"The world tilted."
The confession hung in the snowy air between them like a blade suspended over thin ice, sharp enough to cut through everything Silver thought she understood about Eli Hayes and their months of careful emotional choreography. Three words that should have been beautiful—I love you—but felt more like a detonation that had just destroyed the careful balance she'd been trying to maintain since arriving at Yale's Gothic gates.
The world tilted.
Silver swore the ground shifted beneath her formal heels, snow crunching unevenly as if the ancient courtyard itself had lurched in response to Eli's revelation. The medieval stones that had supported countless Yale students through centuries of academic and romantic drama suddenly felt unreliable, as unstable as the emotional foundation she'd been trying to build despite the psychological warfare that seemed to follow her everywhere.
