heart doing its best impression of a dying star collapsing in on itself.

The hallways felt too bright, too normal, too full of people going about their regular Tuesday bullshit while my entire world had just imploded in front of thirty witnesses with camera phones.

I didn’t stop walking until I reached her office. Dr. Lisette Vaughn’s name was still polished on the door like nothing had happened.

Like she hadn’t just detonated a nuclear bomb in the middle of my life for reasons I was starting to understand with horrifying clarity.

I didn’t knock. Fuck politeness.

She looked up, startled, as I burst through her door like an avenging angel with serious anger management issues. “Sophie?”

“You turned him in,” I said, because subtlety was apparently not on today’s menu.

She stood from her desk with that practiced grace that suggested she’d been expecting this conversation. “I did what needed to be done.”

“Don’t give me that sanctimonious bullshit,” I spat. “You reported him to the fucking police. You couldn’t just go to the academic board? You had to make it a public execution?”

“It wasn’t a show,” she said with the kind of even tone that meant she’d rehearsed this conversation. “It was time someone stepped forward and called him out.”

“Bullshit.” My voice was shaking with fury I didn’t know I was capable of. “If I wasn’t involved, you never would’ve done shit. Would you?”

Vaughn went quiet, which was basically a confession wrapped in academic silence.

“Say it,” I demanded, stepping closer. “If I hadn’t gotten close to him, if I hadn’t been kneeling where you used to kneel, you would’ve let him keep going. You would’ve let it all slide like it was just another Tuesday.”

“That’s not true.”

“You didn’t give a fuck when it was other girls. You only cared when you saw yourself in me.”

Her jaw tightened like I’d hit a nerve with surgical precision. “You’re wrong.”

“You watched me burn and waited until you couldn’t stand not being the only one scarred by Adrian fucking Lewis.”

“You’re a child, Sophie,” she hissed, mask slipping to reveal something ugly underneath. “You don’t understand the damage he’s capable of.”

“No,” I snapped back. “You don’t understand that this isn’t about him anymore. It’s about you.”

She blinked like I’d just spoken in ancient Greek.

“You couldn’t stand seeing him with someone else,” I said, voice sharp enough to draw blood. “You couldn’t handle the fact that you were replaceable. You thought you were the one girl he’d never move on from, the one who’d haunt his dreams forever.”

“Stop.”

“But he did, didn’t he?” I continued, because apparently I’d decided to go for the psychological jugular. “He moved on. From you. To me. And that’s what’s eating you alive from the inside out.”

Her face went red enough to power Christmas lights. “This isn’t about jealousy—”

“Then what the fuck is it?” I yelled, volume control officially offline. “Because you sure as hell didn’t file a police report when it was you kneeling for him. When you were letting him control every aspect of your existence. This—what you did today—this wasn’t about protecting anyone. It was punishment.”

“You think I wanted this?” she shouted back, composure finally cracking. “I lost everything when I left him! My reputation, my research, my entire identity. I almost destroyed myself trying to recover from what he did to me. And now I’m watching another girl fall into the exact same black hole and you want me to just stand by and let it happen?”

“No,” I said, voice going cold as arctic wind. “You didn’t want to watch it happen. You wanted to be the one to end it. You wanted to be the one with the power this time.”

Vaughn’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “He broke me, Sophie.”

“And I still chose him,” I said, each word hitting like a hammer. “Because maybe, just maybe, I wanted something he gave me that no one else could. Maybe I wanted to be broken in exactly that way.”

She shook her head like she couldn’t process what she was hearing. “You don’t know what love is.”

“I never said it was love,” I snapped. “But it was mine. It was my choice, my disaster, my beautiful fucking catastrophe. And you took it from me.”

“It wasn’t real.”

“It is real. It felt real.”

“That doesn’t make it safe.”

I looked her straight in the eyes, seeing her clearly for the first time. “I never asked for safe.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Just silence and the weight of everything we’d both lost.

I couldn’t look at her anymore. This woman who thought she was saving me. This woman who only acted when her pride got wounded.

This woman who’d destroyed everything because she couldn’t stand not being the center of Adrian Lewis’s psychological warfare.

I took a shaky step back toward the door. And whispered the only truth I had left: “I hate you.”