Chapter 5: The Quiet Room

The seminar room on the third floor was thick with the scent of old chalk and dust, illuminated only by the faint, gray twilight bleeding through the high arched windows. The distant hum of the campus felt entirely disconnected from the suffocating stillness inside.
“Hold still, Devin. Please,” Cassie whispered, her voice trembling as she pressed a clump of wet paper towels against his face.
She was visibly shaking, the legendary counseling prodigy’s calm completely shattered by the sight of his blood. Her fingers brushed his cheek, warm and frantic, as she tried to wipe away the dark, steady crimson escaping his nose and staining his collar.
Devin winced as the damp paper hit the raw, swelling split on his lip. He forced his eyes open, trying to summon the familiar, reassuring curve of his lips—the flawless “Dex” mask he wore to keep the world at peace. He even managed a weak, breathy chuckle, though it caught painfully in his throat.
“You… you should see the other guys,” he muttered, his voice raspy. “Three of them are going to need a lot more than paper towels.”
Cassie didn’t laugh. She grabbed his chin, gently but firmly locking his head in place, forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, filled with a desperate, protective panic. “Don’t do that. Don’t play it off. Look at your face, Devin. This isn’t you. Why did you have to provoke him? Why did you have to fight?”
“Actually, Cassie, I think this is the first time he’s acted like himself all semester.”
The dry, piercing observation cut through the room.
Eva was standing near the heavy wooden door, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as she leaned back against a desk. She hadn’t offered to help with the blood, nor had she joined in Cassie’s frantic fretting. Instead, she just watched him. Her sharp, unreadable gaze was fixed entirely on the cracks forming in the “Starboy” myth.
Devin locked eyes with her through the dim light. A tense, heavy understanding passed between them in the silence. She didn’t see the heroic campus savior everyone else worshiped; she saw the raw, dangerous anger he kept buried in his chest. And he knew she saw it.
“I need to get a proper ice pack from the faculty lounge,” Cassie said, breaking the silence as she looked at the rapidly bruising skin around Devin’s eyes. She smoothed down her skirt, trying to regain her professional composure. “Keep pressure on it. I’ll be right back.”
The heavy door clicked shut behind her, leaving Devin and Eva alone in the graying room.
For a long moment, the only sound was Devin’s shallow, ragged breathing. Eva detached herself from the desk, her sneakers clicking softly against the floorboards as she approached the bench where he sat. She stopped just a few feet away, looking down at his bruised, scraped knuckles.
“What did Tyler mean, Farrell?” she asked quietly, her usual sarcastic edge replaced by something dangerously observant. “When he talked about your dad. And the trailer park.”
Devin’s entire body went rigid. The polite demeanor vanished completely, replaced by a cold, defensive wall. He pulled his hands back, hiding his knuckles in his lap. “It’s none of your business, Eva. Drop it.”
“I don’t give a damn about the campus gossip,” Eva countered, stepping closer, entirely unfazed by his icy tone. “But I do care about the sheer stupidity of fighting six guys alone. You’re smart enough to solve every single person’s problems on this campus, but you’re a complete idiot when it comes to your own.”
Devin looked away, his jaw tightening until it throbbed. “I did what I had to do. Ned was getting his head smashed into a table.”
“And you think you’re the only one who can stop it?” Eva let out a sharp, cynical breath. She leaned down slightly, forcing him to hear her. “Marcus told me how you always run to the rescue. But let me tell you something, Starboy. I was the one who fixed his presentation slides today while you were busy wallowing in your own head. The world doesn’t stop turning just because you aren’t the one holding it up.”
Devin’s eyes snapped back to hers, a trace of shock breaking through his anger. She fixed it?
“You can’t keep being everyone’s safety net, Devin,” Eva whispered, her voice dropping into a heavy, ominous register. “Eventually, the net tears. And everyone falls with it.”
Before Devin could process the weight of her words, the door swung open again. Marcus walked in, his shoulders slumped and his face completely drained of color. Cassie followed closely behind him, holding a plastic bag of crushed ice.
Marcus stopped in the center of the room, looking at the bloody paper towels scattered on the desk, then at the severe bruises darkening Devin’s face. The guilt radiating off him was palpable.
“Dex…” Marcus started, his voice thick and hesitant. “Ned’s with the nurse. He’s going to be okay. They’re fixing his lip.” He swallowed hard, rubbing the back of his neck. “Man… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have panicked. I shouldn’t have let Aby call you. You took all of that because of us.”
Devin immediately felt the familiar, toxic urge to carry the weight. He forced a soft, reassuring tone back into his voice, trying to erase his friend’s shame. “Don’t worry about it, buddy. Tyler was looking for a reason to snap anyway. It’s handled. Just focus on your presentation tomorrow.”
Marcus didn’t smile. He looked at Devin, then glanced at Eva, who was watching him with a quiet, knowing expression. The words Eva had told him earlier in the auditorium—push yourself a bit—echoed in his mind. Seeing Devin bleeding, broken, and playing the martyr made a deep, quiet frustration bloom in Marcus’s chest. He didn’t want to be the liability anymore. He didn’t want his own helplessness to be the reason his best friend got dragged into the dirt.
“Yeah,” Marcus muttered, his knuckles tightening against his sides as a dangerous resolve took root. “Right. It’s handled.”
An hour later, the bleeding had stopped, leaving Devin with a dull, throbbing ache that radiated from the bridge of his nose straight to his temples. Despite Cassie’s desperate pleading to drive him home, Devin had stubbornly refused, insisting he needed the fresh air to clear his head. He couldn’t let her see where he lived. He couldn’t let her see the tin-can trailer that Tyler had weaponized against him.
He walked out of the campus gates alone, his long strides heavy as the autumn night fully descended, wrapping the streets in a cold, damp fog. Every muscle in his torso screamed from the kicks he had taken on the cafeteria floor.
As he crossed the dimly lit intersection leading toward the edge of town, his phone buzzed violently in his jacket pocket.
Devin pulled it out, his swollen fingers clumsy against the screen. It was an unknown number. There was no text, no threat, no words at all.
Just a single, high-resolution photograph.
Devin stopped dead in the middle of the empty sidewalk, the breath freezing in his lungs. The image showed the rusty, dented mailbox that marked the gravel entrance to his mother’s trailer park. Standing right beside it, partially obscured by the dark silhouette of the tree line, was the distinct, broad-shouldered frame of a guy in a varsity jacket.
The screen went black as Devin’s grip tightened, the glass nearly cracking under his thumb. The cold dread washed over him, turning the air in his chest to ice.
The cafeteria brawl hadn’t solved a thing. The Starboy had bled for nothing. Tyler wasn’t finishing the fight on campus—he was bringing the storm straight to Devin’s home.