Chapter 171 Love of My Life

Chapter 171 Love of My Life
'BREAKING: Second student death reported at the same university'
'Authorities confirm female undergraduate found dead'
'Campus in shock after two deaths in one day'

My heart stopped.

I clicked the first link with fingers that felt numb.

The article was still updating live. Officials had not released the name yet. Witnesses said a young woman had been seen earlier that evening. Friends were already posting. The comments were moving too fast to track.

Then another news outlet pushed a new headline across my screen.

'SCHOLARSHIP STUDENT IDENTIFIED AS SOPHIA REYES.'

I stared at the name.

For a second, it meant nothing. My brain saw the letters, recognized them individually, but refused to put them together.

Sophia Reyes.

NO.

My stomach dropped so violently it felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath me.

I read the headline again. Then again. My eyes moved down the screen, searching for some mistake. Some other Sophia. Some other Reyes. Some tiny detail that would tell me I was looking at the wrong person.

There wasn't one.

The article loaded beneath the headline.

'Scholarship recipient.... top of her class....promising young student.... FOUND DEAD FEW MINUTES AGO!'

The room seemed to tilt.

"No."

The word barely made it past my lips. I swallowed, staring at the screen as my vision began to blur. "No." I shook my head. "No, that's not—" My voice broke. "That's not her."

Another notification appeared. Then another. Another news site. Another headline. Another photograph. The same name.

Sophia Reyes.

MY SOPHIE.

My heart seemed to stop before suddenly hammering against my ribs so violently that it hurt. I stood so quickly the chair crashed backward behind me. I barely heard it.

My phone slipped from my hand and struck the carpet. I didn't even look down.

"No."

My knees felt weak.

The edges of the room went gray and then black at the corners. I stumbled backward, one hand reaching for the edge of the desk as though I needed something solid to keep me upright. "No, no, no..."

My breathing became shallow. I couldn't understand it.I had just been reading her messages. We just spoke a few moments ago. She had been alive. She had been here in this world.

My mind desperately began replaying every conversation we'd ever had, searching for something I'd missed. Her voice. Her laugh. The way she'd said my name. The stupid arguments. The nights we'd stayed awake talking about our future as though we had all the time in the world. The pain in her voice just few moments ago when we spoke.

We were supposed to have a future. We were supposed to graduate from collaege. We were supposed to be Lawyers. We were supposed to grow old.

She couldn't just be dead. People didn't simply disappear from your life between one conversation and the next. They couldn't.

“Why?” The word came out in a sob. “Why? I was fixing it. I was so close. I was digging, I was building the whole fucking case, I was going to make them pay and get you out of there. You just needed a little more time. Why didn’t you give me more time?”

I sank to my knees beside the phone. My fingers shook so badly that I nearly dropped it again when I picked it up.

The photograph on the screen loaded. And everything inside me shattered. It was her.

There was no mistake. That was Sophia. My Sophie.

The girl I'd spent years fighting. The girl I'd spent years loving without realizing when hatred had turned into something else. The girl who had somehow become the center of my entire world.

Dead.

A sound escaped me. I didn't recognize it as my own.

"My Sophie is dead," I repeated again in disbelief. The sentence tore out of me, raw and broken. I covered my mouth, but it didn't stop the sob that followed.

"My Sophie is dead."

I said it again. And again. As though repetition could make the words less real. As though the universe might eventually get tired of hearing me say them and decide to correct its mistake.

But the headline remained. Her name remained. The photograph remained.

And she didn't.

A pressure began building inside my chest, so tight and sudden that I instinctively grabbed at my shirt. I tried to breathe. The air wouldn't come properly. I dragged in one shallow breath.
Then another. Neither felt like enough.

My vision blurred with tears, and I wiped them away frantically, almost angry at myself for crying.

"No," I whispered. My voice was barely there. "You can't do this to me." I looked at the photograph again. "You promised." Another sob broke through. "You promised we'd have time."

I pressed the phone against my chest as if somehow holding her picture close could bring her back. "I wasn't ready."

That was the part that destroyed me. I wasn't ready to lose her. I hadn't said everything. I hadn't loved her enough. I hadn't had enough mornings with her, enough arguments, enough stupid conversations, enough ordinary moments that I would have given anything to have back now.

There should have been more. There was supposed to be so much more. Instead, I was on the floor, staring at a photograph of the woman I loved while strangers on the internet announced her death like it was just another piece of breaking news.

My chest tightened again. I bent forward, gasping for air. bAnd somewhere beneath the panic, beneath the disbelief, one unbearable thought finally reached me.

She was gone. Really gone. And there was nothing I could do to bring her back. Then I threw my phone away from me. I couldn't bear to look at it anymore.

The expensive carpet was rough under my palms. I could feel every fiber. My phone lay a few feet away, screen still lighting up with new alerts. I didn’t pick it up. I couldn’t.

Tears ran hot and unchecked down my face. I didn’t try to stop them. Whoever said men don’t cry had never lost the only person that made the rest of the noise in their head go quiet.

I cried until my throat burned. I cried until my ribs hurt. I cried until the sounds coming out of me didn’t even sound like my voice anymore.

“I was so close, baby. I was so close to fixing your situation. You could have held on a little longer. We were supposed to get there together. God, why?”

My pulse was slamming so hard I could feel it in my temples, in my neck, in my wrists. The pressure behind my eyes built until the room started to pulse with it. High, tight, unbearable. I couldn’t catch my breath. Every inhale felt like it stopped halfway.

I dragged in air that didn’t help.

“The love of my life is gone.”