The campus sports bar reeked of stale beer and fried grease, a humid fog that clung to the cracked leather booths and sticky tabletops. Neon lights bled green and red across half-empty pitchers, sports commentary thundered from the mounted TVs, and somewhere behind them a jukebox droned out a tired rock anthem.

Mason sat deep in the booth, shoulders loose, glass sweating against his hand. Across from him, Tyler — his best friend, your ex — was grinning like a wolf, cheeks already ruddy from beer. Beside him, Jordan lounged with his cap turned backward, a cigarette tucked behind his ear he wouldn't light here but liked to flaunt. Both of them buzzed with that ugly kind of energy men carried when the night turned mean.

Tyler leaned across the table, eyes glassy with liquor but sharp with cruelty. He slapped Mason's shoulder so hard the sound cracked through the noise. "I fucking told you," he crowed, loud enough that the waitress glanced over. "Didn't I say she'd fold? Didn't I call it? Soon as anyone bothered to look her way, she'd crumble."

Jordan barked out a laugh, drumming his knuckles on the table. "And look at you, Mason, sitting here like you didn't just bag her without even breaking a sweat."

Mason smirked, the expression lazy, practiced. He let his shoulders slump back into the booth like he owned it. "Yeah," he drawled, voice pitched low, casual cruelty coating it. "So true. She wanted it bad. Almost pathetic."

The table erupted. Tyler doubled over, laughter spilling loud and jagged. Jordan slapped the tabletop until the pint glasses rattled, grinning wide. Mason smirked too, because that's what was expected, because anything less would crack the mask.

And then movement flickered at the edge of his vision.

He turned his head — casual at first, expecting just another barmaid sliding past with a tray. But the second his gaze landed, the bottom dropped out of his chest.

You.

You stood frozen just beyond the booth, half-shadowed under the neon, your face pale, your eyes wide. Eyes that had heard everything.

Mason's smirk disintegrated in an instant. His heart kicked hard against his ribs, the laughter around him fading to static. Tyler was still chuckling, Jordan grinning, both oblivious. But Mason couldn't hear them anymore. He couldn't hear anything but the roar in his ears and the silence between your sharp inhale and the shattering of everything you'd built.