Author: Momo Chan

The day I caught Beckett cheating, I lost my mind. I smashed everything in sight. The hysteria took over, and my body simply gave out. By the time I blacked out, I was bleeding out on the hardwood floor. Panic-stricken, he carried me to the emergency room. At my bedside, Beckett wept, clutching my cold hands. “Aurora, I’m so sorry. Just get better,” he begged. “I’ll do anything. I’ll spend the rest of my life making this up to you. I will never, ever leave your side.” Be careful what you wish for. In his frantic rush to get my prescription filled, he ran out of the hospital lobby and was hit by an oncoming SUV. Both of his legs were crushed. I survived, but the trauma of that day took our baby and left me barren, trapped in a heavy, suffocating depression. From then on, he became his own jailer. He locked himself to his wheelchair with a heavy iron chain, refusing to ever be out of my sight. Whenever he felt the urge to stray, he would prick his own skin with sewing needles, leaving a map of tiny, weeping scars across his arms to punish himself. Until today. I pushed the door open to find Hailey, our young live-in maid, kneeling before his wheelchair, her head buried deeply between his thighs. I broke. But instead of apologizing, his face contorted in anger, and he shouted at me: “Aurora, for God’s sake, I made one mistake years ago! Am I always going to be filthy in your eyes?” “Hailey was just cleaning my scarred legs. I gave up my goddamn legs to pay you back—isn’t that enough?” “We lost one baby, and you act like the sky has permanently fallen! How long are you going to hold this over my head?” One baby. The child we had tried to conceive for five long years, reduced to a mere inconvenience in his narrative. Looking at his snarling, bitter face, a strange, hollow quiet suddenly washed over me. I realized, in that quiet moment, that there was absolutely nothing left in this marriage worth saving. … I unclipped the heavy iron chain from his belt and let it clatter to the floor. “I’m done holding on, Beckett.” He froze, kicking the chain aside, his eyes boring into mine. “Aurora, what do you want from me? For five years, I’ve given you my life. I haven’t left your side.” “But the second things don’t go your way, you threaten to pack up and leave. What is it going to take to make you happy?” His voice cracked as he fell into a coughing fit. Hailey immediately rushed forward, rubbing his back to soothe him. Looking at his frail, bitter state, my mind drifted back to five years ago. Back then, Beckett was radiant, full of ambition. On the night his startup went public, he held me tight and promised me a brilliant, glittering future. But at the very peak of his success, I walked in on his betrayal. Now, staring at the man confined to this wheelchair, I realized the bitter truth: I could never truly forgive him. Hailey wrapped her arms around him, her eyes shining with tears. “Beckett, please, don’t get upset. You’ll hurt yourself.” The intimacy of their embrace sent a sharp, dull ache through my chest. Once, in a freezing basement apartment in Brooklyn, sharing a single bowl of instant ramen under a thin blanket, we had held each other just like that. I forced a dry, joyless smile. Hailey looked up at me, her expression dripping with victimhood. “Aurora, why do you always have to hurt him? Don’t you know how much he loves you? He whispers your name every single night.” My brow furrowed. “How would you know that?” Her cheeks flushed, and she looked at Beckett with a soft, adoring gaze. “After you fall asleep, I go to his room to help ease his physical tension. When he… finds relief, it’s always your name he calls.” The words hung in the air. For a moment, I thought I had misheard. I stood frozen, my mind going completely blank. No wonder he had made such a sacred ritual of tucking me in every night, murmuring sweet promises until I fell asleep. It wasn’t love. It was just to clear the path for another woman. I looked at Beckett, biting my lip so hard I tasted copper. “Beckett, how desperate are you? Even losing your legs couldn’t stop you? What is it about betraying me that makes you feel so alive?” Seeing my agitation, he instinctively shielded Hailey behind his chair and let out a long, weary sigh. “Aurora, it’s not cheating. You haven’t let me touch you in years.” “I’m a man. I have physical needs. Hailey was just… maintenance. I love you. You are the only Mrs. Ward.” I love you. He had whispered those words on the Ferris wheel when he proposed. He had sobbed those words by my hospital bed five years ago, begging me not to leave. And now, caught in the act once more, he shielded another woman and said them again. He wore his devotion like a badge of honor, yet happily surrendered his body to anyone else. Staring at the man I had loved for five years, my heart went entirely cold. “Let her take care of you for the rest of your life,” I whispered. “I’m not cut out for this.” I turned to leave, but Hailey lunged forward, grabbing my wrist. Her eyes welled with tears as she sobbed, “Aurora, why are you doing this to me? I was just doing my job, taking care of Beckett. Why do you have to paint me as some homewrecking whore? Am I really that cheap to you?” She wept, looking up at Beckett for protection. That was the spark. Beckett pulled her close, looking at me with a cold, biting disgust I had never seen before. “Aurora, have you had enough?” “This is between us. Why are you dragging her into it?” “And let’s be honest—how clean are your hands? You cry over that miscarriage every single day, but have you ever stopped to think about why you became barren? If you hadn’t been ruined by those men back then, would one miscarriage have ruined your body?” I went rigid. I couldn’t breathe. That was the deepest, darkest trauma of my life. It was the one scar we had tacitly agreed never to touch. Now, for Hailey’s sake, he tore it wide open without a second thought. Our move out of that freezing Brooklyn basement had happened right after I landed my first corporate job. I remember running home, waving the offer letter in his face, crying tears of joy because we were finally going to make it. But that job became a living nightmare. My boss drugged my drink at a client dinner and offered me up to his wealthy associates. In my final moments of consciousness, I managed to speed-dial Beckett. He had arrived like a madman, his eyes wild and bloodshot, beating those men until his knuckles fractured and his hands deformed. He had knelt before me, crying harder than I was, whispering over and over that none of it was my fault. That was the night I decided I would love him forever. But the trauma left me with severe PTSD. For years, any physical intimacy triggered a visceral, nauseating panic. Beckett had held me through those dark nights, promising he would wait, promising we would get through it together. But he was the first to break that promise. Now, Beckett stared at me with complete indifference. “If you hadn’t played the frigid saint for years, I wouldn’t have strayed five years ago.” “Aurora, because of you, our entire social circle laughs at me. They say I chained myself like a dog to a damaged, dirty woman.” He reached down, taking Hailey’s hand. The tenderness in his eyes was something I hadn’t seen in years. “You can call me a bastard, but Hailey is a good girl. If it weren’t for her, I probably would have ended my life long ago.” “Aurora, I can’t live without her anymore. Why don’t the three of us just live together? I’ll make you lobster, she’ll crack the shells for you, and you’ll still be my wife.” My hands shook uncontrollably. I spat out three words: “In your dreams.” Fragments of the past came rushing back, crashing over me. I remembered the day Beckett excitedly told me he wanted to get a cat. I had laughed, telling him he’d lose interest in a week. But he had researched breeds and premium food for days, eventually buying a beautiful, soft ragdoll. On weekends, he insisted on taking me to trendy cafes he found on social media, plotting out the best angles for photos. I had teased him for being so vain. And yet, in five years of marriage, he had never realized that I am deathly allergic to shellfish. Now, the picture was clear. He wasn’t incapable of care; he just didn’t care about me. He did all of those things because they were Hailey’s favorite things. Why was I still standing here, humiliating myself? I forced my breathing to slow, and in a quiet, steady voice, I said, “Beckett, let’s get a divorce. We’re done.” Without waiting for his response, I walked into the bedroom and began packing. Five years of my life fit easily into a single suitcase. There was a soft knock on the door. Without looking up, I said, “Don’t bother, Beckett. I’m leaving.” But it was Hailey who stepped inside. With lingering tear-tracks on her face, she whispered meekly, “Aurora, I wanted to apologize…” I frowned, disgusted by the performance. Then, my eyes fell on her finger. She was wearing a custom-designed platinum band—the one I had custom-ordered for Beckett years ago. We had promised it would only go to the love of our lives. Now, it sat on her ring finger. The moment the door clicked shut behind her, Hailey’s meek expression vanished. “Aurora, I’m glad you finally got the message and decided to drag your pathetic self out of here,” she sneered. “He always told me you were like sleeping with a piece of wood. Honestly, he enjoys me so much more.” I closed my suitcase and looked at her coldly. “Save the drama. You can have him. I don’t fight over garbage.” Seeing that her words hadn’t broken me, her eyes narrowed. She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen, turning it toward me. It was a video. The footage was shaky and intimate. In it, Beckett was pinning Hailey down, his breath heavy and ragged. They were tangled in the sheets, flushed and desperate. I clenched my fists, maintaining a neutral face. “You think a sex tape is going to break me?” Hailey’s smile widened into something cruel. “Look closer, Aurora.” I forced myself to look at the screen again. My heart stopped. In the video, Beckett’s legs were perfectly fine. He was standing, moving, strong. The timestamp in the corner of the video read: Five years ago. The exact date I had caught him cheating the first time. The blood rushed out of my face, and a deafening ring filled my ears. She was the first woman. The one who had caused our screaming fight, the one who had driven me to collapse in a pool of blood and lose our child. And Beckett had kept her close all these years, claiming she was just “hired help.” Thinking of the baby I had lost, something in me snapped. Losing all control, I lunged forward, grabbed her collar, and slapped her across the face with everything I had. The blow was loud and heavy, leaving a bright red mark on her neck and cheek. Hailey’s lip split, but a twisted, triumphant smile flashed across her face. She threw herself backward, crashing dramatically onto the hardwood floor. “Aurora, please! I just wanted to apologize… why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed, her voice echoing loudly. “Is there really no room in your heart to forgive me?” Outside, the frantic whirring of wheelchair wheels grew louder. The door burst open, and Beckett charged in. Seeing Hailey sobbing on the floor, his eyes turned bloodshot with rage. He lunged forward, pushing me away with immense force. I lost my balance, crashing hard against the sharp corner of the bedside table. A sickening, sharp pain exploded in my lower abdomen. He scooped Hailey into his arms, glaring at me with venomous hatred. “Aurora, are you insane? Why the hell did you hit her?” “Just because your own body is ruined and you can’t have kids, you have to destroy her too?” “Honestly, back then… maybe your boss targeted you because of your own twisted, miserable attitude.” It felt like a physical blade piercing my chest, a freezing coldness spreading through my veins. “A toxic, bitter woman like you—I should have just let them ruin you,” he spat. He carried Hailey out, slamming the door behind them. I lay on the floor for a long time, unable to stand. Even though I knew my body was barren, seeing the dark smear of fresh blood on the floor beneath me made my chest tighten in agony. Five years of devotion, ending in a pool of blood. Using the last of my strength, I dragged myself up, took out my phone, and booked the earliest flight out of the country. By the time Beckett was checking Hailey into the hospital, I was already boarding a flight to Switzerland. At three in the morning, looking out the cabin window, the glittering lights of the city stretched out below me. But there was no longer any place for me down there. I pulled out my old phone, ready to erase the past. The screen lit up with dozens of missed calls and texts from Beckett. Aurora, where the hell did you run off to? Get back here right now and apologize to Hailey. If you don’t show your face in an hour, I’m freezing your bank cards. Without my money, you won’t survive a day out there. Don’t come crawling back to me. Beneath those threats, a few frantic messages appeared from later in the night: Why is there blood on the floor? Are you hurt? Where are you? Why aren’t you picking up? It’s freezing outside. Come home right now, or don’t bother coming back at all! I let out a soft, dry laugh. He was right about one thing: I was never coming back. He had gotten his wish. He and Hailey could live out their days in peace. He had known me for five years; he knew exactly how much I loved him. He was so certain I would never leave, so sure I would always bow my head and forgive him, that he felt entirely comfortable flaunting his betrayal in my face. Beckett was a smart man. He probably knew Hailey’s dramatic falls were mostly an act. But he wanted to test me. He wanted to see just how far he could push me before I broke. He believed that because he had rescued me once, and because he had sacrificed his legs, I owed him my absolute submission. He thought a few sweet words could erase any betrayal. But I was done drowning in his abyss. A lifetime is too short to waste on another five years of misery. … By the early hours of the morning, panic finally began to claw at Beckett’s chest. In all our years of fighting, I had never gone completely silent like this. He sent another flurry of texts, his tone softening with every message: You don’t have any money on you. Don’t wander the streets. Just come home. I unblocked your cards. Stop playing games, Aurora. Come home. My phone remained silent. An hour later, Beckett was pacing in his chair, consumed by anxiety. He checked the bank records—no transactions. He checked the security cameras at our front gate; there was no sign of me leaving after my initial departure. When his eyes fell on the dark, dried bloodstain on the floor, his heart hammered against his ribs. Then, a notification popped up on his phone from our linked travel account. It was a real-time flight tracker. Beckett’s pupils dilated as he stared at the screen. It was a one-way ticket to Zurich, Switzerland.

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The Volvo wagon I had driven for over twelve years was finally on its last legs. I wanted to send it to the mechanic, but my wife, the CEO of our company, had shut me down with characteristic coldness. “We’re supposed to be in this together, Thomas,” Georgia had snapped, her eyes sharp over her designer coffee. “But you choose the exact week of our company’s IPO to throw a tantrum over a rusted piece of junk. Have some perspective!” “The budget is tight. We don’t have the cash to waste on a dead engine. Would it kill you to take a Lime bike to work?” Yet, the very next morning—Valentine’s Day—she bought her newly hired, twenty-something personal driver a top-of-the-line, custom-spec Rolls-Royce Ghost. As I watched them through the tinted windows of that leather-scented cocoon of luxury, lost in their own private world of tangled limbs and whispered secrets, I slowly crushed the printed bank statement in my fist. Ten years of starving together, of building an empire from a drafty basement. And in the end, the harvest of our shared success was nothing but a cruel joke. If that was the case, it was time for this fool to step off their stage. … 1 “Georgia, if you give me such an expensive gift, won’t Thomas be upset?” Isaac, her newly minted driver, held the key fob in his palm as if it were a fragile bird, his youthful, handsome face a mask of worry. Georgia’s expression darkened instantly. “This is my company, and it’s my money. He doesn’t get a say in how I spend it.” She pulled Isaac into the passenger cabin, guiding his hands over the pristine leather steering wheel and pointing out the custom settings. And I, the husband she claimed had no right to speak, stood a few yards away in the freezing wind, watching their bodies lean closer and closer. My knuckles turned white inside my coat pockets. The edge of the bank invoice bit into my palm, tearing into damp scraps. Perhaps sensing my gaze, Georgia looked up. Her eyes locked onto mine. Her face fell into an immediate scowl. Pushing the heavy door open, she marched toward me, her heels clicking sharply against the asphalt. “What is with the miserable face, Thomas? We’re meeting our largest distributor today to sign the spring contract, and you’re standing here acting like a child. What are you trying to pull?” I didn’t answer her. My eyes shifted to the gleaming hood of the Rolls-Royce, and then to Isaac as he stepped out of the vehicle. He was wearing a bespoke cashmere overcoat Georgia had purchased for him last week. He looked less like a driver and more like an heir. I looked down at myself—my coat was a cheap, generic wool blend Georgia had grabbed off a rack at a local department store. Isaac walked over, his head lowered in a show of submissive anxiety. “It’s my fault, Georgia. I’ve upset Thomas. I shouldn’t have accepted such a generous gift. Someone from my background… I don’t deserve something this beautiful.” But behind Georgia’s shoulder, where she couldn’t see, his eyes met mine. The anxiety vanished, replaced by a cold, mocking smirk. That was all it took to set Georgia off. Her face flushed with anger, and she pointed a finger directly at my face. “You are unbelievably petty, Thomas. I spent my own hard-earned money to buy Isaac a tool for his job. What does that have to do with you?” “Just because you managed to close a few deals doesn’t mean you run this place. You think you can look down on everyone? Isaac is young and still learning, but he has ten times the drive you do. I am investing in his potential, and there is nothing you can do about it.” She shielded Isaac with her body, like a mother hen protecting her chick. I checked my watch. The meeting was in an hour. I didn’t have the energy to argue. I tossed the crumpled paper ball of the invoice at her feet, turned around, and walked toward my faded white Volvo. Two weeks ago, the car had started stalling at intersections. When I told Georgia it needed a major transmission overhaul, she told me we couldn’t afford it. Then she turned around and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a luxury vehicle for her young favorite, registering the title entirely in his name. I got in, turned the key, and the engine gave a dry, wheezing cough. Nothing. The twenty-year-old battery had finally given up. With the minutes ticking away, I swallowed my pride, got out of the Volvo, and tapped on the window of the Rolls-Royce. The glass rolled down, revealing Georgia’s deeply annoyed face. “What now? Haven’t you caused enough of a scene?” “My car is dead,” I said, keeping my voice flat. “We can’t be late for this meeting. Let me drive us—” “No,” Georgia cut me off instantly. “Take an Uber.” I looked at her, a bitter laugh bubbling up in my throat. “An Uber? Out here in this industrial park? It’ll take forty minutes for a car to reach us. Beatrice is already on her way to our office. Let me in.” As we stood in a tense deadlock, Isaac unlocked the doors from the driver’s seat. He turned to Georgia with a look of quiet sacrifice. “Georgia, business comes first. It’s enough for me just to know in my heart that this was meant to be my car. I don’t mind.” Georgia’s expression softened with pity, and when she looked back at me, the disgust in her eyes had doubled. But just as I reached for the door handle, Isaac let out a sudden, sharp gasp of pain. Georgia flinched. “What’s wrong?” Isaac’s pale face went lighter. He bit his lower lip and shook his head. “It’s nothing, Georgia. I think… my wrist is just flaring up again from those long driving shifts. It’s fine. I can push through it.” The next second, Georgia shoved me hard toward the driver’s side door. “You! Drive!” I stumbled back, barely catching my balance on the icy pavement. Georgia didn’t care. She shoved me again, her voice rising to a harsh shriek. “Move! Didn’t you say the client was waiting? Get behind the wheel!” 2 In the rearview mirror, I watched Georgia cradling Isaac’s hand in hers as if it were made of spun glass. “Does it hurt badly? I told you we should have hired an assistant driver for you. You shouldn’t be straining yourself.” Isaac’s eyes welled with tears. “I’m just a high school graduate. I don’t know how to do anything else. If I can’t even drive for you, Georgia… am I just useless to you?” “Don’t say that,” Georgia murmured, her voice thick with tenderness. I let out a cold, involuntary laugh. Georgia rarely kept a demanding schedule; her total weekly drive time was under five hours. To suggest Isaac needed a driving assistant to ease his “strain” was absurd. Hearing my laugh, Georgia’s face hardened. But before she could speak, Isaac suddenly pressed a hand to his forehead. “Oh… the car feels like it’s spinning. I feel a little sick…” “Thomas, how are you driving?” Georgia yelled from the back. “You’re doing this on purpose!” My patience snapped. “If he’s that fragile, he belongs in a hospital, not pretending to be a executive’s driver on a business trip.” “I…” Isaac’s eyes went wide, and his chest heaved with a quiet sob. “Thomas is right. I’m useless. I’m sorry. Just let me out of the car…” Georgia’s face turned purple with rage. “Pull over right now! Thomas, get out!” I ignored her, keeping my eyes locked on the road, my hands tight on the wheel. All I cared about was reaching the office before Beatrice did. This contract was worth millions; it was the lifeblood of our upcoming quarter. When Isaac’s first tear fell, Georgia went entirely feral. She leaned forward, lunging across the console to grab the steering wheel. “Let go!” I barked, fighting her weight. For the sake of safety, I slammed on the brakes, pulling the heavy car to a halt by the curb. The moment the vehicle stopped, I turned around to yell at her, but a sharp, stinging pain cut me short. Slap. The force of her palm across my cheek echoed in the quiet cabin. “Get the hell out of my car,” Georgia hissed. I stood on the side of the road, the winter wind biting into my burning cheek. Isaac got out of the passenger side, offering me a polite, pitying smile. “Georgia says we can’t afford to delay the meeting any longer. She wants you to take a shared bike back to the office.” With a practiced movement, he tapped his phone against a green Lime bike parked nearby, unlocking it for me. Then he walked to the driver’s side of the Rolls-Royce, slipped behind the wheel, and pressed the accelerator. The luxury car roared to life, kicking up a spray of dirty slush that covered my jeans, before disappearing down the avenue. I reached into my pockets. My phone was still sitting on the center console of the Rolls-Royce. I couldn’t even call a cab. The damp, freezing wind whipped against my face, but the cold of the weather was nothing compared to the sudden, hollow stillness inside my chest. By the time I pedeled back to the corporate headquarters, shivering and covered in road grime, I found a change of clothes and my phone sitting on my office desk. I unlocked the screen. A text from Georgia sat at the top of my notifications: I was too stressed earlier. Sorry. Don’t get sick. Meet me at the old studio at 10 PM tonight. A dull, familiar ache throbbed in my chest. My heart, which had been broken into pieces, felt a foolish, desperate urge to mend itself. The “old studio” was the drafty, one-room brick loft where we had started our jewelry line, Lumina. It sat directly across the street from our current twenty-story glass headquarters. That tiny space represented ten years of late nights, shared bowls of instant ramen, and dreams of a future we were finally living. I worked through the pain, spent the afternoon in meetings, and successfully finalized the multi-million-dollar deal with Beatrice. When 10 PM approached, I retrieved a small, midnight-blue velvet box from the office safe and walked across the street to the old loft. Thirty minutes passed. Georgia didn’t show. I pulled back the dusty curtains of the loft and looked across the street. The lights in the executive suite of the Lumina building were still blazing. I pulled out my phone and dialed her number. As the line began to ring, a shadow moved against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the executive office opposite me. It wasn’t just Georgia. Isaac was there. He lifted her onto the edge of the mahogany desk, and they fell into each other. The smart-glass partition of her office had been switched to entirely transparent. Every movement, every touch, was perfectly visible across the narrow street. He pressed her against the glass, his face buried in her neck. Georgia’s head was tilted back, her eyes glassy and unfocused as she held onto his shoulders. It was a beautiful, cinematic display of passion, and it tore whatever was left of my soul to ribbons. In the middle of their embrace, Isaac slowly opened his eyes. He looked directly across the street, targeting the exact window where I stood in the dark. A slow, victorious grin spread across his face. Then, he looked back down, capturing Georgia’s mouth in another deep kiss, dismissing my existence entirely. My hand shook so violently that the phone slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the hardwood floor. The line went dead, leaving only a mocking silence. If this story no longer had room for my name, then it was time for me to write myself out of it. 3 On Valentine’s Day night, Georgia did not come home. The next morning, I took half a day off to meet with a divorce attorney. Once the paperwork was drafted, I drove straight to the office and walked into Georgia’s suite. Georgia was sitting in her high-backed leather chair, her skin flushed and healthy. A silk scarf was tied high around her neck, but it wasn’t quite high enough to cover the dark, bruised mark blooming near her collarbone. My breath caught. Even though I had prepared myself, the sight of it felt like a physical blow. “I told you not to bother me unless it’s—” She looked up, her brow furrowed in irritation, but stopped mid-sentence. As if remembering something, her expression shifted into a practiced, bright smile. She pointed toward a white gift box sitting on the corner of her desk. “I got so caught up in the IPO meetings yesterday that I forgot the date. Here. A little Valentine’s Day peace offering.” I stared at the box, then opened it. Inside was a simple ceramic mug. I knew the brand. It was a complimentary promotional item given to customers who spent over ten thousand dollars at a boutique jeweler down the street—the same jeweler where Georgia had spent a small fortune on custom pieces for Isaac over the past month. I looked at the mug and let out a dry, quiet laugh, mocking myself for expecting anything else. Georgia didn’t seem to notice my reaction. The moment I set the box down, she slid a manila folder across the desk. “Sign this. We need to begin the transition immediately.” I opened the folder. It was an internal transfer of authority. It demanded my resignation as VP of Business Operations. And my designated successor was Isaac. I laughed again, the sound sharp and ugly. “You want to hand our entire supply chain and a twenty-million-dollar distribution network to a driver who didn’t even finish high school?” Georgia’s smile vanished, her hand slamming onto the desk. “Watch your mouth, Thomas! Isaac only missed college because his family fell on hard times. He is smarter than you, he’s younger, and he has a natural instinct for this market. You’re just bitter and jealous of him!” “Oh, he’s smart,” I agreed, leaning over the desk. “You don’t get into the CEO’s bed by being stupid, do you?” “The money you waste on him is one thing—I’ll write it off as the cost of keeping a pet. But Lumina is my life’s work. I will not let him touch it.” In a fit of rage, Georgia grabbed a heavy crystal paperweight from her desk and hurled it at me. I ducked, and the crystal shattered against the wall behind me. The glass frame of our wedding photo, which hung on the wall, cracked down the center, slicing through our smiling faces. “Don’t you dare insult him!” Georgia screamed, her chest heaving. “You disgust me, Thomas. This company has no place for someone so small-minded. As of this moment, you are suspended. Get out of my sight!” I looked at the shattered glass on the floor, seeing the perfect metaphor for our ten-year marriage. Why was I still trying to salvage something so thoroughly broken? I picked up the transfer document, pulled my own pen from my pocket, and signed it. Then, I pulled a second set of documents from my briefcase and laid them on her desk. “I’ll give him the position,” I said softly. “You sign your name, and I’ll hand over the keys.” Georgia glanced down at the paper, her anger freezing into confusion. “Separation and Dissolution Agreement?”

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My mother always called me a dead weight. A girl who would sleep through her own funeral. I’d fall asleep in the middle of a class, halfway through a forkful of dinner, even standing at a busy crosswalk. My homeroom teacher eventually pulled my mother aside and suggested we see a specialist. But my mother just sneered. “It’s that damn phone of hers,” she’d say. “Up all night scrolling.” After that, my phone was confiscated. She took the lock off my bedroom door so I could never hide. Every time she caught my eyelids drooping, her palm met my cheek. I didn’t want to get hit, and more than anything, I didn’t want to make her angry. So I started finding ways to fight the heavy haze. I pinched my thighs until they bruised. I pulled out my own hair. I dabbed burning peppermint oil directly onto my skin. But when that heavy, suffocating wave of exhaustion hit, nothing could stop it. On the day of the algebra final, my mother happened to be proctoring my hall. I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted metal, begging myself: Just this once. Just hold on for two hours. But the darkness came anyway. A sudden crash shattered the quiet of the room. My desk was flipped over. I went down with the chair, my temple slamming hard against the metal edge of the desk. Everything went black. My mother stood over me, her face twisted with disgust. “Grace Adler, do you care so little about your future that you’d sleep through a final?” “If you’re going to be this lazy, fine. Stay on the floor and sleep!” I lay slumped over my half-blank scantron, the light in my eyes fading to a pinprick. Mom, I think this time, I’m actually going to sleep for a very long time. 1 “How long are you going to play dead, Grace?” My mother’s voice bounced off the cinderblock walls of the silent classroom. I heard the sharp, rhythmic clack-clack of her heels as she marched over to where I lay. My cheek was pressed against the cold linoleum floor. Right at my temple, where I’d hit the desk, a warm, thick trickle of blood was beginning to pool. “Mrs. Adler, I think Grace really fainted,” a boy in the front row whispered, his voice trembling. “Fainted? She’s just throwing a tantrum because she’s lazy!” With a rough jerk, my mother grabbed the collar of my sweater. She possessed an terrifying strength when she was angry, dragging me off the floor. My head lolled uselessly back, my hand scraping against the abrasive floor, leaving a streak of red. “You sleep through class, you sleep at the dinner table, and now you’re sleeping through your finals?” Her voice was a venomous whisper. “You might not care about your dignity, Grace, but I am the Vice Principal of this school. I have a reputation to maintain.” She dragged me toward the door, my sneakers leaving long, dusty scuff marks on the floor. “Mrs. Adler, shouldn’t we take her to the nurse’s office?” Miss Collins, the young proctor, stood up, her face pale with worry. “The nurse? Miss Collins, don’t let her fool you,” my mother retorted, not even turning around. “She was probably up until three in the morning scrolling on her phone, and now she’s putting on a show.” “But she’s so pale. Something is seriously wrong.” Miss Collins hurried down from the podium, trying to block her path. “She’s acting. I know my own daughter.” My mother yanked open the classroom door. “Get back to your tests, everyone. Anyone caught looking out the window gets an automatic zero.” The room went dead silent. My mother dragged me down the hallway to the old storage room at the very end. It was filled with broken desks, dusty filing cabinets, and the suffocating smell of mildew. She threw me onto the floor. My head hit the bottom of a wooden cabinet with a dull, sickening thud. And in that exact moment, the weight vanished. I felt myself floating up, hovering near the water-stained ceiling tiles. I looked down at my own body. Grace was crumpled on the floor like a discarded rag doll, her eyes closed, her face a ghostly, translucent white. My mother knelt down and grabbed my chin, shaking my head violently. “Open your eyes, Grace. Enough is enough.” The girl on the floor didn’t move. My mother’s chest heaved with anger. Then, her eyes fell on the dark stain near my ear. It was blood, seeping from my temple and pooling in the hollow of my collarbone. She sneered, reaching into her pocket for a tissue. “You even brought fake blood? How pathetic.” She wiped hard at my ear, the rough paper scraping the delicate skin, only smearing the fresh, warm blood further across my jaw. “Disgusting. You’re just like your useless father. Always playing dirty tricks instead of doing real work.” She balled up the bloody tissue and threw it in my face. “Fine. Stay here. Let’s see how long you can keep this little act up.” She stood, brushed the dust off her slacks, and walked out. Floating near the ceiling, I screamed after her. Mom, that’s not fake. It’s my blood. My head hurts so bad, Mom, please look at me. But she couldn’t hear me. She only left me with the cold, unyielding sight of her back. A flurry of footsteps hurried down the hall. It was Miss Collins. She held a stack of scratch paper as an excuse, pausing outside the storage room door. She peered through the small wire-glass window, her brow furrowed. “Grace? Can you hear me?” Miss Collins tapped gently on the glass. The girl on the floor remained perfectly still. The blood that had been wiped away was slow to stop, a fresh bead dripping onto the collar of my school sweater. Miss Collins’s face went white. She reached for the brass doorknob. “Miss Collins, what do you think you’re doing?” My mother’s cold voice echoed from the other end of the hall. Miss Collins flinched, pulling her hand back as if she’d been burned. “Mrs. Adler… I… I really don’t think Grace looks well.” “She is perfectly fine,” my mother said, marching over and brushing past her. “Trust me, Miss Collins. The only way to cure this girl’s laziness is a little tough love. A couple of missed meals will do her wonders.” She pulled a heavy brass ring of school keys from her belt. “But Mrs. Adler, it’s December. There’s no heating in that room,” Miss Collins pleaded. The key turned in the lock with a heavy, final click. “Once she gets cold enough, she’ll find the energy to stand up and finish her exam.” 2 The final bell rang, signaling the end of midterm week. The hallways erupted into a chaotic symphony of slamming lockers and teenagers arguing over test answers. My spirit drifted out of the storage room, watching my mother stand outside the main office. My younger sister, Hailey, walked up, offering her a steaming paper cup. “Here, Mom. You’ve been on your feet all day. Drink something warm.” Hailey smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. My mother took the coffee, the harsh lines on her face instantly softening. “Thank you, sweetie. How did the advanced calculus section go?” “I got the last proof! I checked it twice, so it should be a perfect score.” Hailey wrapped her arm around my mother’s, gently swaying. “Good. At least I have one daughter who understands the value of hard work,” my mother said, casting a sharp, resentful glance toward the far end of the hallway. “Unlike the disappointment in the storage room, pretending to faint the moment the test starts.” Hailey followed her gaze, a fleeting, ugly spark of satisfaction dancing in her eyes before she masked it with a sigh. “Mom, don’t be too hard on her.” Her voice was soft, dripping with performative concern. “She probably just didn’t sleep. I’ve seen her huddled under her blankets with her phone late at night. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen.” The lie was lightweight, but it landed with the precision of a scalpel. My mother’s face darkened instantly. “I knew it. Those dark circles under her eyes weren’t from studying.” She slammed her coffee cup onto the desk nearby. “I took the lock off her door, and she still finds ways to sneak around my back. Unbelievable.” Standing beside them, my spirit felt a cold, hollow ache. I remembered the night my mother took the lock off my door. She had just lost a promotion at school, and she came home looking for a target. She kicked open my slightly ajar door and found me slumped over my desk, fast asleep. Without a word, she grabbed a screwdriver and dismantled the lock right in front of me. “You don’t get privacy in this house anymore,” she’d screamed, throwing the metal lock at my feet. “Let’s see you try to slack off behind closed doors now.” I hadn’t cried that night. I had just stared blankly down at the inside of my thighs. They were covered in tiny, neat punctures from the sharp metal tip of my drafting compass. Some had scabbed over; others were still oozing. I had started dabbing peppermint oil on the raw skin to drown out the faint, metallic smell of blood. But when my mother smelled the sharp herbal scent, she assumed I was vaping. “Using cheap vapes to hide the smell of whatever you’re doing, are you?” she had screamed, slapping me hard across the face before taking my phone. After that, I lost the right to even set an alarm to wake myself up. I had to plunge the compass needle deeper. And deeper. But even now, in death, I couldn’t bring myself to hate her. I knew how hard it was for her, raising two kids alone after my father left, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I was just sad. Sad that I would never get the chance to prove to her that I hadn’t been lazy. The intercom crackled, announcing that the building was closing for winter break. The last of the students filed out, leaving the school wrapped in a heavy, tomb-like silence. In the unheated storage room, my body had gone completely rigid. The sun reached its peak in the winter sky, but it couldn’t penetrate the dirt-caked window. My spirit kept track of the time. Four hours since I fell. The golden hour for treating a brain bleed had long since passed. The beam of a heavy flashlight swept across the hallway floor. The elderly night guard, Mr. Henderson, was doing his final sweep. The light caught the glass of the storage room, reflecting off something pale on the floor. My hand. White, cold, my fingers frozen in a deathly spasm around a torn piece of my exam permit. Mr. Henderson stopped, leaning in to squint through the glass. “Hello? Is someone in there?” He tapped on the pane and unclipped his radio from his belt. “Main office, this is Henderson. I’ve got a student lying on the floor in the third-floor storage room. She isn’t moving.” My spirit lunged at the window, screaming at the radio. Please open the door. Help me. The radio crackled with static, and then my mother’s voice came through, cool and authoritative. “Don’t worry about it, Henderson. I locked her in there for detention. Leave her be.” Mr. Henderson hesitated. “But Mrs. Adler, she’s in a really awkward position. Should I go in and check?” “I said leave her,” my mother snapped, her tone leaving no room for argument. “She needs to learn her lesson. A few hours in the cold won’t kill her.” Mr. Henderson sighed and turned off his flashlight. “Alright, Mrs. Adler. You’re the boss.” 3 Across the street, the local diner was warm and bustling. To celebrate the end of finals, my mother had reserved a booth. The table was piled high with Hailey’s favorites: mac and cheese, garlic shrimp, and glazed ribs. There was nothing I liked on the table. “Here, Hailey, eat up. You need to replenish your energy after all that studying,” my mother said, peeling a shrimp and placing it lovingly on Hailey’s plate. “Thanks, Mom,” Hailey beamed, putting a rib onto my mother’s plate. “You should eat too. You worked so hard proctoring today.” “As long as you get that top rank, every bit of hard work is worth it.” My mother looked at Hailey with pure pride. “Once the report cards come out, if you’re number one, I’ll take you anywhere you want. What do you say?” Hailey tapped her chin. “I want to go to Disney World. All my friends have been.” “Done,” my mother agreed instantly, her smile smoothing out the deep lines of stress on her face. My spirit stood in the corner of the vinyl booth, watching them laugh. A cold chill washed over me. I remembered the folded piece of paper in my school jacket pocket. It was a contract I had written the night before, my hand shaking with exhaustion: If I place in the top fifty this term, Mom will let me put the lock back on my door. That paper was currently soaked in my blood, the ink smeared into illegible blue shadows. I would never get to show it to her. After lunch, my mother returned to the school to grade the finals. The teachers’ lounge was silent save for the furious scraping of red pens on paper. My mother graded quickly, her pen slashing checkmarks across the pages. Until she reached a completely blank answer sheet. At the top, the name was written in shaky, desperate handwriting: Grace Adler. I had written my name with the last ounce of my strength before the dark took me. My mother stared at the blank paper, the muscles in her jaw twitching violently. “Not only is she lazy, but now she’s handing in blank papers just to spite me.” Her grip on the red pen was so tight her knuckles turned white. “Diane, is everything alright?” the head of the English department asked, leaning over. “Oh, whose paper is that? Leaving the essay completely blank? That’s just disrespectful.” “Whose do you think?” my mother sneered, slamming her red pen down to draw a massive, jagged ‘X’ across the entire page. The paper nearly tore under the force. “My ungrateful, lazy daughter.” She stood up, her chair screeching against the floor. “I am going to deal with her once and for all.” Clutching the zero-grade paper, she marched out of the lounge, her coat billowing behind her like a dark cloud. By four in the afternoon, the winter sun was beginning to dip, casting long, bruised shadows down the hallway. My mother’s heels clicked sharply against the tiles. She stopped at the storage door, not bothering to reach for her keys, and kicked the wood. “Grace! The sun is setting. Have you slept enough?” No sound came from inside. My mother muttered a curse, jammed the brass key into the lock, and swung the door open. A wave of freezing, musty air hit her. She stepped into the room, holding the paper with the red ‘X’ aloft. “Grace, get your lazy ass up and look at this disgrace of a grade.” Her voice died in her throat. The girl on the floor was in the exact same position she had been in four hours ago. 4 The dim winter light sliced through the dirty storage room window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. I lay curled in an unnatural, rigid heap on the floor. My fingers were clamped tight around the torn exam permit, my nails a deep, bruising plum color. The blood from my temple had dried into a dark, crusty halo on the concrete. My mother walked over, her face twisted in annoyance. She nudged my stiff shoulder with the toe of her designer heel. “What kind of performance art is this?” She rolled the zero-grade exam into a tube and tapped my shoulder sharply. “Do you honestly think that faking some dramatic illness is going to get you out of rewriting this test a hundred times?” Silence. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t breathe. “Grace, my patience is wearing thin,” my mother said, her voice rising with a dangerous, quiet heat. “Get up right now and go to my office to redo this.” She reached down to grab my arm. The moment her fingers brushed my skin, she froze. “Are you seriously still playing this game?”

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Today was day 362 of sending my girlfriend the exact same photo of my dinner as a daily check-in. She still hadn’t noticed. Before long, our group chat notifications buried the image I had just sent. My roommate leaned over, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Is she blind? You’ve sent her the exact same photo of a turkey club for almost a year, and she hasn’t clicked on it once?” A year ago, Julia had asked me what I had for dinner. I snapped a quick photo of my plate and sent it to her. She told me to do it every day from then on—a little daily check-in to prove I was thinking of her. But I had sent the same image 362 times, and she had never once tapped to enlarge it. I typed out another message to her: Out for dinner with Logan tonight. She replied instantly: Logan hates onions. Did you make sure they took them out of his order? Classic. I knew that as long as I mentioned Logan, she would care about every minor detail. We had been together for a year, yet she knew my best friend’s preferences better than my own. Every time we planned a trip or a night out, she would only agree to go if Logan was joining us. Even at the college career fair, she had gone out of her way to hand Logan’s resume directly to her cousin, a VP at a prestigious firm. “Logan’s portfolio isn’t as strong as yours,” she’d told me back then, her voice soft but dismissive. “With your grades, you’ll find a job anywhere on your own. He actually needs the help.” Logan got the job. He ended up at her company, working in the same building, sharing the same daily commute. I was rejected. I took a position at a firm on the other side of the city, where seeing her required a two-hour train ride. I’m putting together a dinner with some of our old college friends this weekend. Can you make it? I texted her. Can’t, she shot back. It’s Logan’s birthday this weekend. why would you even schedule it for that day? She had completely forgotten. This weekend was our one-year anniversary. It was also the day my bet with Logan was set to end—the day I would finally leave her. 1 Another text from Julia buzzed on my screen. You’re supposed to be Logan’s best friend. How do you forget his birthday? Reschedule your friends. We’re celebrating Logan this weekend. I couldn’t reschedule. This dinner wasn’t just a casual get-together; it was my farewell party. I had accepted a three-year transfer to our firm’s London office. A major promotion waited for me on the other side of that stint. I remembered Logan’s birthday a year ago. We were sitting on my porch, the glow of the candles reflecting in the dark. He’d had too much to drink, his eyes red and watery as he asked me why I had to ask Julia out first. I had no idea we were both in love with the same girl. The guilt had eaten me alive. Then, Logan had pointed at my phone. “If you send her the exact same check-in photo every day for a year and she never notices… you let her go. You let me have a shot. Deal?” I had laughed. It sounded absurd. Who wouldn’t notice the same photo sent daily for a whole year? So, I nodded. I agreed to the bet. But I had been too confident. Julia had let me lose, thoroughly and quietly. I went back to packing my suitcase when my phone buzzed again. It was Logan. Three days left on our bet! He didn’t need to remind me. I already knew I’d lost. In fact, I hadn’t even invited him to my farewell dinner. Our friendship, once so solid, had decayed into something tense and unrecognizable. I didn’t know how to look him in the eye anymore. Julia, annoyed by my silence, called me. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you answering my texts?” Her voice held that familiar sharp, impatient edge. She didn’t actually care what I was doing; she was just angry that I wasn’t at her beck and call. Without waiting for an answer, she kept talking. “You can see your college friends anytime. We all live in the same city. But Logan only has one birthday a year.” I looked at the flight confirmation on my laptop. Even though we lived in the same city, it had been three months since Julia and I last saw each other. She always claimed she was too busy, too exhausted from working overtime, too focused on climbing the corporate ladder. “I’m doing this for our future, so we can get married,” she’d say. A hollow promise, used to dodge a simple train ride to see me. Yet, she always found the energy to travel to out-of-town conferences with Logan for “market research.” I knew the answer, but the desperate, foolish part of me still had to ask. “Do you know what day it is in three days?” 2 “It’s Logan’s birthday. What else would it be?” She dismissed my question instantly, moving on to her checklist. “Just make sure you buy him a decent gift. I’ve already booked the restaurant and ordered the cake.” “You’re his best friend, but you’re so incredibly thoughtless. Honestly, thank God I’m here to handle these things for you.” I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth. On my birthday, Julia told me she had to pull an all-nighter at the office. I had booked a nice Italian place near her building, waiting alone at a table for hours until she finally showed up late. She’d forgotten to order a cake, so she grabbed a stale, generic cupcake from a bakery on her way over. I had been visibly upset, and we didn’t speak for three days afterward. She complained that I was being needy and unsupportive of her career. Yet, for Logan, she remembered every detail. She hand-selected everything. “I’ll have his gift ready,” I murmured. Satisfied, Julia hung up without another word. I stared at the call log. Her name barely appeared in it anymore. The last time we had a real phone call was over a month ago. Logan had fainted from exhaustion after a long shift, and she had panicked, rushing him to the ER in a frantic state, only for it to be a minor issue. She had called me, sobbing, asking what medication Logan usually took when he was sick. I had never heard her sound so terrified. A few weeks before that, I had fallen off a ladder while cleaning the windows and fractured my leg, spending a week in the hospital. Julia didn’t show up until the second day. “How do you manage to land yourself in the hospital just from cleaning a window? You’re so clumsy,” she’d sighed, staying for barely thirty minutes before rushing off because Logan needed help with a client proposal. She never visited me again during my recovery. I reached for the wrapped box sitting next to my suitcase. I did have a gift for Logan. We had been brothers for over a decade. We grew up on the same block, went to the same schools. I once believed our bond was unbreakable. I used to start planning his birthday gifts six months in advance. I thought we would be in each other’s lives forever. I didn’t realize this would be my last gift to him. My transfer paperwork was complete. I didn’t even have to go into my office this week. My phone rang. It was Mark, our old college class president. “Hey Lucas, Julia called me saying we need to cancel the dinner this weekend? Are you staying in town? Did you guys finally decide to tie the knot instead of you moving abroad?” Mark’s tone was teasing, but there was a hint of relief. Back in college, I had the highest GPA in our department. Everyone assumed I’d land the coveted analyst role at the top firm alongside Julia. When I didn’t, people were stunned. But since Julia’s uncle was a senior partner there, no one questioned it too loudly. We all grow up and realize the real world doesn’t run on merit alone. I had accepted it, kept my head down, and built a successful track record at my current firm. But I hadn’t expected Julia to take it upon herself to cancel my farewell dinner. 3 I forced down the lump in my throat. “No, she’s just not coming. The dinner is still on. My flight is booked.” Mark sounded confused, but he didn’t pry. He promised he’d be there. I went to the mall to pick up the final pieces of Logan’s gift. While paying at the register, a familiar silhouette caught my eye. The sales associate cleared her throat. “Will that be all for today, sir?” I snapped out of it. Julia was across the store, trailing after Logan, carrying several shopping bags. What a rare sight. In our entire year of dating, I could count the number of times she’d gone shopping with me on one hand. And every time, she’d set a strict timer. Twenty minutes, max. “Just pick something. What is the point of walking around in circles?” she’d snap. Yet, her patience for Logan was limitless. I took my bags and headed toward the elevators, wanting to slip away unnoticed. “Lucas!” Logan’s voice echoed across the open atrium. A few shoppers turned to look. Julia’s eyes drifted to the bag in my hand. “Is that Logan’s birthday present?” she asked. I shook my head. Her brow furrowed. “I told you to get him something. Instead, you’re out here buying things for yourself.” The casual sting of her voice made my chest tighten. She seemed to have completely forgotten whose girlfriend she actually was. Logan gave her a playful nudge. “Oh, come on, Julia. Lucas probably got me something amazing and is just keeping it a surprise, right?” He gave me a knowing, conspiratorial wink, acting as though he were diffusing the tension. Julia sighed, her expression softening. “You always defend him. You’re too nice, Logan. Meanwhile, he can’t even remember your birthday.” “How could I forget a day this important?” I said quietly. The day I asked her out. Our first anniversary. The day my bet ended. But to Julia, the only significant date on the calendar was Logan’s birthday. She let out a cold laugh. “Sure you didn’t forget. If I hadn’t called you, you would have skipped his birthday entirely for some random college reunion.” Logan looked surprised. “A reunion? Why didn’t you tell me, Lucas?” He looked at me with a kicked-puppy expression. “Are you mad at me? I feel like you’ve been so distant lately. You never have time for me anymore. Julia’s the only one who hangs out with me.” “I’ve been busy,” I replied, my voice flat. “And I’m going to be even busier from now on.” You don’t need my company anymore anyway, I thought. Seeing Logan’s downcast face, Julia quickly chimed in. “Well, his office is practically on the other side of town. It’s obviously not as convenient for him as it is for me.” Logan smiled, his mood instantly recovering. “True.” I watched them. Even though I had spent months preparing myself for this, a cold, hollow ache opened up in my chest. I stood there, utterly helpless, watching the wind sweep away the remnants of my friendship and my love. My phone buzzed with a flight confirmation notification. Julia caught a glimpse of the screen. “Are you traveling for work?” I didn’t answer, letting the silence serve as confirmation. She didn’t press the issue; she never actually waited for my answers anyway. As I walked out of the mall, the sky opened up into a torrential downpour. Suddenly, Julia’s car pulled up right in front of me. “Get in,” she said, rolling down the window. “We’ll give you a ride. It’s on our way.” Logan sat in the passenger seat, offering me a warm, pitying smile. On our way. The words stung. But what made me freeze entirely was the custom decal on the passenger side dashboard: Reserved for Boyfriend. I stared at it, paralyzed. Behind Julia, a car honked loudly. She glared at me, losing her patience. “Come on, Lucas. You’re blocking traffic. Get in.” “I’m fine,” I said. I turned on my heel and ran through the rain toward a waiting taxi at the curb. 4 The rain left me with a raging fever. My mom called me on FaceTime, asking about my move to London. When she saw my pale face, her expression shifted to deep worry. “You’re burning up, Lucas. Where’s your girlfriend? Why isn’t she taking care of you?” She hesitated, then added gently, “Is she upset that you’re leaving for three years? Does she think it’s over between you two?” When Julia first agreed to be my girlfriend, I had called my mother immediately, ecstatic. I had harbored a crush on Julia throughout college, never dreaming those three years of quiet longing would actually lead to something. I had been so naive, believing we were meant for the long haul. I shook my head slowly. “We broke up, Mom.” My mom sighed, a soft look of sympathy crossing her face. “It’s alright, sweetheart. You’re young. There will be someone better out there for you.” I offered a weak smile. Maybe there would be. But this relationship had cost me both my love and my best friend at the exact same time. Part of me wished I could go back to the day I confessed to her, to remain silent, to keep things the way they were. But regret is a useless thing. I opened my laptop to review some transition documents sent by the London team, but my head was throbbing so violently the words blurred together. Then came a knock at the door. Assuming it was the drugstore delivery with my medicine, I dragged myself out of bed and pulled the door open. Julia stood on the threshold, carrying a bag of groceries. She pushed past me into the apartment. “I knew you were acting weird lately. If Logan hadn’t reminded me, I completely would have missed it.” “Our anniversary is this weekend. If you wanted to celebrate, you should have just said so instead of playing these passive-aggressive games.” “Logan told me he didn’t care about his birthday anymore. He wanted me to spend the weekend with you. I figured, since it’s only a one-day difference, I’d come over and celebrate our anniversary early.” I stood frozen by the door. “Why didn’t you celebrate his birthday early instead?” She paused, her hands stalling over the grocery bag. When she spoke, her voice was strained. “You don’t celebrate birthdays early; it’s bad luck. Besides, an anniversary is just a date. What does it matter which day we celebrate, as long as I’m here with you?” The difference was immense. She could be with Logan every single day, while our anniversary required my best friend’s permission to even exist in her schedule. I held the door open. “I don’t want to celebrate. You should leave.” Julia walked over, reaching out to wrap her arms around my waist. I stepped back, avoiding her touch. Her tone softened into a cajoling murmur. “Come on, stop being dramatic. If I actually leave, you’re just going to pout.” I looked down. The one who pouted, the one who cried to get his way, was Logan. I had never shed a tear in front of Julia. Perhaps she assumed I was strong enough to handle everything on my own, that I didn’t need comforting. The truth was, whenever I wanted to cry, she was never there to see it. “Julia,” I said, looking straight into her eyes. “Do you ever regret saying yes when I asked you out?” If she had said no, Logan would have confessed to her. If she were Logan’s girlfriend, she probably wouldn’t treat him the way she treated me. Julia knit her brows, genuinely contemplating the question. After a long silence, she shook her head. “When you handed me those flowers, I thought you were really sweet.” “Now, stop overthinking things.” She unpacked a small cake and placed a single candle on top. “You complained last year that I didn’t get you a cake. Look, this time I brought flowers and a cake.” I looked at them. The cake was strawberry—Logan’s favorite. The flowers were pink roses—Logan’s favorite. A wave of nausea hit me, and my head felt as if it were splitting open. As she lit the candle, Julia took out her phone, snapped a photo, and sent it. Mission accomplished, she typed. I saw the screen. She attached a cute puppy emoji. She was texting Logan. Celebrating our anniversary was nothing more than a task he had assigned her. “If Logan asked you to break up with me, would you do that too?” I asked. 5 Julia looked at me, her eyes wide with disbelief. “How can you think so poorly of Logan? He’s constantly telling me to pay more attention to you. He remembered our anniversary better than I did, and he was the one who told me to get you the flowers and the cake. He cares so much about you, and you treat him like an enemy.” I let out a tired, empty laugh. “Maybe I’m just petty.” The doorbell rang again. This time, it was the delivery driver with my medicine. I took the bag. Julia finally noticed the flush on my face and reached out to touch my forehead. I stepped back, dodging her hand, and gently but firmly pushed her out of the apartment. “Your boyfriend has a raging fever and you didn’t even notice,” the delivery guy muttered, shaking his head as he walked down the hall. “Some partner.” Julia’s face flushed with embarrassment. She knocked on the door for a few minutes, but when I didn’t answer, her patience evaporated. “Just take your medicine,” she called out through the wood. “And don’t forget Logan’s dinner tomorrow.” Then, silence. I picked up the strawberry cake and the pink roses and threw them directly into the trash can. The next morning, my phone buzzed with a text from Julia. The Grandview Hotel, Private Room 203. Don’t be late. I stared at the screen, letting out a dry laugh. It felt like a sick joke from the universe. The room she booked was directly adjacent to the one I had reserved for my farewell dinner. I arrived at the hotel early, carrying my suitcase and Logan’s gift. My friends knew I was leaving for London, and seeing me arrive without Julia, they kept their questions to themselves, maintaining a tactful silence. My phone buzzed repeatedly with texts from Julia. I ignored them all. Mark looked at the wrapped box sitting next to my chair. “Hey, didn’t we already exchange farewell gifts? Who’s that one for?” I waved down a waiter. “Could you deliver this to the party in Room 203 next door? Tell them it’s from Lucas, and that I hope they have a wonderful night.” The waiter nodded and took the box. Mark nudged my shoulder. “You and Julia having a rough patch?” “We’re done,” I said. From the other side of the wall, I could hear the muffled strains of “Happy Birthday” and Logan’s delighted laughter. They didn’t need me there. They never had. As our dinner wrapped up and we walked out of the private dining room, several of my friends stopped in the hallway. “Wait, isn’t that Julia and Logan?” one of them whispered. We all looked through the glass partition of Room 203. “Weren’t you and Logan incredibly close?” another friend muttered, looking between me and the room. “I thought he couldn’t make it tonight because of some emergency. Why is he…” The question trailed off. The reality of the situation was painfully clear to everyone. “It’s in the past,” I said quietly. My relationship with Julia, my friendship with Logan—all of it belonged to a life I was leaving behind. I said my goodbyes, took my luggage, and hailed a cab to JFK. After passing through security, I sat at the gate and pulled out my phone. I sent one final text to Julia: We’re over. Then, I popped out the SIM card, walked over to a trash bin, and threw it away—along with the expensive designer watch she had given me for our first Christmas.

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My daughter’s ballet slippers had three holes worn straight through the toes, yet she refused to let me bring a new pair to her school. She kept her head low, her voice barely a whisper. “Mom, all the other girls’ moms wear haute couture when they come to our shows.” “Your hands are covered in chilblains and grease. Please, just don’t come.” Later, she received her acceptance letter from the elite academy of dance. I practically jumped for joy, but she threw the envelope straight into my face, her eyes rimmed with angry red. We couldn’t afford the tuition. “Mom, I wish you were like other moms. Just a gentle push from them, and their kids are flying high in the clouds.” “But with you? We fight with everything we have, and we still end up suffocating in the mud.” I stared at her scarred, calloused toes, my chest aching as if a dull blade were carving through my heart. I didn’t have the courage to tell her that the chronic headaches I’d been suffering from had finally been diagnosed the day before. A brain tumor. Terminal. Quietly, I pulled out that old, dust-covered organ donor agreement and my high-payout accidental death insurance policy. Evie, sweetheart. Your mom doesn’t have much to offer. But I can give you my life to buy you a ticket to a bigger stage. … 1 “You’ve flipped that damn fish eight hundred times! Are you going to buy it or are we just wasting my time here?” The fishmonger’s sharp, grating voice snapped me out of the blinding pain in my temples. I forced a polite, pleading smile, holding back the throbbing agony of the tumor. “I’ll take it, I’ll take it,” I murmured. “Could you maybe give me a small discount on this one, Lou?” “My daughter has her preliminary ballet showcase today. I wanted to make her some fish soup to keep her strength up.” “A discount? I have bills to pay too, Helen! Look at you—living on pennies, and your kid is doing ballet? You sure she isn’t just taking you for a ride?” Her eyes swept over me with pure disdain. I squeezed the crumpled diagnosis slip tucked deep inside my pocket and handed over the cash. “Just this one, please.” The tumor in my brain was a ticking time bomb. I didn’t know when it would finally go off. But before it did, I had to pave the way for my Evelyn. Taking the meager change, I hurried home first, then carefully packed a pair of pristine, snow-white ballet slippers. I made my way to the theater, keeping out of sight. Evelyn never wanted me near her school, and she certainly didn’t want me delivering shoes. She said it was humiliating. But today, I just wanted to steal a single glimpse of my beautiful daughter—my graceful swan—from the lobby doors. Just one look. But the moment I reached the backstage entrance, a security guard stepped in my way. “Whoa, hold on. Where do you think you’re going? No unauthorized personnel back here.” “I… I’m looking for my daughter, Evelyn. Evelyn Davies—she’s in the showcase.” “Families belong in the audience seats!” “And what is that smell on you? Step back, lady.” He pinched his nose, grimacing. The smell of raw fish was a permanent fixture on my skin, baked in from years of working the docks and fish markets. Once, that smell had been my badge of honor—the proof that I could pay for her classes. Now, it was the barrier keeping me from her. As we argued, a group of young girls in beautiful, matching leotards walked out. Right in the center was Evelyn’s classmate, Chelsea. She spotted me immediately. Covering her nose, she let out an exaggerated gasp. “Oh my god, Evelyn, is that your mom?” “Why does she smell like a rotting pier? Did she come backstage to scale some fish for us?” Dozens of eyes locked onto me instantly. I watched the color completely drain from Evelyn’s face. She stared at me. It wasn’t sadness in her eyes; it was raw, burning humiliation. I stood frozen, clutching the cardboard box with the new slippers to my chest. “Evie…” “What are you doing here?! Who told you to come?!” She lunged forward, her voice shrill and trembling. “I… I was worried your old shoes would tear. I brought you a new pair.” I held out the box, hoping she’d take it. She didn’t even look at it. Instead, she shoved me away with a violent push. “I don’t have a mother like you! Haven’t you embarrassed me enough?!” The shove caught me off guard. My foot slipped, and I crashed hard onto the concrete. The shoe box flew out of my hands, landing right in a murky, oil-slicked puddle nearby. Water seeped through the cardboard caught in the puddle, ruining the pristine white satin. Evelyn stared at the ruined slippers, the disgust in her eyes intensifying. “You can’t even hold a shoe box straight. Is there anything you can do?” Sprawled on the freezing ground, the blinding pain in my head flared up again. But it was nothing compared to the agony in my chest. The hallway erupted in snickers, Chelsea’s laughter ringing loudest. “Wow. Such a beautiful family moment.” Evelyn’s face burned crimson. She didn’t help me up. She didn’t even look at me again. She just turned around and ran back into the theater. I struggled to push myself up from the cold floor. Under the mocking stares of strangers, I gathered the wet, muddy box. These slippers had cost four figures. It was more than I made in an entire month of scaling and gutting fish in the freezing market. They were dirty, yes. But maybe I could wash them. Maybe they were still salvageable. 2 That evening, I prepared a feast of all her favorites. Roasted pork ribs, garlic bread, corn cream soup… “Evie, honey, wash your hands. I made everything you like…” Before I could even finish, she violently slapped my hand away. “Are you trying to ruin my body with this garbage? As if you didn’t humiliate me enough today!” She grabbed the plate of pork belly and dumped it straight into the trash can. Then the ribs, then the fish… plate after plate, gone. “What are you doing?!” I couldn’t hold it back anymore. My voice shook with exhaustion. “What does it look like? I’m throwing out the trash!” With a bitter sneer, she pulled a document from her bag and flung it directly at my face. “Look at it. The acceptance letter from the Royal Ballet Academy. Happy now?” My hands shook as I smoothed out the paper. “You got in? Evie, you actually got in!” “What is there to be happy about? Look at the tuition!” She pointed a trembling finger at the exorbitant figures listed at the bottom, her voice rising to a scream. “Fifty thousand dollars! Where are you going to get fifty thousand dollars?!” “Do you think I’m like Chelsea? Her mom can write a check with a single phone call!” “And what about you?” “What can you do besides make a fool out of me?!” My head felt like it was splitting in two. I leaned heavily against the dining table, barely able to keep my balance. “Evie, listen to me. Your mom…” I wanted to tell her. I wanted to say I was sick—terribly, desperately sick. “All you ever do is cry! All you ever do is play the victim!” She cut me off, her eyes dripping with pure contempt. “If you couldn’t afford to raise me, why did you even have me? Why don’t you just die?” “Why don’t you sell your life to get me the money?!” Sell your life to get me the money. Those words were like a key turning in a lock, releasing the final chain in my heart. She slammed her bedroom door shut, leaving me standing alone in the ruins of the dinner I had spent hours preparing. A sudden wave of warmth rushed up my throat. I covered my mouth, coughing violently. When I pulled my hand away, my palm was smeared with bright, crimson blood. I stared at the blood, then looked toward my bedroom where the terminal brain tumor diagnosis lay in a drawer. A strange, quiet smile crept onto my face. Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? My life could buy her future. Evelyn’s father had walked out before she was even born; I had never been able to give her a proper family or a comfortable life. But now, I could give her this one final gift. I walked over to the old chest of drawers, unlocked the bottom panel, and pulled out the accidental death insurance policy alongside my organ donor registry form. On the policy, the sole beneficiary was listed in clear print: Evelyn Davies. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I gathered every single dollar of cash I had hidden around the house. Bill by bill, I smoothed them out and stuffed them deep into her old, torn ballet slippers. She always called those shoes her ultimate shame. But I knew they were where her dream began. She would never throw them away. The next morning, Evelyn dragged her suitcase toward the door, ignoring me entirely. “I’m leaving. I’m staying at Chelsea’s place for a few days.” “Her house has a private dance studio. It’s infinitely better than this dump.” I held a warm bowl of oatmeal, my hands trembling. “Evie, don’t go. Eat some breakfast first.” “I’m not eating that. Just looking at your cooking makes me sick.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “And don’t you dare show up at my school again. If you embarrass me one more time, I swear I will never call you my mother again!” The front door slammed shut. I slowly finished the bowl of oatmeal by myself, then walked out into the cold morning toward the fish market. “Lou… could you… is there any way I could get a three-month advance on my pay?” I kept my head down, unable to meet her gaze. “An advance? Are you out of your mind, Helen?” Lou shoved my shoulder roughly. “You’ve been getting slower and slower lately. I was actually thinking of cutting your hours!” The shove sent me stumbling back, nearly losing my footing. Right then, a cold, horribly familiar voice cut through the noise of the market. “Mom? What the hell are you doing here?” “Do you have no shame at all?!” I spun around. Evelyn and Chelsea were standing just a few feet away. Chelsea had a smug, mocking smirk plastered across her face. “Oh, wow. If my mom hadn’t insisted we get fresh king crab for the party tonight, we would have missed this little performance.” Evelyn’s face burned a dark, furious red as she marched over. “Are you trying to make sure everyone knows my mother is a beggar at a fish market?” “No, Evie, that’s not it. I was just…” I reached out, desperate to grab her hand and explain. 3 “Don’t touch me!” She violently slapped my hand away, her eyes flashing with pure revulsion. “Your hands are filthy. It’s disgusting!” A small crowd began to gather, whispering and pointing at us. With every word she spoke, my heart was slowly torn to shreds. Chelsea crossed her arms, taking a slow step forward. “Honestly, Evelyn, don’t be too hard on her. People from her class just don’t know any better.” “Unlike my mom—she gives me a credit card, and the pocket change on it is more than your mom could make gutting fish for a lifetime.” Evelyn’s expression grew even more humiliated. She leaned in close, her voice a harsh, venomous whisper. “Are you happy now?” “Do you only get off on stripping away every shred of dignity I have in front of my friends?!” Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Chelsea’s arm and walked away. I was left standing alone, surrounded by the quiet murmurs and mocking snickers of the crowd. … It took me a long time to gather the strength to walk back to that silent, empty apartment. I pulled out the insurance policy. With a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking, I traced my finger over the letters of her name in the beneficiary column: Evelyn Davies. Then, I carefully tucked the document into her bedroom drawer. Once that was done, I picked up my phone and sent her one last text message. My sweet girl, Mom is finally going to give you those wings to fly. The screen lit up almost instantly with her reply. What kind of dramatic nonsense is this now? I’m telling you, I am sick of your guilt trips. They don’t work on me anymore! I didn’t reply. I just stared at the text as tears blurred my vision, spilling over my cheeks. Then, another soft chime echoed in the quiet room. For a brief, foolish second, my heart leaped, hoping she was checking on me. But when I opened the message, a single line stared back at me: Unless you die, I will never be able to stand on the same level as Chelsea. I stared at the cold words on the screen until a hollow, breathless laugh broke from my throat, tears streaming down my face. So, that was her final wish. Then I would grant it. I wiped my face, changed into my cleanest outfit, and walked out the door. The fish market at night was much quieter than during the day, smelling heavily of damp concrete, salt, and raw scale. I walked all the way to the back of the facility, stopping in front of the massive, decommissioned industrial freezer unit. The iron door was incredibly thick. Once locked from the inside, it couldn’t be opened from the outside even with a key. It would require a heavy-duty circular saw to cut through. I took a deep breath. The sharp, cold scent of the fish market suddenly felt like the scent of freedom. I stepped inside, grabbed the heavy iron latch, and pulled it shut. Click. Locked from the inside. “Evie, Mom is going to make sure you fly high.” The temperature inside the freezer began to plummet rapidly. I shook violently, my teeth clicking together. The blinding pain of the tumor flared in tandem with the biting, razor-sharp cold. I curled into a tight ball in the corner, my consciousness slowly slipping away. Just when I thought my body was finally giving up, I felt a strange lightness. It was as if my physical form no longer held me down, and I began to drift upward. I floated right through the heavy iron door, past the darkened streets, until I came to a halt outside a magnificent, brilliantly lit estate. The thumping bass of music and the sound of laughter spilled out from the windows. I drifted through the walls, and there she was. My daughter, Evelyn. She was wearing an exquisite white cocktail dress—one I had never seen before. A group of teenagers had gathered around her, hanging onto her every word. She looked beautiful. “Evelyn, you look like an actual princess tonight.” “That routine you showed us was incredible! You’re going to dominate at the academy!” Evelyn smiled modestly, basking in the warmth of their praise. Just then, her phone vibrated in her hand. She glanced at the caller ID, her brows knitting together in irritation. She stepped into a quiet hallway to answer. “What do you want?” she snapped. On the other end, Lou’s voice sounded panicked and breathless. “Evelyn! Have you seen your mother?” “I was doing inventory, and someone turned on the main breaker to the abandoned freezer. The door is locked from the inside, and no one is answering when I knock!” “Is your mother in there?!” My spirit form tensed, hovering close to her face. Evelyn, please. Come save me. But in the next second, a mocking, cold laugh slipped from my daughter’s lips. “Lou, don’t let her fool you.” “She’s just putting on another one of her pathetic guilt shows. She’ll say anything to force me to come home.” “No, I’m serious! I think I heard a faint scratching sound from inside!” “You need to get down here. If she’s actually in there…” “Let her scratch,” Evelyn cut her off, her voice dripping with ice. “When she gets tired, she’ll come out on her own.” “I’ve dealt with her manipulation my entire life. I’m sick of it.” 4 She hung up the phone without another word, immediately blocking Lou’s number. Hovering in the air, my soul watched as she severed my very last lifeline. My heart died in that moment. She adjusted her dress, painted a perfect, dazzling smile back onto her face, and walked back into the center of the party. Chelsea strolled over, holding a glass of champagne, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “Evelyn, it’s such a great party. Why didn’t you invite your mom to come see how the other half lives?” I saw Evelyn’s shoulders stiffen for a fraction of a second. Then, she casually tossed her hair back and laughed. “Oh, you mean Helen, our housekeeper?” “Her family had an emergency today, so she couldn’t make it.” “My actual mom is overseas most of the year managing her international business. She’s so busy we barely see each other.” Our housekeeper. Even though I knew she was only trying to save face in front of her wealthy classmates, the words cut like a knife. To her, I wasn’t even worthy of being called her mother. Slowly, my spirit form began to turn translucent, drifting away. … The next morning, Evelyn woke up in a guest room at Chelsea’s mansion. She reached for her phone, habitually checking to see if I had sent any more pathetic messages. Nothing. Not a single text. She smirked, thinking I had finally learned my lesson. Ding. An automated notification popped up. It was a tuition reminder from the ballet academy. Staring at the cold, clinical demand for fifty thousand dollars, Evelyn felt a wave of frustration. She opened our chat and began typing furiously. Where’s the money? Did you get the fifty thousand dollars yet? Don’t play dead with me. If I don’t have the tuition by the end of the day, I am cutting you out of my life for good! She hit send, expecting me to immediately beg for her forgiveness as I always did. But minutes turned into hours, and the screen remained blank. Are you dead? Answer me! I’m counting to three. If you don’t reply, don’t ever expect to see me again! Helen, I am warning you! Her messages vanished into a silent void. Evelyn’s patience finally snapped. A blind fury took over. She threw herself out of bed, determined to go back to the apartment and tear into me in person. She kicked the front door open. “Helen! Get your ass out here right now!” The apartment was freezing. The stove was cold; there was no smell of food, no sign of life. “Where are you hiding? Do you think hiding means you don’t have to take responsibility?!” She began tearing the place apart, throwing water glasses against the wall and throwing cushions onto the floor to vent her rage. In the middle of her tantrum, a heavy knock sounded at the door. Thinking I had finally crept back home, she lunged at the door and ripped it open, her face twisted in anger. But standing on the threshold were two solemn-faced police officers. “Are you Evelyn Davies?” the older officer asked. “Yes. What do you want?” Evelyn snapped. The officer verified her ID, his expression turning grim. “Miss Davies, we are very sorry to inform you, but your mother, Helen Davies, has passed away.” Evelyn froze for a second. Then, a sharp, cynical laugh escaped her lips as she crossed her arms. “Officers, you must have the wrong person.” “My mother is fine. Did she hire you to play along with her little act?” “I’ve seen her sob stories my whole life. I know exactly what she’s doing.” The older officer’s jaw clenched, his eyes burning with a quiet, suppressed fury. His younger partner, unable to maintain the same restraint, reached into an evidence bag and held an item out to her. It was a pair of old, worn ballet slippers. I had hand-stitched the tears in them multiple times; the satin at the toes was worn down to a dull grey. “This was recovered next to your mother’s body.” Looking at those slippers, Evelyn’s laugh withered on her face. Her hands began to tremble uncontrollably. But she kept pushing. “She really went all out this time, didn’t she? Even got the props right.” “Where is she? Is she waiting around the corner to see my reaction?” “That is enough!” the older officer barked, his voice echoing in the small hallway. “Evelyn, your mother was trapped in a sub-zero industrial freezer for over eight hours!” “The metal door was covered in her blood where she clawed at it with her bare fingernails!”

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A spring trek through the rugged Wyoming backcountry. The moment we touched down, my boyfriend’s toxic “girl-bro” insisted on heading straight to the deep woods of the back mountain to shoot grizzly bears. She claimed she wanted to film a viral clickbait video—something along the lines of LexieWildlife Interaction Meets Wilderness Survival GuideLexie. What she didn’t know was that the grizzlies in these mountains right now were fresh out of hibernation. They weren’t majestic forest dwellers; they were starving, hyper-aggressive man-eaters. Even if you went in packed to the gills with tactical gear, surviving them was a roll of the dice. In my past life, I reported her plans to our local trail guide. Threatened with the forfeiture of their steep security deposit, the guide kept a tight lock on the camp. But she snuck out in the dead of night anyway. By the time they found her, two starving grizzlies had left nothing of her but a single, blood-soaked hiking boot. When my boyfriend found out, his face remained flat and indifferent. Yet, the night before we were set to leave, he snapped. “You had to open your fat mouth!” he’d screamed, pinning me down. “If I had gone with her, we would’ve gotten a viral hit, and she’d still be alive!” He tied me to a lodgepole pine. The grizzlies found me, and they tore me open from chest to groin. When I opened my eyes again, the phantom sensation of my own wet, warm intestines spilling onto the pine needles was still burning in my gut. I was back at the campsite, listening to them argue about heading into the back mountain to find the bears. 1 “Come on, Darcy. Don’t tell me you’re actually chickening out?” Lexie twirled my expensive carbon-fiber trekking pole between her fingers. The sharp carbide tip scraped against the gravel with a grating, metallic screech. She looked at me, her eyes wide with that practiced, delicate innocence that made my stomach turn. “The internet says grizzlies are practically docile this time of year,” she purred, flashing a smug, dimpled smile. “If you toss them some food, they’ll roll over on their backs and play like oversized golden retrievers. Zach’s channel is practically dead right now. He needs a hook. As his girlfriend, shouldn’t you be supporting him instead of pulling the emergency brake?” I stared at her smooth, sun-kissed face. My stomach rolled with violent nausea. The memory of teeth ripping through my flesh, of cold mountain air hitting my exposed organs, was so visceral I had to squeeze my hands into fists to keep from shaking. I didn’t say a word. Standing right beside her, Zach immediately scowled. He stepped forward, defensively pulling Lexie behind his shoulder. “What’s with the attitude, Darcy?” Zach snapped. “Lexie flew all the way out to the Rockies just to help me shoot content. She pushed through altitude sickness to be here. And you? Since we landed, you’ve done nothing but throw cold water on every single idea.” “We’re trying to build a business here,” he continued, his voice rising, practically vibrating with self-righteous anger. “You don’t get views without taking risks. Do you even understand how the algorithm works? Or do you just want to see me fail?” A few other hikers from our group drifted over to watch the drama unfold. Dave, a guy in his fifties holding a stainless-steel thermos of rehydrated soup, chimed in. “Honestly, Darcy, the kid has a point. Young people need that drive. I looked at the map earlier; that back trail is barely a mile from the camp line. What’s the worst that could happen? You’re twice her size, but you don’t have half the grit of little Lexie here.” Luke, another guy from the group, nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Zach is busting his ass to secure a future for the two of you. You’re holding the girlfriend title, but you’re just dead weight on this trip.” I looked at them. A slow, cold smile crept onto my face. In my past life, these were the exact same people who took fifty thousand dollars in hush money from Zach’s family. They had stood before the sheriff and sworn up and down that I must have sleepwalked into the deep woods of my own accord. “You guys are entirely right,” I said. My voice was quiet, incredibly calm. Zach blinked, caught off guard. He clearly hadn’t expected me to roll over so easily. “Since it’s for your career, of course I support it,” I added, looking Zach dead in the eye. “The landscape back there is stunning. The footage will be spectacular.” Lexie’s eyes lit up instantly. “Really? You mean it?” She took an eager step toward me. “Great! Let me borrow your DJI Mavic drone then.” Before I could answer, a gravelly, furious roar cut through the camp. “Like hell you will!” Jed, our local guide, came marching out from behind the supply tents. His face was weathered and dark red from years of mountain wind, his heavy flannel shirt billowing as he strode over. “Who the hell thinks they’re going into the back mountain?” Jed snarled, pointing a thick, calloused finger at Lexie. “Those aren’t ‘docile’ bears. Those are starving grizzlies. They’ve been asleep all winter, and they will chew your bones to splinters the second they smell you. You go back there, you’re suicide bait.” Jed glared at the group. “If you want to die, don’t do it on my permit. As long as I’m the registered guide for this sector, no one steps a foot past the camp boundary. Try me, and I’ll have the sheriff haul your asses down the mountain before sunset.” The atmosphere went ice-cold. Lexie shrunk back, tucking her head into her shoulders, looking up at Zach with watery, helpless eyes. Zach’s face flushed a deep, angry crimson. “Jed, stop trying to scare everyone. We have bear spray. Besides, we’re only shooting at the tree line. We’ll be back in thirty minutes. You don’t own the national forest.” Jed’s eyes bulged. “I own the liability for your pathetic lives!” Seeing them on the verge of a fistfight, I stepped forward and gently patted Jed’s arm. “Jed, take it easy,” I said, pulling a notepad and a sharpie from my tactical jacket pocket. “They’re grown adults. They have the right to make their own choices. If you’re worried about the liability, we can just write up a waiver.” Jed stared at me, dumbfounded. Zach looked equally stunned. I popped the cap off the pen and quickly scribbled a few lines on the paper. LexieWe, Lexie Vance and Zachary Thorne, hereby choose to enter the restricted back mountain area of our own free will. We fully acknowledge the high risk of wild predators in this sector. Any injury, death, or accident occurring during this excursion is solely our responsibility and is entirely unrelated to guide Jed or fellow hiker Darcy Rollins. We assume all risks.Lexie I handed the pen and paper to Zach. “Sign it,” I said. “Once you sign, Jed won’t have to worry about losing his license. And you two can go get your viral masterpiece.” I looked at Lexie, the corner of my lips turning up in a shadow of a smile. 2 Zach stared at the paper. His eyes flickered with a brief, uneasy hesitation. “Darcy, what is this?” he muttered. “Drawing lines like this… are you seriously still pretending to be my girlfriend?” I shrugged. “Even married couples keep their finances separate these days, Zach. Jed has a family to feed. It’s not fair to ruin his livelihood just because you guys want to play National Geographic.” Dave scoffed from the sidelines, taking a noisy sip of his soup. “Man, Darcy, you really know how to play the accountant, don’t you? Just looking out for your own skin and your own wallet, huh?” Luke let out a dry laugh. “Modern romance. Zach, looks like your girl doesn’t want to carry even an ounce of risk for you.” Lexie’s eyes darted between us, her expression shifting instantly into one of deep, wounded victimization. “Darcy, if you’re still mad at me, just say so,” she whimpered, her voice trembling. “If you don’t want to lend us the drone, you don’t have to make this passive-aggressive point to humiliate Zach. Forget it. I won’t go.” She made a show of turning around to walk back to her tent. Zach caught her by the wrist. “No, we’re going.” He whipped around, glaring at me with pure venom, and snatched the paper and pen from my hand. “You want a waiver? Fine! I’ll sign the damn thing!” He scribbled his signature with aggressive, slashing strokes. Then he shoved the pen into Lexie’s hand. “Sign it, Lexie. When this video hits a million views, she isn’t getting a single cent of the ad revenue.” Lexie hesitated for a fraction of a second. But with Zach pressuring her and the rest of the hikers watching, she had no choice but to bite her lip and sign her name. I took the paper back, satisfied. I folded it carefully and slid it deep into the zippered inner pocket of my sports bra. Jed looked at me, slowly shaking his head. “Kid, you’re playing with fire,” he muttered, turning on his heel to check the guylines on the cook tent. Since the liability waiver was signed, he wasn’t going to waste his breath. If these city slickers wanted to serve themselves up as grizzly chow, let them. “Well, the paperwork’s done,” Lexie said, her meek, fragile persona evaporating the second Jed walked away. She strutted over to me, her eyes scanning me from head to toe. “Since you’re being so LexiesupportiveLexie now, Darcy, a drone isn’t going to be enough.” She pointed directly at my Arc’teryx alpine parka. “The wind is picking up, and my jacket is way too thin. Let me wear yours.” I raised an eyebrow. The parka was a top-tier mountaineering shell I’d bought specifically for this trip. It had cost me nearly a thousand dollars. Zach immediately chimed in. “Yeah, Darcy, you’ve got a thick build anyway. You’re just staying in camp; you won’t freeze. Lexie has asthma; she can’t handle the cold. Take it off and give it to her.” He reached out his hand, entirely entitled, as if demanding a tax payment. “And give us your satellite phone, too. Just in case there’s no service back there and we need to check in.” I looked at the two of them. In my chest, there wasn’t even a spark of anger left. Just a cold, dead vacuum. “Sure,” I said. I unzipped the parka, slipped it off, and handed it over along with the Garmin inReach satellite communicator from the sleeve pocket. Lexie couldn’t grab them fast enough. She threw the parka over her shoulders. The sleeves were a bit too long for her petite frame, so she rolled up the cuffs with a smug little giggle. “Thanks, babe,” she chirped, before turning her attention to my heavy-duty Osprey pack resting on the camp table. “Let me see what else you’ve got in here.” She unzipped the main compartment without asking, rummaging through my personal belongings like she was picking through a thrift store bin. Zach stood beside her, watching with quiet approval. Suddenly, Lexie’s hand paused. She pulled a heavy, matte-black aluminum canister from the side sleeve. It was emblazoned with a bright orange safety label. “Ooh, what’s this?” Lexie tossed it lightly in the air. “Bear spray?” She let out a loud, mocking laugh. “Darcy, you actually believed that old mountain man’s garbage? Who even carries this junk? You think spraying some hot sauce in a grizzly’s face is going to stop it? You think they’re vegan?” Before I could stop her, she flicked off the plastic safety clip and pressed down on the nozzle. A sharp, orange cloud of aerosolized capsaicin burst into the air. “Cough—cough!” The wind caught the edge of the mist, blowing it right back into Lexie’s face. She gagged, her eyes watering instantly as she fell into a violent coughing fit. Zach rushed to her side, frantically patting her back. “Lexie! Are you okay?” He whipped his head around to glare at me, his face twisted in fury. “Darcy, are you insane? Why do you have hazardous materials just sitting in your bag? Are you trying to kill her?” Lexie was hacking so hard tears streamed down her cheeks. Humiliated and furious, she snatched the canister from the table and slammed it onto the gravel. She lifted her heavy hiking boot and brought it down hard on the plastic nozzle mechanism. LexieCrack.Lexie The plastic collar shattered. The pressurized canister hissed weakly, venting its chemical load into the dirt until it went completely flat. “Trash,” Lexie wheezed, spitting on the ground. “Taking up space for nothing.” I looked down at the ruined canister of bear spray. It was the only thing standing between them and a violent death. And she had just crushed it under her own heel. “Good call,” I said, looking at Lexie. My voice was entirely sincere. “It was taking up space anyway.” 3 As twilight crept in, the sky turned a bruised, heavy purple. The wind carried the sharp, icy sting of an impending storm. Zach and Lexie were packing their gear, eager to get into the tree line before the last of the light faded completely. “Darcy, hand over your honey jar,” Zach demanded, walking up to my chair with his hand outstretched. I was sitting by the portable fire pit, holding a mug of hot water. I looked up. “The honey?” “Yeah,” Zach said impatiently. “Lexie said she saw signs of wild beehives on the lower trail yesterday. We’re going to shoot a ‘man versus nature’ bit. We’ll smear the raw honey on a pine trunk and film her pretending to harvest it. It’ll look amazing on camera.” My fingers tightened around my mug. The memories rushed back, cold and suffocating. In my past life, that rough lodgepole pine bark had scraped against my back. The sticky, sweet honey had been smeared all over my throat and chest. I remembered the heavy, wet hot breath of the grizzly against my face just before its jaws closed around my shoulder. The utter, paralyzing despair of that moment flashed like a spark of white-hot lightning behind my eyes. “What? You’re going to be stingy over a jar of honey now?” Zach sneered, taking my silence for defiance. “It’s a twenty-dollar jar of raw honey, Darcy. When the video blows up, I’ll buy you ten of them.” Dave, who was swapping out a propane canister nearby, let out a loud grunt. “Honestly, Darcy, your pettiness is something else. Your guy is trying to build a brand, and you won’t even chip in a jar of honey. You’re a pretty lousy partner, you know that?” A couple of other hikers chuckled. I ignored them. I took a slow sip of my water, set the mug down, and walked over to my tent. I reached into the gear crate and pulled out the large glass jar of high-viscosity, organic wild honey. “Here,” I said, handing it to Zach. “Take the whole thing.” Zach snatched it, grunting as he glanced at the dried dirt on the glass. “Finally.” He stuffed it into Lexie’s pack, then pulled two printed sheets of paper from his own pocket and slapped them onto the camp table. “Since you’re so determined to play the victim,” Zach said, his voice dripping with condescension, “let’s put it in writing.” He tapped the papers. “This is an official Disassociation and Revenue Waiver. It states that you have no part in this production, and you have zero claim to any intellectual property or financial returns from the footage we shoot today. Sign it.” He stared at me, his eyes full of cheap calculation. He truly believed he was protecting his future empire from a greedy girlfriend. Lexie hovered by his shoulder, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Zach, maybe we shouldn’t… I mean, I’m sure Darcy doesn’t mean to be a drag. But I guess if we make real money, it’s safer to have it in writing so she doesn’t try to sue us later.” I looked at the documents and had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud. They were so blinded by the mirage of internet fame that they were systematically cutting off every single cord that tied them to me. They were legally locking their own trap from the inside. “Sure,” I said. I picked up the pen and signed both documents without a second thought. I even pressed my thumb onto the ink pad from my journal kit and left a bright red print next to my name. “All yours,” I said, sliding the papers back. “I hope you get exactly what you deserve.” Zach checked the signatures, satisfied, and slid them into a waterproof ziplock bag. “Good. At least you have some common sense left.” He hoisted his pack and called out, “Lexie, let’s go!” Lexie, clad in my expensive Arc’teryx parka, carrying my drone, and carrying my honey, sauntered past me. She paused, turned back, and flashed me a vulgar middle finger. “Have fun playing housewife at the camp, Darcy! We’ll show you the footage when we get back!” I sat back down in my folding chair. I watched their silhouettes shrink into the dark, jagged line of the pine forest until they were swallowed by the shadows. They looked exactly like walking corpses. The wind howled louder now, carrying the faint, distant echo of a low rumble from the deep valley. I pulled my fleece jacket tighter around myself, finished my water, and waited for the show to start. 4 By eleven o’clock that night, the wind outside was screaming like a banshee. I lay flat on my cot inside the tent, my eyes wide open. My phone was gripped in my hand, its screen glowing in the dark, displaying a high-definition infrared live feed. I had paid a premium for a cellular-linked, night-vision trail camera and set it up on the perimeter of the back-mountain trail before we arrived. I had bought it to keep an eye out for gear thieves. Now, it was my front-row ticket to the main event. Suddenly, a blood-curdling shriek pierced through the roar of the wind. It was a sound of absolute, primitive terror—so warped and shrill it didn’t even sound human. Immediately after came the sound of snapping timber and a deep, guttural roar that vibrated through the floor of my tent. The entire camp erupted. Zippers hissed open as flashlights cut through the dark. Dave threw his tent flap open, stumbling out into the cold in his long underwear. “What the hell was that? Was that a wolf?” Jed ran out of his tent holding a high-lumen spotlight, his face pale. “That’s no wolf. That’s a grizzly. A big one.” About thirty minutes later, the brush at the edge of the camp rattled violently. A shadow stumbled out, falling face-first into the dirt. It was Zach. He was coated in black mud and pine needles. His jacket was shredded down the back, exposing raw, bloody gouges across his shoulders. His hair was wild, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Help… please, God, help me!” he shrieked, his entire body convulsing with dry heaves. Jed ran over, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Where is she? Where is the girl?!” At the mention of Lexie’s name, Zach let out a horrific, high-pitched scream, covering his ears and thrashing in the dirt. “The bear… it was huge! It took her! There was so much blood!” The camp fell into a horrified silence, broken only by the howling wind and Zach’s hysterical sobbing. Jed didn’t waste a second. He ran to his cabin tent, grabbed his sat phone, and dialed search and rescue. Two hours later, three search and rescue deputies and a local ranger arrived at the camp, their spotlights cutting through the swirling snow. The lead deputy, a burly, stern man named Deputy Briggs, took one look at Zach’s shock-induced state. “What happened here?” Briggs demanded, his voice dropping like an anvil. “Didn’t you people see the warning signs posted at the trailhead?” Zach slowly raised his head. His vacant, bloodshot eyes scanned the crowd until they landed on me. In an instant, his grief turned into a feral, rabid hatred. He dragged himself across the gravel, grabbing the cuff of my pants. “It was her!” Zach roared, pointing a trembling, muddy finger at my face. “Officer, she killed Lexie! She forced Lexie to go out there!” He was screaming so hard spit flew from his lips. “She was jealous of Lexie! She refused to give us our safety gear! She poisoned that honey to attract the bears! It was a setup!” Every eye in the camp locked onto me. Dave, looking terrified but eager to shift blame, jumped in. “Officer, I saw it! Darcy was egging them on all afternoon! She even made them sign a waiver just to wash her hands of it!” Luke chimed in. “Yeah! And she broke their bear spray! We saw her stomp on it!” Zach wept hysterically, clutching the deputy’s jacket. “She’s a murderer! You have to lock her up! She killed Lexie!” Deputy Briggs frowned, his gaze shifting to me, hard and suspicious. “Is this true, ma’am?” He reached for the heavy steel handcuffs on his utility belt. “I’m going to need you to step forward and cooperate with our investigation.” Zach stared at the handcuffs, his lips twitching into a tiny, sick grimace of triumph. He thought he had won. Just like in my past life, he thought he could use his tears and lies to bury me under the weight of public outrage. I looked at him. I felt no anger. No panic. I calmly pulled my phone from my pocket and unlocked the screen, opening the cloud-synced security app. The blue light cast a cool glow over my face. “Are you sure I’m the one who forced her to go, Zach?” I pressed play.

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Dr. Diane Mercer, one of the country’s leading cardiothoracic surgeons, was hosting her first public seminar. She was widely regarded as a savior for heart patients, having maintained a legendary zero-mortality record throughout her long career. During the Q&A session, a student stood up and asked, “Dr. Mercer, how do you avoid losing a patient on the table?” She closed her eyes, a look of profound sorrow crossing her face. “In my entire career, I have only had one failed surgery. It was my resident, my apprentice. She secretly donated her heart to her boyfriend under a pseudonym, and I couldn’t save her.” The lecture hall erupted into whispers. “Oh my god! That is so tragic. He must carry that guilt forever, right?” Dr. Mercer opened her eyes, tears brimming. “No. He mistook someone else for his savior. Instead, he treated the girl who gave him life as the monster who killed his mother.” She paused, hardening her resolve. “I promised her I would keep her secret. But my conscience won’t let me remain silent anymore.” “I want him to know that his rise to become a titan of Wall Street was built entirely on his ex-girlfriend’s sacrifice.” “And his current fiancée is the very person who murdered both his mother and the woman who saved him.” The clip exploded online, shooting to the top of every social media feed. The public quickly pieced together the identity of the mysterious billionaire. But Daniel Foster knew nothing of this. He had just spent the entire night finalizing wedding plans, and he was about to take his beloved fiancée to try on her wedding dress. … Chelsea Price sat in the passenger seat, her makeup flawless, practically buzzing with excitement. “It feels like a dream. I can’t believe we’re finally getting married.” Daniel’s bloodshot eyes shone with intense warmth. “I wanted to take our engagement photos on our three-year anniversary for a reason. I want us to have nothing but beautiful memories going forward.” “You’re the reason I’m alive, Chelsea. I will spend the rest of my life making sure you’re cherished.” Chelsea suddenly pouted. “Are you sure none of those beautiful memories still belong to Paige?” Daniel’s hands stiffened on the steering wheel, his smile freezing. “Of course not. I only have room in my heart to hate her.” He spat the word hate. But there was a tremor in his voice—a tiny, flickering hesitation he didn’t even notice. He was so distracted he didn’t realize the light had turned green. In my phantom chest, my empty heart began to ache all over again. He still believed the beautiful, rotten lie. The lie that I had maliciously leaked fake stock market tips, causing the ruined investors to target and murder his mother. The lie that I had embezzled every single cent from his startup and run away. While the true architect of his ruin became his sole anchor. Suddenly, Daniel’s phone buzzed on the dashboard. It was Dr. Mercer. “Mr. Foster, do you have time to come in for a follow-up appointment today?” Ever since the transplant, Daniel’s heart had been incredibly stable. He was about to decline, but he caught Chelsea’s suddenly tense expression out of the corner of his eye. He immediately spun the wheel. “Actually, yes. I’ll bring Chelsea in for a checkup right now.” In the narrative Chelsea had spun four years ago, she was the one who had donated her heart to save him. Daniel was obsessively protective of Chelsea’s health. If she so much as sneezed, he would panic and rush her to the ER. So, whatever protest Chelsea wanted to voice died in her throat. When they arrived at Dr. Mercer’s office, Daniel walked in with a familiar ease, though his chest was hammering with a strange, unaccountable rhythm. He had always wondered why seeing Dr. Mercer brought on this overwhelming sense of familiarity. “I suppose I’m just deeply connected to the person who gave me this heart,” Daniel murmured, a faint smile touching his lips. “Thanks to you, Chelsea has been in perfect health. We’re planning our wedding for this winter, and you absolutely must attend.” Dr. Mercer froze, staring at him. She carefully weighed her words. “Actually, about Paige Evans…” “Dan! I’m all done. The doctor said all my vitals are perfect.” Chelsea swept into the office with a clipboard, her bright laugh cutting through the room. She stepped closer to Dr. Mercer, dropping her voice to a lethal whisper only the doctor could hear. “Dr. Mercer, you wouldn’t want to ruin your perfect reputation, would you?” Dr. Mercer stared at her, her lips pressed into a hard, thin line. Chelsea immediately turned back to Daniel, wrapping her arms around his sleeve. “Let’s go, babe. We’re going to miss our fitting appointment.” As they reached the door, Daniel hesitated, turning back. “What about Paige?” he asked, unable to let it go. Before Dr. Mercer could speak, a swarm of reporters suddenly burst through the hallway, thrusting microphones into Daniel’s face. “Mr. Foster! How do you respond to the viral video regarding your ex-girlfriend’s murder?” Daniel’s brow furrowed into a deep scowl, his voice instantly turning icy. “What are you talking about?” Chelsea frantically tugged at his sleeve, clutching her chest and whimpering in pain. Daniel shoved past the reporters, shouting for a nurse. But one persistent journalist held up a phone, playing the video right in front of his face. “Miss Price never had heart surgery! The donor was Paige Evans!” Daniel whipped around, his eyes wild with fury. The reporter, desperate for an exclusive, didn’t back down. “Are you refusing to admit that your current fiancée murdered Paige Evans, Mr. Foster?” The air in the corridor seemed to solidify. The shock in Daniel’s eyes curdled into pure, unadulterated rage. He practically roared: “Don’t you dare mention that piece of trash’s name in front of me!” “If you vultures keep spreading these sick rumors for clicks, I will sue every last one of your networks into bankruptcy!” He scooped Chelsea up, begging Dr. Mercer to save her. But Dr. Mercer didn’t move. She just stared at him, her voice dead-calm and heavy. “The reporter is telling the truth. The heart beating in your chest belonged to Paige Evans. I performed the surgery myself.” During every single checkup over the past three years, Daniel would unconsciously ask about his donor. He did it with a quiet, desperate obsession he didn’t even understand. Dr. Mercer had wanted to keep her promise to me—to let him live his life in peace. But seeing Chelsea parading around in her stolen happiness, while I had died in agonizing pain, rejected by my own body’s defense systems, unable to even rest in peace… It wasn’t fair. Daniel’s arms went stiff around Chelsea. His voice was cold, rigid. “What did you say? Since when do you play along with these sick jokes?” Dr. Mercer shook her head, her eyes filled with profound grief. “To keep you alive while we waited for a real donor, she wore a mechanical heart. The side effects were brutal.” “I could have saved her. But Chelsea…” Before she could finish, Chelsea conveniently fainted, her head lolling back. Daniel’s attention was instantly pulled back to her. Dr. Mercer threw her professional dignity aside, physically blocking his path. “Chelsea is perfectly fine! She has been lying to you—” “Enough!” Daniel’s knuckles turned white as he yelled, cutting her off. “Dr. Mercer, I don’t know what kind of sick game Paige is paying you to play.” “But I don’t believe a single word out of your mouth.” “If Paige wants to clear her name, tell her to show her face and confess to my face. Otherwise, I will make sure she never finds peace in this lifetime!” ——– On the very day Daniel achieved everything he had ever dreamed of in his career, he spent hours dialing my old, deactivated number. His assistants searched every corner of the city. But they found nothing. No trace of Paige Evans. Chelsea then staged a series of fake threats, pretending I was stalking and blackmailing her. Daniel’s remaining sympathy for me withered away. He leaked my personal information to the darkest corners of the internet. Slanderous videos circulated. Uncensored photos of me were pasted on street corners. Even though my parents had passed away years ago, internet vigilantes tracked down their graves. They desecrated the headstones, scattering my parents’ ashes and spraying vulgar graffiti across the marble. Our old family photos were turned into cruel memes. My remaining relatives were harassed. Red paint was splashed across their front doors. My elderly aunt knelt on the pavement, crying, begging Daniel to show mercy. But Daniel only watched from the tinted window of his sedan, his eyes cold and detached. “I want to see just how long Paige Evans can hide,” he muttered. He put a five-million-dollar bounty on my head. I hovered beside him, watching this horrific farce drag on for a year. Of course, no one would ever find me. They didn’t know I had already become a “silent teacher”—a willed body donor in the anatomy lab of Hudson University. He didn’t know that Chelsea had intercepted every attempt I made to contact him. Dr. Mercer slowly let go of his arm, letting out a long, hollow sigh. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me. I am going to release the records. I will expose the truth.” “I only hope you don’t regret this when it’s too late.” Daniel’s toe tapped against the floor—a nervous habit he only did when his mind was spinning. Chelsea whimpered, feigning a tremor. Without another word, Daniel turned and carried her away. Dr. Mercer faced the reporters’ cameras, her voice cracking with exhaustion. “Paige Evans’s body is currently at the Hudson University School of Medicine.” Daniel had always been a man who only believed what he chose to believe. Back in college, when a classmate maliciously accused me of cheating on an exam, Daniel was the first one to stand up in front of the dean’s office. “I don’t believe it,” he had said, completely ignoring the fabricated evidence. He spent three sleepless days tracking down witnesses to clear my name, eventually helping me secure my scholarship. On the night I cleared my name, I asked him, “What if I really did cheat?” He looked at me under the streetlights, his eyes bright and clear, a slow smile spreading across his face. He reached out and gently ruffled my hair. “I know you, Paige. You wouldn’t.” An orphan and a boy from a broken home—we were both bruised by the world, clinging to each other for warmth until graduation. We had a shared dream: Hudson University’s finance program. I remember him looking up at the night sky, vowing to build a financial empire. “We’re going to make so much money, Paige. So much that no one will ever be able to hurt us again.” And for a while, the story went exactly as planned. We lived in drafty basements, split cold sandwiches, and drank ourselves to the point of stomach ulcers at corporate dinners just to secure clients. Finally, the company began to take off. But Daniel’s heart began to fail. During the hardest months of my life, Chelsea arrived with an impressive resume. She was brilliant. She helped scale our operations. But her intentions were as old and tired as time itself. She wanted Daniel. When Daniel turned her down and threatened to fire her, his condition took a nosebleed plunge. The doctors issued a terminal prognosis. Every venture capitalist rejected my pleas for funding; we didn’t have a fraction of the money needed for his transplant. That was when Dr. Mercer contacted me. There was a clinical trial for an advanced, fully bio-compatible mechanical heart. It was fully funded, experimental, but promised to sustain life. I remembered Daniel’s mother weeping by his bedside: “What is my boy going to do? He is so young…” So, I decided to give Daniel my heart. I was healthy, I was young, and I had no family left to grieve me. That was the first time I ever lied to him. I told him his name had magically cleared the national transplant donor registry. Before he went into the operating room, we both smiled, believing this was just another temporary hurdle we would clear together. But everything spiraled out of control. I didn’t wake up from my own surgery until three months later. By then, Chelsea had already painted me as a thief who had embezzled the company’s funds and abandoned him on his deathbed. I dragged my frail, mechanical-hearted body to the office and slapped her across the face in front of everyone. I screamed every ugly word I knew. But Chelsea just sank to the floor like a broken, fragile doll, weeping silently. When Daniel walked in, the way he looked at me was terrifying. It was the look you give a mortal enemy. “Paige Evans. You actually have the nerve to show your face here?” I tried to tell him the truth, but a sudden, blinding pain flared in my chest. I coughed, spitting blood onto the pristine floor. For a split second, his cold expression softened with panic. But Chelsea chose that exact moment to faint. Daniel’s concern vanished. He kicked my hands away from his shoes. “Stop acting. For the sake of what we used to be, I won’t call the police on you.” “But if you ever touch Chelsea again, I will make sure you pay with your life.” I don’t remember how I got back to the hospital. Dr. Mercer told me that Chelsea had become his entire reason for fighting to live. They were all over the business news—the brilliant young CEO and his beautiful savior. I was cast as the villain who used and discarded him. Daniel used the public sympathy to secure millions in venture capital. As his new firm soared, my body underwent five agonizing episodes of transplant rejection. Suddenly, I didn’t want to fight anymore. The mechanical heart was tearing my body apart. If I couldn’t find a matching human donor within two years, I would die anyway. What was the point of telling him the truth? To shatter the life he had finally rebuilt? Perhaps God had a twisted sense of humor. On the day Daniel proposed to Chelsea, I finally got the call: a perfect donor heart was available. I wanted to live. I truly did. But then I heard that Daniel was planning to sign over all his company shares to Chelsea. I was terrified she would ruin him. I tried to reach him, but before I could, Chelsea’s hired thugs cornered me and dragged me to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. The blows rained down on me. My chest felt like it was imploding. Chelsea knelt beside me, forcing a handful of incompatible medications down my throat. “Just lie here and die quietly, Paige. I’ll make sure Daniel thinks you took your own life out of guilt.” With my last ounce of strength, I dialed Daniel’s number. “Daniel… I’m dying… don’t trust Chelsea…” He was with Chelsea. I could hear their breathing, the rustle of sheets. There was a long silence before his voice came through the line, dripping with mockery. “Then congratulations. I hope you enjoy hell.” To the sound of their soft laughter, my world went black. If Chelsea hadn’t intercepted the donor heart meant for me, the paramedics might have saved me. In the final second of my life, I heard Daniel’s voice through the thin drywall of the adjacent hospital wing where they had eventually dumped me. “Doctor! Please, save my fiancée! She’s having chest pains!” When my body was wheeled out under a white sheet, we crossed paths in the corridor. He seemed to feel something. He glanced back at the gurney. But a second later, he muttered, “What a nuisance,” and turned away. In the high-rise boardroom, the atmosphere was suffocating. The viral video of Dr. Mercer’s seminar was already tanking the company’s stock. Daniel sat at the head of the table, his face grim. “Do whatever it takes to kill the story,” he ordered the PR team. “Chelsea’s name must remain clear.” “Get the car ready. I’m going to Hudson University.” When he stormed into the anatomy lab, I was lying silently on the stainless steel table, my cold, preserved body surrounded by medical students. Dr. Mercer walked in right behind him. “According to her final wishes, all her viable tissues were donated,” she said softly. “She served as a silent teacher here for three years. Her body is beginning to show wear, and the department is preparing for her burial. I wanted to ensure she finally rests in peace.” I hovered right beside her, reaching out to comfort her, but my ghostly fingers slipped right through her shoulder. Dr. Mercer was the only person who had stood by me. She wasn’t just my doctor; she was my mentor, my protector. During those endless nights when the pain of rejection kept me awake, she had stayed by my bedside, holding my hand. I felt so guilty. She had given me five chances at life, but my foolish decisions had ruined her flawless surgical record. Daniel’s presence was like a dark cloud in the room. His sharp, hollow eyes stared at my bloated, formalin-soaked face. The professor quietly dismissed the students. As they filed out, I heard one whisper, “Hey, isn’t that the donor the senior was messing around with? Is the CEO here to investigate?” Daniel’s brow furrowed deeper. “You must have gone to a lot of trouble to find a corpse that looks this much like her,” he sneered, looking at Dr. Mercer. “Has she been stalking me for the last three years? What is this, another one of her sick plays?” “I’m marrying Chelsea. Even if Paige pretends to be dead, I will never forgive her.” Dr. Mercer gently drew the white sheet over my face. “Today is the third anniversary of Paige’s death, Daniel.” “Her last phone call was to you, begging for help. But you hung up and let her die.” “Chelsea never had a heart condition. The donor heart you hijacked in the next ward that night? It was supposed to go to Paige.” Daniel’s fists clenched so hard the veins in his forearms bulged. He took a step back, a mocking laugh escaping his lips. “How long are you going to keep playing along with her theater?” Dr. Mercer pulled a thick, faded medical file from her bag and slapped it onto the metal table. “See for yourself. Look at who actually gave you your life.” Daniel’s eyes fell on the signature page. My name was written there in my neat, familiar handwriting. He flinched as if he had touched hot iron, dropping the papers. “You’re a doctor! You could easily forge a medical file!” he snarled, his voice cracking. “If Chelsea’s heart was fine, why didn’t any other doctor say anything?” “Because she paid them off!” Dr. Mercer’s chest heaved with heavy, ragged breaths. Her eyes were rimmed with red. She thrust my death certificate directly in front of his face. “Look at it! Paige Evans died three years ago!” “Do you think I would destroy my entire medical career to tell a lie?” Daniel froze. “She was thinking of you until the very moment her heart stopped,” Dr. Mercer choked out. “She was terrified the truth would break you, so she begged me to keep it a secret.” “And what did you do? For three years, you’ve been parading around with her killer, ruining Paige’s innocent family in the process.” “Your new heart is perfectly healthy now, Daniel. But it’s time you face the truth.” Daniel’s face was completely rigid. A cold, hollow laugh bubbled up from his throat. “Beautiful. Quite a performance. All this just to turn me against Chelsea?” “Do me a favor and tell Paige that Chelsea is the love of my life. Even if she made mistakes, it was Paige who drove her to it.” Dr. Mercer closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled out her phone. She hit play on a video and handed it to him. “Watch this. And then tell me if you still feel the same way.”

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When my husband’s company went under, I stayed. When the bank took the house, I didn’t blink. But when I caught him playing the field behind my back, that was it. I hit my breaking point and demanded a divorce. The words had barely left my mouth when something impossible happened. A string of glowing, neon-blue text floated through the air right in front of my eyes, like a ticker tape only I could see: [Wow, the new Female Main Character is ruthless. Reincarnated just to steal the guy from his throwaway ex-wife. Classic villain-era FMC!] [The ex-wife is such an idiot, though. The FMC literally Photoshopped one picture, and the wife immediately screams for a divorce. No wonder she’s just cannon fodder.] [The FMC is gonna help the guy rebuild his empire and become a billionaire’s wife. Meanwhile, the ex gets lured in by a romance scammer, trafficked overseas, and dies pregnant. Tragic, but she’s so dumb.] Jeremy stared at me, his face registering a flash of shock before settling into a terrifying, hollow calm. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll go to the courthouse first thing tomorrow.” 1 I snapped back to reality, my chest heaving. Pointing a trembling finger at his chest, I spat, “I said I want a divorce, and I mean it! You never loved me, did you? You absolute bastard!” Jeremy flinched. For a second, a shadow crossed his face, but then his mouth curled into a self-deprecating, bitter line. “It’s entirely normal that you want out,” he said, his voice flat. “I understand. I accept it. You don’t have to make up excuses to justify leaving.” Panic flared in my chest, but I kept my chin high. “What do you mean, make up excuses? If you hadn’t cheated on me, do you think I’d be standing here screaming about a divorce?!” I laughed, a harsh, brittle sound. “You agreed so fast. Don’t tell me you don’t have a guilty conscience!” Maybe my sheer audacity stunned him, because it took him a long moment to reply. “You’re accusing me of cheating. Where exactly is your proof?” “You think I don’t have it?” I challenged, fueled by righteous indignation. I did have proof. Even if that floating text called it “Photoshopped by the FMC.” I shoved my hand into my pocket and yanked out my phone. But when I opened my messages, my blood ran cold. The anonymous text—the one with the photo of Jeremy kissing some stunning brunette on a city street—was gone. Vanished. My thumbs flew across the screen, scrolling frantically, my breath catching in my throat. “Why isn’t it here? Where did it go?” [Where did it go? Because the FMC hacked your phone and wiped it, you moron!] [Look, the guy only married her out of a sense of duty to her dead mother anyway. He never had real feelings for her. She’s been high-maintenance forever, and now she’s ditching him at his lowest point. He’s completely disillusioned.] [This spoiled trophy wife does nothing but cry and spend money. She never deserved him. Can’t wait for her to get written out of the story so the FMC and the male lead can become a corporate power couple. Period.] Watching me fumble with my phone, Jeremy’s patience finally evaporated. He let out a low, mocking exhale—a sound that cut deeper than a knife—and turned his back on me, walking into the bathroom. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t have to. The silence was deafening. My throat tightened. A sharp ache pierced the bridge of my nose, and the tears I’d been trying to hold back finally spilled over. 2 I retreated to our cramped bedroom, burying my face in the pillows to muffle my sobs. I didn’t know what was wrong with me lately. My emotions were entirely out of my control; the slightest breeze of conflict had me ready to break down. It had always just been me and my mom. Seven years ago, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Despite every aggressive treatment money could buy, she faded fast. In her final days, terrified of leaving her naive, sheltered daughter alone in the world, she entrusted me to Jeremy. Jeremy had been a foster kid my mother mentored and put through college. Brilliant, driven, and relentlessly hard-working, he had started his own tech firm right after graduation and was already making a name for himself. I had always known him, had always harbored a quiet, blooming crush on him. So, when he held my mother’s frail hand and swore he would protect me for the rest of his life, I didn’t object. After she passed, we simply… fell together. Jeremy was endlessly patient with me. He was gentle, indulgent, and absorbed every one of my flaws and tantrums without complaint. For years, I truly believed it was because he loved me. But those floating words… they said he didn’t. They said it was just a debt. A transaction to repay my mother’s kindness. The thought felt like physical pressure on my chest. There were a million ways to repay a mentor. He could have paid her back in stock, in charity, in taking care of her affairs. Why marry me if he didn’t even like me? It was sick. But as I lay there, my tears drying into a stubborn resolve, a new thought took root. I might not be a genius, but if I knew Jeremy was destined to become a titan of industry again, I wasn’t going to just hand him over to some manipulative “Female Main Character.” Fine, we could divorce. But not until he was back on his feet and could give me a settlement large enough to secure my future. Until then, this “FMC” could wait in line. I owed her nothing. Fifteen minutes later, the bedroom door clicked open. Jeremy stood at the foot of the bed. The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating, before he spoke. His voice was devastatingly calm. “I have nothing left to my name right now. If we divorce, I can’t give you the alimony you deserve. But if I ever make it back… I’ll make it right.” He paused, his jaw tightening. “You don’t need to worry about the creditors. The debt is entirely mine. It won’t touch you.” I sat up, glaring at him through swollen eyes. “I’m not divorcing you! Don’t even think about it!” Jeremy opened his mouth to argue, but the fight seemed to drain right out of him. “Whatever you want, Gemma. When you’re ready to sign, let me know. I’ll make it easy for you.” He turned and walked out. He didn’t say it, but I felt the weight of his disappointment. Just like the phantom text said, my asking for a divorce had broken something fundamental between us. But without the photo, what was I supposed to do? I’d just have to cling to him. Dig my heels in. Being shameless was the one thing I was actually good at. [The guy is totally heartbroken. He’ll push for the divorce soon.] [I don’t know. He’s got a toxic level of loyalty. Even if he doesn’t love her, he won’t force her out if she refuses to leave. Based on her reaction, this might drag out.] [Relax. She’s a pampered princess who can’t handle poverty. The second a better option flashes some cash, she’ll jump ship. It won’t take long.] I rolled my eyes at the empty air. Pampered? Yes. A gold-digger? Absolutely not. If I only cared about money, I would have bolted the day the bank locked the doors to his office. If I hadn’t been blinded by the sheer betrayal of that Photoshopped kiss, I never would have thrown the word “divorce” at him. Stupid, judgmental ghost text. 3 I lay in bed for another hour, sinking deep into my own misery. Eventually, Jeremy appeared in the doorway, an apron tied around his waist. “Dinner’s ready.” His tone was detached. Cold. It made my skin crawl. Back in the day, if he had dared to speak to me with that kind of ice, I would have thrown a fit. But now, terrified of pushing him entirely into the arms of the “FMC,” I dragged myself out of bed without a word. I had never cooked a day in my life. After the bankruptcy, when we had to let the housekeeper go, I tried. But my culinary skills began and ended with microwave ramen and frozen pizza; everything else I touched turned to charcoal. Jeremy, raised by his grandfather after losing his parents young, was entirely self-sufficient. He was actually a phenomenal cook. When he was home, the kitchen was his domain. He had made seared salmon, garlic asparagus, and a delicate squash soup—all my favorites. Looking at the steam rising from the plates, the back of my throat burned. Tears, unbidden and humiliating, slipped down my cheeks. I turned my head away fast, wiping my face with the back of my hand, and stared rigidly at my plate. Maybe it was the heavy atmosphere, but the food tasted like ash. After a few bites, my stomach rolled. A wave of nausea hit me so hard I had to put my fork down. “I’m full,” I whispered. Jeremy frowned, setting his own fork down. He looked at me, his eyes guarded. “I’m flying to Chicago for a few days. Take the weekend to really think about what you want to do about us.” My hands curled into fists under the table. “Where in Chicago? For how long?” “Just downtown. I’ll be back Sunday night at the latest.” I stood up, my chair scraping harshly against the floor. “I already told you, I am not getting a divorce!” Jeremy looked at me, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes, before he looked away. “Suit yourself.” Suit myself? I let out a sound of pure frustration, stomped my foot like a petulant child, and stormed back to the bedroom. Half an hour later, I heard him zipping up his duffel bag. I curled into a tight ball, facing the wall, silently weeping into the quilt. It took him less than ten minutes to pack. He didn’t come in to say goodbye. I heard the scrape of his bag, the heavy thud of the front door closing. Once he was gone, the silence of the apartment crashed down on me. The silent weeping turned into a sob, and the sob tore into a full-blown, ugly wail. [Cry, cry, cry! That’s all she does. Crying away whatever good luck she has left!] [This side-character is so useless. All tears, no brains.] [What did you expect from the ‘beautiful but useless’ trope?] [Honestly, if she wasn’t so pathetic, it wouldn’t be this easy for the FMC to steal her husband. The more useless she is, the better.] [True that, lol!] 4 Reading the words hovering in the air only made me cry harder. I was drowning in my own pity party when the mattress suddenly dipped behind me. I gasped, spinning around in terror. Jeremy was sitting on the edge of the bed. I had no idea when he’d come back. He was looking down at me, his expression a complicated mess of exhaustion and sorrow. I choked on a sob, glaring at him defensively. “What… what do you want?!” He stared at me for a long time. Then, without a word, he reached out, pulled me against his chest, and buried his face in my hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. I froze against him. I knew what that apology meant. He was apologizing for failing. For losing the company, for the cramped apartment, for not giving me the charmed life he had sworn to my mother he’d provide. But business was just business. Fortunes rise and fall. When he first went bankrupt, I was terrified, yes. But I adapted. I always believed he would find his way back to the top. I never, not even for a fraction of a second, considered leaving him because the money ran out. I wasn’t crying because I missed the penthouse. I was crying because he didn’t trust me. He didn’t believe that someone had sent me that photo, and worse, he didn’t believe I could stand by him when things got dark. “You are wrong,” I said, my voice thick and muffled against his shirt. “I did get a picture of you kissing someone. Why won’t you just believe me? Why is it so hard to believe someone hacked my phone and deleted it?” Jeremy’s hand stroked a slow, rhythmic circle on my back. “Okay,” he said softly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you.” I let out a wet huff. I knew he was just placating me, but there was a time to fight and a time to fold. I let myself sink into his warmth. He held me a little tighter. “If everything goes according to plan,” he murmured, his voice rumbling against my ear, “I can clear the debt in three years. We might not have the private jets again, but we’ll be comfortable. We’ll be okay.” I didn’t offer some fake, noble speech about loving the struggle. I just pressed my face deeper into the crook of his neck and breathed in the scent of his cedarwood cologne. “Okay.” He didn’t say anything else. He just leaned down and pressed a long, soft kiss to my forehead. In that quiet, suspended moment, I could have sworn he loved me. We stayed like that for a long time, just breathing together, until he finally pulled back. He kissed my forehead one last time. “I have to catch my flight. Wait for me. When I get back, I’m taking you out for a real dinner.” I nodded, feeling absurdly small. “Okay.” I walked him to the door, suddenly reluctant to let him leave. “Be careful in Chicago.” “I will.” He smiled, a genuine, blinding smile that made my chest stutter. He reached out and ruffled my hair. “Be good. Wait for me.” My heart did a violent flip. Flustered, I muttered a quick goodbye and shut the door. [Wait, I’m kind of shipping them now. The arranged marriage to lovers arc is hitting.] [Ew, why? She brings nothing to the table but her face. The FMC is a powerhouse. Power couples are way better.] [Yeah, FMC all the way.] I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. Right. The FMC was a powerhouse. And her definition of female empowerment apparently included breaking up a marriage. Cool. 5 Making peace with Jeremy shifted the atmosphere in the apartment. Even while he was in Chicago, the tension evaporated. He texted me constantly, checking in, asking if I had eaten, reminding me to lock the door. He was back to being the attentive, endlessly gentle man I knew. Even knowing he might not truly love me, I found it impossible to be mad at him. As for the future, my plan remained intact. I’d stick it out until he struck gold again, take my lucrative alimony, and vanish. Sunday arrived. I slept in until ten, the autumn sunlight streaming through the blinds. Stretching out of bed, I went to the kitchen and boiled a pot of the dumplings Jeremy had made from scratch and frozen before his trip. Pork and scallion. My absolute favorite. I set the steaming bowl on the counter and grabbed a fork. But the moment the smell of the pork hit my senses, my stomach rebelled violently. I clamped a hand over my mouth, bolted to the bathroom, and dry-heaved over the toilet until my ribs ached. I slumped against the cool tile, wiping my mouth, my mind racing. I had never been pregnant, but I wasn’t an idiot. …dies pregnant. The floating text’s gruesome prophecy echoed in my head. To be absolutely sure, I threw on a coat, walked to the pharmacy down the block, and bought two different brands of pregnancy tests. Twenty minutes later, they sat on the edge of the sink. Two lines on both. Pregnant. A year ago, Jeremy and I had actively tried for a baby. But when the company collapsed, we shelved the idea indefinitely. If I refused to divorce Jeremy, I knew the “FMC” would keep gunning for him. I had been terrified I wouldn’t be smart enough to hold on to a future billionaire. But this? This was the ultimate trump card. I rested a trembling hand on my flat stomach. “Hey there, kid,” I whispered, a nervous laugh escaping me. “Our whole future is riding on you.” Jeremy was intensely loyal. A man driven by duty. With a child in the picture, he would never abandon me. I reached for my phone to call him, then remembered he was probably mid-air. It could wait. I wanted to see his face anyway. I would surprise him tonight. I waited. The hours crawled by. By seven p.m., he should have been walking through the door. Anxiety gnawing at me, I texted him. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. Caught up with some unexpected business. Going to be late. I didn’t overthink it. I turned on Netflix and curled up on the couch to wait, eventually drifting into a restless sleep. I didn’t know what time it was when the sound of the deadbolt clicking woke me. I jolted upright. Jeremy was standing in the entryway, setting his keys in the bowl. Adrenaline and joy spiked in my veins. I threw the blanket off and practically ran toward him. “Jeremy, I have to tell you—” He didn’t move to catch me. He stood entirely still, his face carved from stone. The air around him was freezing. “Gemma,” he said, his voice stripped of all emotion. “We need to get a divorce.” I slammed on the brakes, my bare feet skidding on the hardwood. I stared at him, sure the sleep hadn’t entirely left my brain. “What?” He met my eyes, his gaze steady and dead. “A divorce. I’ll have a settlement agreement drawn up for you tonight.” My jaw locked. My hands curled into fists at my sides. “Give me one good reason.” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “We aren’t a good fit anymore. Let’s just end it cleanly.” Fire exploded in my chest. “You’re the one who promised my mother you’d marry me! You didn’t think we were a bad fit then, did you?!” Jeremy lowered his eyes, staring at a spot on the floor between us. “I’m sorry.” I took a ragged breath, fighting the sudden, violent sting of tears. My voice shook so badly it barely sounded like me. “Jeremy. Look at me. I’m going to ask you one more time. Why are you doing this?” He turned his head away, unable to meet my gaze. “I met someone who’s a better fit for me.” A hysterical, broken laugh ripped out of my throat. Someone who’s a better fit. The Female Main Character. I knew it was coming. I knew she existed. But God, I didn’t think she would move this fast. I had planned to stubbornly occupy the role of his wife until he could afford to buy me out. In my most secret, shameful heart, I had hoped I could beat her plot armor. That I could stay his wife forever. It was a delusion. If he had already fallen for her, if he was standing in our home asking to end our marriage, then fighting for him was pointless. Begging would only make him resent me. Clinging to him would turn me into the villain in his eyes. Fine. If he wanted out, I’d take the settlement and walk. But I was keeping my baby. If this “FMC” could play the homewrecker and steal my husband, I could certainly keep my own child a secret.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “457771”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On Valentine’s Day, my ex-boyfriend, Kevin, cornered me in the most crowded dining hall on campus. He was holding a microphone from the student radio station, declaring to the entire room: “Zoe, if you just agree to give us another chance, I’ll withdraw my application for the Dean’s Fellowship.” The entire cafeteria erupted into cheers and whistles. Beside him stood Delilah, his childhood best friend, her eyes red as she pleaded with me: “Zoe, Kevin is doing all of this for you. Please, stop being so dramatic.” From the crowd, whispers drifted over. Some called me cold-hearted. Some said I didn’t know how good I had it. Others muttered that a girl like me deserved to be dumped anyway. I simply smiled. I reached for the glass of iced lemonade on my tray and threw it directly into Kevin’s face. “Using public resources to stage a tragedy, Kevin?” I said, my voice cutting through the silence. “You’re pathetic.” He thought I was just lashed out because he had backed me into a corner. But he had no idea. From the moment he and Delilah began plotting to steal my fellowship spot, I had already started digging his grave. And the first shovel of dirt would fall next week, during our senior capstone presentations. 1 Today was Valentine’s Day. The first floor of the campus student center was packed to the gills. I had just picked up my lunch tray and walked toward the seating area when a sudden roar of excitement erupted behind me. “She’s here, she’s here!” “Zoe’s here!” “Make way, let the leading lady through!” I froze. Before I could even register what was happening, the crowd parted automatically, forming a long path. At the end of that path stood Kevin. He was wearing a crisp white shirt, dark trousers, and his hair was meticulously styled. In his hand, he held a wireless microphone. At his feet lay a massive ring of red roses, inside of which sat a heart made of glowing tea lights. Next to it was a chalkboard sign that read: Zoe, let’s start over. Looking at those words, my stomach churned. Start over? Only two months ago, I had walked into the local indie theater and found him in the back row, holding Delilah in his arms. Delilah had been wearing the forest-green wool scarf I had spent three weeks knitting for him. She had leaned against his shoulder, her voice soft and sweet: “Kevin, won’t Zoe be upset if she finds out?” And what did Kevin say? He had stroked her hair and murmured, “Don’t worry about her. She’ll never leave me.” I hadn’t made a scene that day. I simply took a photo of them, walked out, and texted him that we were over. At first, Kevin acted like he didn’t care. “You’ll regret this, Zoe,” he’d warned me. “You’re never going to find another guy who treats you the way I do.” I hadn’t regretted it for a single second. But it seemed he was starting to. Our department had only one spot for the fully-funded Dean’s Fellowship this year—a direct track to the university’s prestigious graduate program. When our cumulative GPA rankings came out, Kevin and I were tied for first place. The final decision would come down to the senior capstone project presentations next week. Delilah was ranked third. If either Kevin or I dropped out of the running, the runner-up spot would automatically go to her. This grand gesture wasn’t an act of devotion. It was a setup. Kevin raised the microphone, his eyes glistening with rehearsed emotion. “Zoe, these past two months apart have been a nightmare. I haven’t slept. I know I made mistakes, but I truly can’t imagine my life without you.” The crowd went wild. “Oh my god, he’s so romantic!” “What is she waiting for? Say yes!” Kevin took a step forward, pulling a folded piece of paper from a leather portfolio. I recognized the official department letterhead. It was a Voluntary Withdrawal Form for the fellowship. He held it up for everyone to see. “If you take me back, I’ll sign this right now. I don’t care about the fellowship. I only care about you.” The cafeteria erupted. People were clapping, cheering, and recording videos to post on their socials. “Giving up a full-ride fellowship for love? Kevin is a literal prince!” “If Zoe rejects him now, she’s just being heartless.” I stood in the center of the room, pinned to the floor by hundreds of staring eyes, like a criminal on trial. Kevin looked at me, a subtle gleam of triumph in his eyes. He was certain I would be swept up by the romance, or at least too afraid of the public pressure to humiliate him. He knew the old me too well. During our two years together, I had always protected his ego. When he was late, I told him it was fine. When he forgot our anniversary, I blamed it on his heavy workload. When he spent hours alone with Delilah, I told myself I trusted him. But a person can only be a fool for so long. Once was enough. Just then, Delilah stepped out from behind him. She was wearing a delicate white sundress, her eyes rimmed with red, looking like the victim of some grand tragedy. She walked over to me, her voice trembling. “Zoe, please don’t hold a grudge against Kevin. He’s been in so much pain lately. If you’re refusing to forgive him because of me, I’ll apologize. I’ll do whatever it takes.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll keep my distance from him from now on. Just please, stop torturing him like this.” It was a masterful performance. The moment she spoke, the whispers around us shifted, growing sharper, uglier. “Zoe is being so cold.” “Even the friend apologized, and she’s still standing there with that look on her face.” “Is she just stringing him along because she likes the power trip?” Kevin didn’t stop Delilah. He just watched me, the faint twitch of a smirk touching the corner of his mouth. In that moment, his entire plan became crystal clear. He wasn’t here to beg for my forgiveness; he was here to force me to submit. If I accepted, he won. He could occupy the moral high ground, regain control over our relationship, and eventually manipulate me into stepping down from the fellowship anyway. If I rejected him, he still won. He would use the court of public opinion to paint me as a ruthless, ungrateful villain, making it impossible for me to survive the department’s review process. No matter what, he wanted to ensure I lost. I looked at him, and suddenly, I laughed. Kevin’s eyes lit up, thinking I was softening. He opened his arms, his voice dropping into a deeper, tender register. “Zoe. Come back to me. I’m so sorry.” I set my lunch tray down on a nearby table, picked up the tall plastic cup of iced lemonade, and before he could react, I threw the contents straight into his face. The sticky, ice-cold liquid drenched his hair and ran down his neck. A slice of lemon clung to his collar. The entire cafeteria went dead silent. The mask of devotion on Kevin’s face shattered instantly. He wiped the liquid from his eyes, his chest heaving as he roared, “Zoe! Are you insane?” I took the microphone from his hand. My voice wasn’t loud, but in the quiet of the hall, it carried perfectly. “First of all, we broke up two months ago. I am not interested in getting back together. Ever. “Second, the Dean’s Fellowship is an academic honor. It is not a prop for you to use in your pathetic romantic dramas. Staging this little show isn’t noble, Kevin. It’s desperate.” A collective gasp rippled through the room. Delilah’s face drained of color. “Zoe, how can you say that? Kevin did this because he loves you—” I turned my gaze to her. “Because he loves me? If he withdraws, you’re third in line for the spot. If I walk away because of the drama, it goes straight to you. Tell me, Delilah, why are you crying? You should be throwing a party.” Delilah froze, her mouth slightly open. Kevin went rigid. Finally, some of the onlookers started putting the pieces together. “Wait, Delilah is third in the department?” “So if Kevin drops out and Zoe gets distracted, Delilah gets the funding?” “Holy shit. Is this a setup?” Delilah’s tears fell faster. “No! That’s not true! I never wanted to take anyone’s spot! Zoe, why do you always assume the worst of me?” Before she could finish her sentence, a stern, authoritative voice boomed from the back of the crowd. “What is going on here?” The students parted to reveal Professor Harris, our department head. His face was dark. He was notorious for his strict academic standards and his absolute disdain for students who treated their studies like a game. He had clearly heard enough. Kevin panicked. “Professor Harris, I was just—” “Just what?” Professor Harris cut him off, his voice like ice. “Using a graduate fellowship as a bargaining chip for your love life? Kevin, what do you think this university’s academic standards are? A playground?” Kevin’s face was white. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I stepped forward and bowed slightly to the professor. “Professor Harris, since things have escalated to this point, I have a proposal. To ensure complete fairness, I suggest we make the capstone defense next week entirely transparent. Let the entire faculty panel grade us live, and let the highest score take the fellowship. No one has to withdraw, and no one gets to play the martyr.” Professor Harris was silent for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Fine. Next Friday, a public defense. Everyone speaks with their work.” I looked back at Kevin. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles in his cheek twitched. Delilah’s fingers were white from clutching the fabric of her skirt. Their first move had failed. But at ten o’clock that night, my roommate, Grace, kicked our dorm door open and shoved her phone in my face. “Zoe, look at the campus forum. Kevin is dragging you through the mud.” 2 By midnight, the campus forum had completely caught fire. An anonymous post had been pinned to the top of the homepage. The title read: Exposing the cold-blooded genius who threw ice water on the campus golden boy on Valentine’s Day. The post was written with dramatic flair, painting Kevin as a tragic romantic who had offered to sacrifice his entire future for me, only to be publicly humiliated. It claimed I had used him for support throughout our relationship, only to discard him the moment I didn’t need him anymore. It even suggested that my call for a public defense was because I had already bribed the faculty. It was so absurd I wanted to laugh. But the comments underneath were filled with genuine, vitriolic anger. “Zoe looks so innocent, but she’s actually a sociopath.” “Who cares if she’s smart? Her character is trash.” “People like her shouldn’t get fellowships. They ruin academic departments.” “She was the one who suggested the public defense. I bet she already has the professors in her pocket.” Our class group chat wasn’t quiet either. Kevin’s roommate was the first to speak up. “@Zoe, you went way too far today. Kevin was willing to give up his career for you, and you poured ice water on his head? You’re cold.” Delilah’s roommate immediately chimed in: “Some people think they can treat others like garbage just because they have a high GPA. Delilah has been crying all night, and she did absolutely nothing wrong. Zoe, you owe her an apology.” I stared at the screen, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Before I could type a single word, Grace snatched the phone from my hand. “Don’t waste your breath, Zoe,” she said, her eyes flashing. “Let me handle this.” Within seconds, she fired off a dozen messages in the group chat. “Kevin is a romantic? Is that what we’re calling a guy who cheats on his girlfriend with his ‘childhood best friend’?” “Is it romantic that while Zoe was running a hundred-and-four-degree fever, Kevin claimed he was stuck in the lab, only to go see a movie with Delilah?” “Is it romantic that he took the green scarf Zoe spent weeks knitting for him and gave it to Delilah?” The chat went silent for a few seconds. Then, Grace dropped the bomb: a photo of Kevin and Delilah sitting in the back row of the movie theater, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist as she fed him popcorn. The chat exploded. Kevin’s roommate tried to salvage the situation: “So what? Friends can’t go to the movies together?” Grace fired back: “To a theater’s love seats? Feeding each other popcorn? Wearing his girlfriend’s hand-knit scarf? Is everyone in your dorm room lacking a mirror, or just lacking a brain?” I couldn’t help but chuckle. Grace never needed a script to dismantle someone. Kevin finally appeared in the chat. “Grace, don’t make this uglier than it needs to be. Whatever issues Zoe and I have, we’ll resolve them privately.” Grace replied: “Oh, now you want privacy? You didn’t care about privacy when you set your online mob on her. Now that you’re caught, you want to act dignified? Kevin, you’re a joke.” Nobody else in the chat said a word. But the storm on the campus forum didn’t stop. The next morning, a new anonymous thread appeared. The headline was even more malicious: Why is Zoe so desperate for a public defense? What’s the real nature of her relationship with a certain professor? There were no facts, only insinuations. It implied that my academic record was manufactured, and that Professor Harris and I had a personal connection that would guarantee my win. Grace looked ready to throw her laptop through the window. “Are these people out of their minds?” I stared at the screen, tracing the usernames of the most active commenters. They all had similar registration dates and posted with identical phrasing—defending Kevin, attacking me, pretending to be objective bystanders while steering the narrative. It was a coordinated effort. “What are you looking at?” Grace asked, leaning over. I took screenshots of everything and saved them to an encrypted folder. “I’m looking at them digging their own graves.” Grace blinked. “You already have a plan, don’t you?” I opened the project directory on my computer, revealing the final architecture of our machine learning model. “I’m not planning. I’m just waiting for them to take the bait.” 3 For the next four days, Grace and I practically lived in the computer science lab. Our capstone project was an AI-driven predictive analytics model for regional healthcare logistics. It was a highly complex codebase, but if we could get the optimization algorithm to run smoothly, the results would be undeniable. Every night at 2:00 AM, the lab was pitch black except for the glow of our monitors. Grace sat slumped over a bag of potato chips, staring at the endless lines of Python code. “I feel like these brackets are staring back at me and calling me stupid,” she groaned. I kept typing. “What exactly are they saying?” “They’re asking why I haven’t crawled into bed yet.” I smiled. “Two more days, Grace. Just hang in there.” She put her head on the desk. “When you get this fellowship, you’re buying me dinner. Five times.” “Deal.” Despite our joking, we both knew what was at stake. This wasn’t just about beating Kevin anymore. It was about our work. It was about the endless nights we’d spent debugging, the spreadsheets of data we’d meticulously cleaned, and the simple fact that we refused to let someone ride our coattails or destroy our future. Kevin had been quiet. He didn’t try to corner me in the halls, and he stayed out of the group chats. But whenever we crossed paths in the department building, his gaze was dark and venomous. On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the printing room to grab some physical reference sheets. As I pushed the door open slightly, I heard voices from inside. It was Delilah, her voice thick with unshed tears. “Kevin, I’m scared. If Zoe wins the presentation, I’ll lose my chance at the graduate program entirely.” There was a long silence. Then Kevin spoke. “She won’t win.” “But her model is so much faster than ours,” Delilah whispered. “How are we supposed to beat her?” Kevin’s voice dropped, cold and sharp. “We don’t have to beat her. We just have to make sure she has nothing to present.” My hand froze on the doorknob. Behind me, Grace’s eyes went wide. I made a sharp gesture for her to stay quiet. Inside, Delilah sounded startled. “What do you mean?” Kevin let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Zoe’s a creature of habit. She’s used the same password combination for everything since freshman year—her birthday followed by her initials. I checked. She never changed her access credentials for the department’s shared project server.” Delilah’s voice was barely a whisper. “Isn’t that… too risky?” “If she walks onto that stage on Friday with empty hands, the fellowship is mine,” Kevin said. “Once I have the funding secured, I’ll work out a way to transfer the research assistantship to you. Delilah, don’t you want this?” A pause. Then, Delilah murmured, “You’re the only one who truly cares about me, Kevin.” I almost laughed out loud. They truly were made for each other—one malicious, the other entirely spineless. Grace looked ready to charge through the door, but I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into the hallway. “Did you hear that?” she hissed once we were out of earshot. “He’s going to delete our repository!” I nodded. “I heard.” “So what do we do? Change the passwords right now?” I looked back at the heavy wooden door of the printing room. “No. Let him do it.” Grace stared at me like I had lost my mind. “Are you crazy?” “If he doesn’t do it,” I said softly, “how can we ensure he gets caught?” Right then, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A notification from my cloud dashboard popped up: Multi-factor authentication bypass detected. Server monitoring active. I looked at the screen and smiled. “He’s taking the bait. Now, we let him play his hand.”

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For three years, I’ve been styling wigs and doing makeup for my friends on the cheap. Everyone was always thrilled. Until this fresh-out-of-college girl showed up: “Are you guys insane? Two hundred bucks for a full styling? You can get that on Depop for a hundred and fifty, easy. Have you seriously let yourselves get ripped off like this for three years?” She added a hand-over-mouth laughing emoji. “Just give me a hundred and fifty each, and I’ll handle your cosplay styling from now on~ I just graduated, so I’m not in it for the money. I just want to make friends.” I stared at my screen and let out a long, quiet breath. She had no idea. I’d been ready to stop bleeding money for these girls for a very long time. 1. It was the final week of prep before LuminaCon, and the group chat was blowing up. The messages were from Hailey, the group admin’s shiny new friend. She’d been dragged into the chat last month, and her feed was nothing but polished con selfies and heavily edited close-ups. Right then, I was at my workbench, struggling with a gravity-defying wig for Fiona. It was a complex design, and I had already poured three days of meticulous work into it. “Hey Queena~” Hailey’s text popped up. “I was just looking over the budget for the Aether Crest lineup. Over two hundred for hair and makeup? Is my math off, or is there… something else going on here?” She added a smug little emoji. I assumed she thought I wasn’t charging enough. I started typing to explain that since we were all close friends, I didn’t mind cutting my rates to the bone. But then she followed up: “You can get this for a hundred and fifty on Depop, max. Even professional studios only charge a hundred and eighty for bulk orders. Queena, aren’t you a little embarrassed charging us that kind of markup?” “We’re supposed to be friends. Charging us tourist prices… feels a little off, doesn’t it?” She capped it off with a whimpering cat emoji. My fingers froze over the keyboard. Christine, our group admin, was the first to chime in. “Omg, Hailey, you’re so good at saving money! I never even noticed, haha. Guess we’ve been overpaying this whole time.” Then Christine’s inner circle started piling on. “Yeah, when I did the group cosplay with the other crew, we only paid like a hundred and seventy.” “Queena’s work is great, so it makes sense she charges more… but honestly, if we can save money, that’d be amazing.” Two people tried to defend me, but Hailey quickly drowned them out. “Oh, I’m not saying she’s bad at it!” she replied with an innocent wink. “But we’re doing this for fun, right? It’s not a commercial gig. Do we really need high-end studio standards? Think of the cash we’d save for new outfits!” “Tell you what, let me handle it this time. I’ll only charge a hundred and fifty per person. I don’t need to make a profit; I just want to help my girls out.” The chat went quiet for a moment. Then Christine, of course, broke the silence. “Yes, please! Hailey, you are a lifesaver! Queena, looks like we won’t be needing you for this run.” The rest of the dominoes fell instantly. “Me too! Count me in!” “Hailey, you’re literally an angel!” “Yeah, I’ll switch to Hailey too. It’s so much cheaper.” “Queena, we’ll catch you next time, okay? Promise!” I stared at the screen, watching the neat line of betrayals stack up. It felt like a slow, deliberate twist of a knife. “Sure,” I replied. Just two letters. Honestly, it was fine. I was exhausted from subsidizing their hobbies anyway. Three years ago, when I first got into cosplay, I taught myself makeup and wig-styling just to save some cash. They saw how good I got and begged me to style them. Back then, they were using thirty-dollar synthetic wigs off Amazon that reflected light so badly the photographers wanted to cry, and their makeup was patchy at best. I was the one who spent nights detangling, ventilating, cutting, and styling. For three years, I lost count of the all-nighters I pulled. My fingers were scarred from hot glue, my cervical spine was shot, and my prescription had jumped by two diopters. Two hundred dollars barely covered the baseline cost of high-grade materials. Not only was I donating my labor, but I was also paying out of pocket to upgrade their supplies. If they went to a real professional who did custom wigs, makeup, and prop coordination like I did, they’d be looking at a starting rate of a thousand dollars, booked months in advance, excluding materials. But I wasn’t going to argue in the group chat. Even if I told them I was losing money, they’d just say, “Well, you chose to do that. No one forced you.” Explaining myself in that chat would feel like laying my dignity on a table just to watch them pick it apart. I stayed quiet. Then Christine slipped into my DMs. “Hey Queena, Hailey’s just blunt, don’t take it personally. But we’re not made of money, you know? Maybe you could recalculate your costs? If you can beat her price, we’d love to stick with you.” “After all, we trust your work~” I almost laughed. Pressuring me to lower my prices while trying to make it sound like a favor. Why should I care who they went with? I had plenty of paying clients. “No, thanks,” I wrote back, keeping it simple. She immediately went back to the group chat and tagged me: “Hey everyone, Queena’s going to hand over the materials to Hailey, so Hailey will be taking over the styling for this con!~” “Also, Queena, we’re actually at capacity for the Sovereign Five group now, so maybe sit this one out? It’s just easier to coordinate with Hailey in the lineup.” The Sovereign Five was a fixed group of five characters. I was supposed to play one of them. But I didn’t fight for my spot. I just typed: “Got it.” 2. The group chat erupted in celebration. “Christine, you’re the best!” “A hundred and fifty for everything? Hailey, I’m literally obsessed with you! You’re an angel!” “Hailey is a goddess!” … My phone buzzed with a private message from Prima. “Queena, are you okay?” I didn’t reply. I locked my phone and set it face down. On my workbench, Fiona’s gravity-defying white wig sat half-finished. Good. I didn’t have to finish it now. I stared at the headpiece for a long time. Then I picked up my needle-nose pliers and slowly, methodically, tore it apart. I salvaged the materials. I had other projects to focus on. That night, I wrapped up work three hours earlier than usual. I was just about to crawl into bed when my screen lit up again. It was Hailey. “Hey Queena, I hope you’re not mad at me for taking over the gig? It’s nothing personal, honestly. I just don’t think friends should take advantage of friends.” “By the way, could you send over the contact info for your material supplier? Just wanted to compare prices~” I was speechless. She calls me a scammer, and then has the nerve to ask for my sources. I started typing a furious response, but my thumb hovered over the send button. Then I deleted it. Not worth the energy. I sent her the links to a few of my regular wholesale suppliers. A few minutes later, she came back crawling into my inbox: “??? These are insanely expensive!” “Are you trying to sabotage me?” “If I buy from these places, the raw materials alone will cost five hundred per person. You didn’t pay anywhere near that when you did it!” Exactly. Because for three years, I had been quietly subsidizing them. I should probably thank her. She’d just saved me from throwing any more of my own money down that drain. I opened my professional app, and saw a message from Maeve. Maeve was one of the premier wig fiber suppliers in the country. Her high-end custom hairpieces were so sought after that people booked her a month in advance just to get on her waiting list. I called her directly. “A girl reached out to me today,” Maeve said, her voice crackling over the line. “From the way she talked, I’m guessing she’s from your old circle?” I rolled onto my side. “Yeah. I’m done doing their styling. She’s their new girl.” The line went quiet for a beat. “I figured. I didn’t give her a discount. Did you want me to?” “No.” Maeve was a veteran in the scene; she didn’t need me to spell it out. “When outsiders want my materials, I mark them up three times over and still turn them down,” Maeve scoffed. “Those kids have been spoon-fed luxury by you for years, and now they’re turning up their noses?” “Maeve,” I interrupted gently. “It’s fine. I have more commissions than I can handle anyway.” My skills had only sharpened over the last three years. “Fair enough. I can’t wait to see what their cosplays look like this time without you.” After we hung up, the bedroom was incredibly quiet. I opened my personal social media account and scrolled back to my very first posts from three years ago. Every single shoot was a carefully preserved memory. The first group photo: seven of us. Christine was right in the center. I had stayed up for two straight nights styling her wig, and I’d crafted her hairpins piece by piece from shrink-plastic. The comments were flooded with people calling her the perfect fantasy heroine. The second photo: Phoebe as the celestial general. I had carved her armor plate by plate from EVA foam, spray-painting it until four in the morning. The third, the fourth… I went through them all, then closed the app. I opened a different platform. On TikTok, I had a creator account I’d never shared with any of them. The username at the top of the profile read: Sweetbriar & Snow. Three hundred thousand followers. Everyone in the local scene knew Sweetbriar & Snow was a master wigmaker and stylist, but no one in my immediate circle knew it was me. I switched to my main account and messaged another local cosplay group: “Hey, about the styling we discussed—I have an opening now. Are you still looking for someone?” Within seconds, three exclamation points popped up. “Omg, the master replied! Yes, yes, yes! We’d be honored!!!” A small smile touched my lips. I couldn’t wait to see what happened when our two groups crossed paths at the con. 3. Hailey began posting feverishly in the group chat, practically humming with chaotic energy. “Look at this wig, guys! Only forty bucks! I spent hours comparing shops to find this deal. Such a steal!” “And the outfits are pre-made, so I don’t have to waste time sewing. I’m not like some people who insist on doing everything by hand. It’s such a waste of time and money.” At first, the girls cheered her on, but as the updates kept rolling in, the enthusiasm began to curdle. Eventually, someone started a separate group chat—excluding Hailey and Christine—and added me. “I’ve bought from that shop before,” one of the girls wrote. “The color is always completely off. Are we sure Hailey knows what she’s doing?” “Oh god, I just looked up the wig shop. The reviews are terrible. Someone said the fibers started shedding the second they put it on…” I watched the chat silently, offering nothing. Every time Hailey boasted about a new purchase in the main chat, the secret chat tore it to shreds. Finally, Prima tagged me. “Queena, what do you think? Are these materials actually legit?” I took a slow sip of my coffee. “No idea. Never used them.” It wasn’t a lie. I had never touched that cheap trash. Prima DM’d me privately. “Queena, maybe you should talk to Christine again? You get what you pay for, and honestly, your prices were incredibly fair.” “No,” I replied instantly. “I’m not interested in chasing after people who threw me out.” It was harsh, but it was the truth. We’d been friends for years, and they knew what professional stylists charged. The fact that Christine had sided with Hailey so quickly proved she didn’t value me. Prima sent back an ellipsis. By that evening, Hailey proudly announced that all the materials had arrived. The total came to just under a hundred dollars. “I’ll take the extra fifty as a small labor fee, even though I’m practically doing this for free,” she sent, followed by a grinning emoji. “After all, I put a lot of heart into this!” Then, she slipped into my DMs. “Hey Queena, now that I’m doing the math, I see how much of a markup you were charging~ Keeping half the budget as profit? No wonder you could afford such nice things.” I ignored her. She pushed harder. “Don’t say we’re leaving you out! What are you going as this time? Want me to do your hair and makeup? I’ll give you the friend discount—only a hundred and fifty!~” Still, I didn’t reply. Instead, I opened a blank document and began drafting a comprehensive guide on wig fibers and prop materials, analyzing products at every price point from high-end to budget-bin. I spent forty minutes writing, filling it with raw, undeniable facts. I’d post it after the convention. I shut my laptop and lay down in bed. My phone chimed. “Hey! The con is in four days. Do you have time tomorrow to check out our outfits and props?” It was the cosplayer I’d messaged, who went by Hazel. There were seven of them in total, planning to debut characters from the new Aetheria expansion. They had a massive following—even their smallest account had over a hundred thousand followers. “Tomorrow afternoon works for me,” I replied. “Oh my god, thank you so much!” Hazel shot back. “I can’t believe you were free! Their loss is definitely our gain, haha.” I stared at her message for a long beat. “I had a booking,” I wrote. “They bailed on me.” “What the hell? Do they have any idea what they just gave up?!” I smiled faintly. I didn’t know what they had given up. But I knew what I had given up: three years of a one-sided friendship. 4. Three days before LuminaCon, Hailey’s orders started arriving. She hosted an unboxing livestream in the group chat, uploading a dozen videos back-to-back. The first video showed the wigs. They were cheap, forty-dollar Amazon specials. The synthetic fibers glinted under the fluorescent light with a harsh, plastic sheen, and the ends were already tangling into a frizzy mess. “Aren’t they gorgeous?~” Hailey gushed in the voiceover. “This shine is going to look so good on camera!” The chat fell dead silent. Finally, Prima spoke up. “…Is it just me, or is that fiber going to reflect the camera flash like crazy?” Hailey fired back instantly. “That’s what Photoshop is for! No one posts raw photos anyway!” I didn’t say anything, but I knew better. No amount of editing could fix that. The cheap plastic shine would bleed through any filter, making a quick touch-up impossible. The editor would have to manually brush out the glare frame by frame. For seven people, it would be an absolute nightmare. But it wasn’t my problem anymore. Hailey’s second video showed the makeup. A pile of cheap palettes from brands I’d never even heard of. She swatched a concealer on the back of her hand to show it off, but the formula was so dry it cracked as it spread, catching the light in ugly creases. “Full makeup kits! The color selection is way bigger than what Queena used to bring. And it’s incredibly cheap!” Sure, the palettes had plenty of colors, but the quality compared to my professional-grade kits was laughable. I used to custom-blend foundation shades for each of them to match their skin tones and types. I kept my mouth shut. In the secret chat, the girls were spiraling. “Oh my god, look at the ends of those wigs. It looks like spider legs.” “Who is actually going to let her put that cheap makeup on their face? My skin is going to break out.” Prima ventured into the main chat, keeping her tone cautious. “My skin is really sensitive and prone to breakouts. Are we sure about these brands?” “Aren’t you a little high-maintenance?” Hailey replied with a rolling-eye emoji. “It’s just makeup. The ingredients are all the same; you’re just paying for the brand name. Someone’s been spoiling you guys too much.” A passive-aggressive dig aimed right at me. I remembered the first time I did Prima’s makeup. Her skin was incredibly sensitive, covered in acne scars, and easily irritated. I spent weeks testing seven different professional foundations on her skin before finding one that didn’t trigger a reaction. I had bought those products specifically for her. And how had Prima repaid me? Sure, she’d checked in on me privately. She’d made the secret group chat to make me feel included. But when it mattered, none of them had stood up to Christine for me. So, I washed my hands of it. The night before the con, Hailey posted the schedule: Everyone meet at 7:00 AM sharp. I’ll do everyone’s hair and makeup. I’m handing out the wigs tonight, so adjust them yourselves. Seven people. The con started at nine. She was starting at seven. Subtracting travel time, that gave her less than twenty minutes per person. I didn’t have time to worry about their train wreck. I was out the door by 3:00 AM to style Hazel’s group, spending at least forty minutes on each person. By the time I finished Hazel’s entire crew, my feet were throbbing. I finally sat down and unlocked my phone. Christine had posted a heavily filtered photo in the chat. “Looks gorgeous! Hailey, you have such a great eye, and this was so cheap!” Hailey tagged me in the main chat. “How’s it look, Queena? Not bad, right?” At the exact same moment, the secret chat exploded with notifications. My screen lit up with panicked texts. “Queena, help!”

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