EPISODE 11- FAINT RED MARKS
(Layla's POV)
The silence after he left was a physical weight. I stood in the centre of his sterile bedroom, wrapped in a sheet that still smelled of him—sandalwood, sex, and fear. My body ached in the most delicious, hollow way. My lips felt bruised. My skin was hypersensitive, every place he'd touched me humming like a live wire.
But the humming was underscored by a new, cold vibration: dread.
My phone, buried in my discarded dress, began to buzz. Not a call. A frantic, rapid-fire series of notifications. Instagram. Twitter. Campus Connect. I didn't want to look. I already knew.
With trembling fingers, I fished it out.
The screen was a wall of chaos. Tags. Mentions. DMs from people I didn't know. A meme already—a screenshot of the video, Ethan's face circled, with the caption "When you spot the scholarship student." My stomach lurched.
I opened one link. The video loaded, grainy and dark. There I was. I'm leaning across that blue-lit table. His hand in my hair, pulling me into a kiss that looked… consuming. It looked like I was being devoured. And I had been. Willingly.
The view count is 127,843.
A numbness spread from my chest outward. This wasn't just a private mistake. This was a public spectacle. I was the "mystery girl." The gossip fodder.
The phone rang in my hand, startling me so badly that I almost dropped it. Mom.
I swallowed hard, my throat tight. "Hi, Mom."
"Layla Marie Adams." Her voice was strained, a forced calm that was worse than shouting. "I just got off the phone with Susan Carter. Her daughter goes to Avalon. She sent me a… a video."
Oh, God. "Mom, I can explain—"
"Explain what? Explain why my daughter is all over the internet kissing some boy like… like a strumpet in a nightclub?" The old-fashioned word, laced with her deep disappointment, cut deeper than any curse. "Who is he, Layla? Is this the kind of crowd you're running with already? We sent you there for an education."
"It's not a crowd, it's just… it's complicated. It was a mistake. It's being handled."
"Handled? By whom? That boy's people?" She sniffed, and I could picture her sitting at our pristine kitchen table, her knuckles white. "Susan says he's a Marshall. As in Gregory Marshall. Is that true?"
There was no point lying. "Yes."
A long, heavy silence. I heard her take a shaky breath. "Layla, you listen to me. Men like that… their world eats girls like you for breakfast. You are not a headline. You are not a scandal. You get your degree, you keep your head down, and you stay away from him. Do you understand me?"
Every word was a nail in a coffin. The coffin of the girl I was supposed to be. The obedient one. The one who followed the rules.
But I could still feel the ghost of his hands on my hips, his mouth on my shoulder, his voice in my ear. You're mine.
"I understand," I whispered, the lie tasting like dust.
I ended the call and sank onto the edge of the rumpled bed. The sheet slipped. I looked down at my body—the faint red marks from his stubble on my inner thighs, the love bite on my shoulder already purpling. Evidence. His evidence.
My phone buzzed again. A new message, not a social alert.
Unknown Number: Cleanup in progress. Video is being memory-holed. Do not engage online. Do not post. Do not confirm. -M
Marcus. It had to be. Ethan's blunt instrument.
As if on cue, I refreshed the campus gossip page. The post was still there, but the video player showed an error. This content is no longer available. I searched for the hashtag. Fewer results. The meme page was gone. It was like watching digital bleach work in fast-forward, erasing the stain of us.
But you can't un-see the internet. Mom had seen it. Susan Carter's daughter had seen it. Hundreds of thousands of eyes had already consumed us.
Another text, this time from Chloe.
Chloe: HOLY SHIT. Are you okay? I just saw… everything. Call me when you can. I'm here.
I couldn't call. I couldn't form words. The emotional whiplash was too severe. From the highest, most desperate peak of pleasure to this cold, scrutinized crash.
I dragged myself up and gathered my clothes. The silk dress felt cheap now, a costume. I dressed mechanically in the echoing space. The house felt dead without him in it.
As I slipped my heels on, my phone buzzed with a final, definitive notification. An email from the Avalon University Communications Department. Subject: Community Standards & Digital Citizenship.
My blood ran cold. I opened it.
It was a generic, mass-blast email about "responsible use of social media" and "upholding the university's values of respect and integrity." It didn't name names. It didn't have to. It was a warning shot. From the dean. Ethan's father's lunch date.
The walls were closing in. The digital cleanup was a clinical, efficient process. But the emotional fallout? That was a minefield, and I was standing in the centre of it, completely alone.
I let myself out of the cold, perfect house. The Uber ride back to campus was a blur of streetlights and silent tears I refused to let fall. The driver didn't speak.
My dorm was dark. Mia was out, probably still at some after-party. I was grateful. I couldn't face her bright, curious energy.
I stripped and stood under a scalding shower, scrubbing my skin as if I could wash away the fingerprints, the scent, the claim. But it was under my skin. In my marrow.
Wrapped in a towel, I finally looked at myself in the steamy mirror. The girl staring back had shadows under her eyes, but her lips were still swollen. Her pupils were wide. She looked… alive." Wrecked, terrified, but viscerally alive.
My phone, on the sink, lit up. One new message.
Ethan: It's gone.
Two words. No apology. No reassurance. Just a statement of fact. The cleanup was complete. The headlines were cleared.
I traced the letters on the screen. The numbness began to recede, burned away by a sudden, fierce spark of anger. He got to just… make it disappear? To hide me away again after putting me on display?
But beneath the anger, the hunger uncoiled, slow and insistent. The memory of his weight, his possession, the way he'd looked at me when he said don't let him.
I didn't reply. I just stood there, shivering in the damp air, caught between my mother's warning and the echo of his command, the digital silence and the very real, aching need he'd carved into my body.
The door to the dorm room clicked open. Mia's voice, bright and bubbly, spilt in. "Layla? Are you in here? You will not believe the drama going around about some video that got deleted…"
I took a deep breath, my fingers tightening around the phone.
—