The clock read 3:07 a.m.
Aria stared at it like it had personally betrayed her.
The dorm room was silent except for the low hum of the heater and Mila's steady breathing from the other bed. Outside, the campus slept—lawns dark, buildings resting, ambition paused.
Inside Aria's mind, nothing rested.
She sat cross-legged on her bed, hair loose, sweatshirt pulled over her knees. Her laptop glowed softly, untouched. Instead, a worn leather notebook lay open in her lap.
The diary.
She hadn't written in it for months.
Diaries were indulgent. Unstructured. Emotional.
She'd promised herself she wouldn't need it anymore.
Her pen hovered.
Then pressed down.
Entry — 3:09 a.m.
I don't know when it started.
That terrified her—the honesty of it.
She paused, then continued.
I used to sleep easily.
Sleep was efficient.
Eight hours. No dreams. No interruptions.
Now my brain refuses to shut up.
Aria clenched her jaw, writing harder than necessary.
Lucas Vale is not important.
This is not about him.
This is about disruption.
She stopped.
Read the lines.
Crossed out the last one.
That's a lie.
Her chest tightened at the admission.
She hated lies—especially her own.
I hate him for changing my focus.
I hate myself for letting him.
Winning used to be enough.
That sentence sat alone on the page.
She stared at it longer than the others.
Because it was true.
Winning had always been enough.
Top of the class. Best arguments. Clean victories. Applause that faded quickly, leaving behind certainty. Purpose.
Now, victories felt… muted.
Incomplete.
Like applause echoing in an empty room.
Her pen slowed.
I replay conversations I didn't lose.
I analyze silences I shouldn't care about.
I notice where he sits.
Who he looks at.
Who he doesn't.
She swallowed.
The heater clicked.
Mila shifted in her sleep.
Aria lowered her voice instinctively, though she was only writing.
This is not attraction.
This is erosion.
She underlined the word.
Erosion.
Slow. Invisible. Dangerous.
The kind of damage you noticed only when the foundation cracked.
She closed her eyes briefly, memories intruding uninvited.
Lucas's calm voice dismantling her argument—not loudly, not cruelly. Just efficiently.
The way he looked at her when she surprised him.
The way he went quiet when Evelyn spoke.
The way he hadn't looked back.
Her hand trembled.
She pressed the pen harder.
Evelyn knows.
She knew before I did.
That realization burned.
Evelyn hadn't needed to say it outright. She'd seen it in the way Aria listened too closely. In the way she withdrew too carefully.
In the way she lost sleep.
I've built my entire life on control.
Emotion was always optional.
Attachment was a risk I didn't need.
So why does it feel like something is missing when I remove him from the equation?
The question bled into the page.
Unanswered.
Unanswerable.
Aria leaned back against the headboard, staring at the ceiling. Her heart beat faster than necessary, like it was preparing for a threat that hadn't arrived yet.
Or had already passed.
She hated that Lucas existed in her quiet moments.
Hated that he lived in the pauses between thoughts.
Hated that she measured herself differently now.
Before, she'd asked: Did I win?
Now, the question had shifted.
Did he notice?
The realization made her stomach twist.
This is how people lose.
Not loudly.
Not suddenly.
But inch by inch—focus slipping, priorities blurring, logic bending to accommodate feeling.
She wrote the next lines slower.
If I lose him…
Her pen hovered.
The sentence refused to finish itself.
She swallowed hard.
Wrote anyway.
… I lose myself.
The words felt too big.
Too dramatic.
Too honest.
Aria snapped the notebook shut, breath uneven, pulse loud in her ears. She pressed the diary to her chest like it could anchor her.
This wasn't love.
She knew that.
Love was expansive. Mutual. Chosen.
This was something darker.
A dependency forming quietly, uninvited.
A shift in gravity.
Her phone buzzed softly on the bedside table.
She flinched.
A message.
From Mila.
Mila: you're awake, aren't you?
Aria stared at the screen.
Then typed.
Aria: I couldn't sleep.
Three dots appeared.
Mila: because of him?
Aria closed her eyes.
Didn't reply.
The silence was answer enough.
Mila sat up slowly, careful not to turn on the light. "Aria," she whispered, "talk to me."
Aria didn't look at her.
"If I say it out loud," she murmured, "it becomes real."
Mila climbed onto her bed, sitting beside her. "It already is."
That was the cruelest truth of all.
Aria hugged her knees tighter, voice barely audible. "I don't like who I'm becoming."
Mila rested her chin on Aria's shoulder. "Then don't let him define you."
Aria laughed softly.
"If it were that simple," she said, "I wouldn't be awake at three a.m. writing confessions I don't believe in."
The room fell quiet again.
The clock ticked forward.
3:41 a.m.
Aria lay back down eventually, diary hidden beneath her pillow, eyes open to the dark.
Sleep never came.
Because somewhere between control and obsession, she had crossed a line she didn't know how to step back from.
And that frightened her more than losing any debate ever had.
"If I lose him…"
"…I lose myself."