Category: English

For twenty years, they refused to acknowledge my existence. But today, they all showed up. The living room was packed. My biological father, my mother, my younger brother, an uncle, an aunt, and several distant relatives I couldn’t even put a name to. My mother wore a stark black dress, her eyes rimmed with red, clutching a crumpled tissue. When I walked in, she stood up, her lips trembling. “Ethan…” It had been twenty years. It was the first time she had ever said my name with that much emotion. I just looked at her. I didn’t say a word. The estate attorney opened his briefcase. 1 When I was six years old, I was dropped off at my grandfather’s house. It wasn’t a “fun summer at Grandpa’s” situation. I stood on his porch with a single duffel bag containing two changes of clothes and a pair of worn-out sneakers, watching my mother’s back get smaller as she walked away. I didn’t cry. At six, you don’t really grasp the concept of “abandonment.” I only remember that she was holding my brother’s hand when she left. My brother was four then. He was wearing a brand-new, bright blue Gap hoodie, holding a massive caramel apple. He looked back at me once. Then he turned around and kept licking his candy. My mother never looked back. Grandpa stood behind me. After a long time, he let out a heavy sigh. “Come on, kid. Let’s get inside.” He took my hand. “I’ll make you some chicken noodle soup.” I ate a whole bowl that night. Grandpa asked me, “Do you miss your mom?” I said, “Yes.” He didn’t say anything, just put another scoop in my bowl. Later, I learned what my mother told Grandpa before she dropped me off. “Dad, you have to take Ethan. We honestly can’t afford to raise two.” Can’t afford two. Then why was I the one who had to leave, not my brother? I spent twenty years asking myself that question. The answer was actually very simple. My brother was the favorite. I was not. Grandpa lived in a modest suburb. Small house, a big oak tree in the yard. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean. Grandpa was sixty-two then, still strong. He got up at five every morning, hit the grocery store, came back to make me breakfast, and drove me to school. He was always there at the pickup line in the afternoon. Rain or shine. He took care of me through everything. When I had a high fever, he carried me into the ER and sat in the hard plastic chairs of the waiting room until three in the morning while I got an IV. Everything my mother should have done, Grandpa did. But I knew Grandpa wasn’t Mom. Because every time I had to fill out parent information at school, the teachers would give me a funny look when I wrote “Grandfather.” “Where are your parents, Ethan?” “They live in the city.” “Why don’t you live with them?” I never knew how to answer that. Later, I learned a standard lie. “My parents are really busy with work.” Busy. So busy they barely visited me a handful of times in twenty years. I remember in first grade, the school had a drawing contest. The theme was “My Family.” Other kids drew a mommy, a daddy, and themselves—a perfect family, holding hands. I drew Grandpa and me. Two people. One big oak tree. The teacher looked at it for a long time and said, “You draw beautifully.” She didn’t ask, “Why are there only two people in your family?” But I saw her eyes tear up. I kept that drawing for a long time. I lost it when I moved out for college. 2 When Christmas came around that year, I thought I’d be allowed home. Grandpa made the call. I stood right there. I heard my mother on the other end say, “It’s just not a good time this year, Dad. The apartment is small, and Lucas just got a brand-new bed. There’s really nowhere for him to sleep.” Nowhere to sleep. Lucas got a brand-new bed. I didn’t even have an old cot. Grandpa hung up and rubbed my head. “We’re having Christmas just the two of us, kid. I’ll make a huge roast turkey.” That Christmas, Grandpa made a massive dinner. He ate a few slices and gave the rest to me. I ate so much I got a stomachache. Grandpa just smiled. “Slow down. No one’s going to take it from you.” Later, I found out that during that same Christmas, my parents threw a huge party at their place in the city. Two full tables of food. Every dish was Lucas’s favorite. Family photos were mailed out to the rest of the relatives. My dad, my mom, and Lucas were in the picture. I was not. My Uncle Gary later told someone, “Richard’s got that one boy, Lucas. They absolutely treasure him.” Someone asked, “Doesn’t he have an older son, too?” Uncle Gary said, “Oh, yeah. That one. He lives out in the suburbs. The old man is raising him.” “That one.” He didn’t say “Ethan.” I was “that one.” In the narrative of this family, I didn’t even deserve a name. When I was nine, Grandpa took me into the city to see a doctor. We stopped by my parents’ apartment on the way. I stood in the doorway and saw my brother’s room—one whole wall covered in toys, a new gaming PC on his desk, and a framed picture on his nightstand of him and my parents at an amusement park. In the living room hung a massive family portrait. Dad, Mom, Lucas. Three people. I counted twice. Three people. Lucas ran out, looked at me, and frowned. “Mom, who is he?” He didn’t recognize me. My own biological brother didn’t know who I was. My mom poked her head out of the kitchen and glanced at me. “He’s from your grandpa’s house. Call him your brother.” “From grandpa’s house.” Not, “He’s your brother.” It was “From grandpa’s house.” Lucas just said, “Oh,” turned around, and went back to his room to play video games. He didn’t speak another word to me the entire visit. On the car ride back, Grandpa didn’t say anything. When we were almost home, he suddenly stopped walking. “Ethan.” “Yeah?” He crouched down and looked me right in the eye. “Remember this. You are Grandpa’s Ethan. If nobody else wants you, Grandpa wants you.” His eyes got red. “As long as Grandpa is alive, I will take care of you.” I nodded. That year I was nine, and I learned a hard truth. Some people are family. Some people are just strangers you happen to share blood with. 3 Twelve years old. Middle school. I ranked number one in the whole district on the standardized tests. Grandpa called my mom. It was on speakerphone. I was right there, and I heard it perfectly. “Brenda, Ethan ranked number one in the district!” Silence on the other end for two seconds. “Oh. Okay.” “Ethan wants to go to the magnet school in the city. The tuition—” “Dad, money is tight right now. Lucas needs to enroll in prep classes next semester, and we have to pay for his travel soccer team.” Grandpa didn’t say another word. He hung up. That year, my brother ranked 138th in his grade. My parents paid for three different tutoring programs for him, costing twenty-four thousand dollars a year. I ranked number one in the district. Zero. Not a single penny of tutoring money for me. I went to the local public middle school. Lucas went to a private academy in the city. Later, I discovered that Grandpa had been wiring my parents three hundred dollars a month. For twelve years. The memo always read: “Ethan’s Fund.” Three hundred times twelve months, times twelve years. Forty-three thousand two hundred dollars. I never saw a single cent of it. The summer I turned fifteen, Grandpa took me to get new glasses. We ran into Uncle Gary on the bus. Uncle Gary looked me up and down, then said to Grandpa, “Wow, Ethan’s getting big.” Then he lowered his voice. “Richard and Brenda are really something. Originally they said they’d let Ethan stay with you for a couple of years, and it’s been almost ten.” Grandpa didn’t respond. Uncle Gary continued, “You shouldn’t spoil him too much, Dad. He’s a boy; ‘good enough’ is fine for him. In the future—” “Uncle Gary.” I spoke up. He stopped and looked at me. “I’m not a ‘good enough’ kind of person.” I looked him right in the eye. “In the future, please call me by my name. Ethan.” Uncle Gary’s face went stiff. Grandpa patted my hand and didn’t say anything. But I saw a hint of a smile on the corner of his mouth. Eighteen years old. College applications. I ranked 23rd in the entire city on my SATs. Got into the State University’s Honors Law program. Grandpa was so excited he couldn’t sleep all night. First thing the next morning, he called my mom. “Brenda! Ethan got in! The Honors program!” Again, silence on the other end. “Dad… that’s great.” “About the tuition—” “Dad, Lucas is getting his driver’s license this year, and we need to—” “I’ll pay,” Grandpa said. His voice was dead calm. “I will pay for Ethan’s tuition.” After he hung up, Grandpa sat in the backyard, looking at that oak tree. For a long time. I walked over. “Grandpa, I can apply for student loans, you don’t have to—” “No.” He looked at me. “Grandpa can afford to send you.” He smiled. “The proudest achievement of my entire life is raising you.” I couldn’t hold it back. That was the first time in twenty years I had ever cried in front of Grandpa. That same fall, my brother was rejected from every four-year college. He took a gap year, then got into a local community college. My parents spent eighteen thousand dollars and bought him a car. To celebrate him “getting into college.” An eighteen-thousand-dollar car. For my four years of tuition and living expenses, Grandpa spent a total of seven thousand two hundred dollars. They didn’t contribute a single dime. But they told all the relatives: “We worry just as much about both our boys.” As much. An eighteen-thousand-dollar car versus zero. That’s what they called “as much.” 4 During my four years of college, I went back to Grandpa’s house for every winter and summer break. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to my parents’ “home.” It was that no one ever invited me. One Thanksgiving, I tried calling my mom. “Mom, can I come home for a couple of days over the break?” Hesitation on the other end. “Ethan… you know, the house is being remodeled right now. There’s dust everywhere. You should probably just go to Grandpa’s.” Remodeling. Later, I saw the photo my brother posted on Instagram. On Thanksgiving Day, the three of them took a family photo in their newly remodeled living room. New sofa, new TV, new curtains. My brother’s caption was: “New house vibe. Love it.” My mom left a comment: “As long as you like it, sweetie.” As long as he liked it. A new home for the three of them. There was no place for me. After I graduated, I stayed in the state capital. Got a job at a law firm. My starting salary was three thousand five hundred a month. I never asked my family for a single dime. Because I knew that even if I asked, they wouldn’t give it to me. And because I had known one thing since I was six years old— Depend on yourself. In this life, besides Grandpa, the only person I could rely on was myself. In my third year, I passed the bar and became a full associate. My salary jumped to twelve thousand a month. Fourth year, I was promoted again. Eighteen thousand. Fifth year, I was leading my own cases. During those five years, my mom called me exactly four times. The first time: “Ethan, your brother is looking for a job. Can you see if there are any openings in the city?” The second time: “Ethan, your brother has a girlfriend. They’re buying a house and are a little short on cash—” The third time: “Ethan, your brother—” The fourth time: “Ethan, your brother—” Every single time, it was “your brother.” Not once was it: “Ethan, how are you doing lately?” Did I give them money? Yes. The first time I lent them two thousand, supposed to be paid back in six months. Three years passed, and they never mentioned it. The second time was three thousand. This time she didn’t even use the word “borrow.” My mom just said, “Wire three thousand to Lucas.” Wire. Not borrow, wire. As if my money was naturally meant to be spent on my brother. Five thousand dollars total. To this day, they have never paid it back. But I didn’t care about the five grand. What I cared about was— When they wanted money, I was “family.” When they didn’t need money, I was “the one from Grandpa’s house.” I am twenty-six this year. It’s been twenty years. I gave up expecting them to call me their son a long, long time ago. Until Grandpa got sick. Last October, Grandpa was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer. When the call came, my hands were shaking. I took an extended leave of absence and drove from the city back to the suburbs. Grandpa had lost so much weight. His hair was completely white. Lying in the hospital bed, he smiled when he saw me walk in. “Ethan is here.” “Grandpa, I’m here.” I held his hand. So thin. The bones felt sharp against my palm. “I’m here to take care of you.” Grandpa shook his head: “No need, your job—” “My job isn’t important.” I looked at him. “You are important.” Grandpa’s eyes got red. He didn’t speak. He just squeezed my hand tightly. For the next forty-seven days, I stayed in the hospital. During the day, I fed him, bathed him, and accompanied him to his scans. At night, I slept on a folding cot right next to his bed. Forty-seven days. My dad came twice. The first time, he stayed for thirty minutes, took a phone call in the hallway, and left. The second time, he brought a bag of fruit, dropped it off, and left. My mom came once. She sat for fifteen minutes. Looked at the IV drip, looked out the window. Said to Grandpa, “Dad, make sure you get plenty of rest.” Then she left. My brother never came. Not even once. Forty-seven days. Just me. The attending doctor pulled me aside once and asked, “Where are your grandfather’s other children?” I said, “It’s just me.” He looked at me. “And you are?” “His grandson.” He was silent for a moment. “His children really should come visit.” I smiled faintly. “They’re busy.” During Grandpa’s last week in the hospital, he couldn’t speak much anymore. One night, he suddenly grabbed my hand. “Ethan.” “Grandpa, I’m right here.” “In my dresser… there’s a metal box.” His voice was very weak. “There are some things inside… you need to take them.” “Grandpa—” “Take them.” He looked at me. “They belong to you.” He said one more thing. His voice was incredibly soft, but I heard it perfectly clearly. “Ethan, in this life, the person I failed the most is you. I never should have let you suffer those injustices.” Ten days later. Grandpa was gone.

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When I was nine years old, the explosion that nearly killed Blair took my hearing instead. I remember the heat, the concussive force that felt like a physical punch to the soul. Afterward, there was only silence. A thick, suffocating cotton-wool silence. Blair was consumed by guilt. I remember her sitting by my hospital bed, her small hands trembling as she held mine, eyes red and swollen. She demanded—no, she begged—our parents to let us be engaged. It was a child’s promise, heavy with an adult’s burden. “Wes,” she sobbed, “I’m going to take care of you forever.” But forever ended when we turned eighteen. It was the night of our graduation party. To prove herself to Carter—the golden boy, the captain of the lacrosse team, the guy every girl wanted—she decided I was the sacrifice she had to make. She reached out and pulled the hearing aid from my left ear. Right there in front of Carter and half the senior class. Her voice dripped with a new, cruel kind of venom. “God, you little burden. I am so sick of you.” She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. “Honestly? I wish you hadn’t made it out of that fire when we were nine. It would have been cleaner if you’d just died.” I stood there, clutching the medical report in my pocket that I’d been waiting to show her. I didn’t say a word. I went home, quietly logged into the university portal to change my acceptance commitment, and told my parents it was over. Blair, you and I are done. The road ends here. … “Wes? Honestly, I wish you hadn’t made it out of that fire when we were nine. It would have been cleaner if you’d just died.” When Blair said those words, the VIP booth at the club erupted. “Damn, Blair! That was cold. You’re a legend.” “Next time, when he gets his miracle cure, you should whisper that right in his ear. I bet he’d cry. He’s such a soft boy, always looking at you with those puppy dog eyes.” “What’s it matter if he hears it? Who wants a cripple anyway? You were a saint for putting up with him this long.” I stood frozen in the shadows of the hallway, my hand gripping the folded paper in my jacket pocket so hard my knuckles turned white. My hearing had been fully restored weeks ago. My parents had taken me to a specialist in Zurich right after finals. No more hearing aids. No more static. Today was my eighteenth birthday. I had planned this night down to the second. I was going to surprise her. I was going to tell her that I was fixed, that I wasn’t her broken toy anymore. Instead, my carefully orchestrated surprise had turned into a live autopsy of my heart. Her words felt like serrated blades, twisting in my chest, cutting off my air supply. The pain was physical, sharp and radiating. I bit my lip until I tasted iron, looking up at Blair through the dim neon lights. Why? She didn’t even look at me. She was looking at the white hearing aid in her hand, tossing it up and down like a cheap party favor, a lazy, amused smile playing on her lips. “Alright, that’s enough,” she drawled. “He did save my life when we were kids. Let’s not be too mean. Keep it down, I don’t want him walking in on this.” The group fell into line immediately. “Right, right. Lips are sealed.” “Still, Wes getting to date you? Being deaf was a small price to pay for that privilege.” Laughter rippled through the room again. “Okay, okay,” Blair said, waving a hand dismissively. “Wes is a good guy, really. He’s just… boring. Not like us. He can’t handle the way we play.” Carter stepped forward then, that arrogant smirk plastered on his face. He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Blair,” he announced, his voice thick with self-importance, “you passed the test.” “Now I believe you’re actually over him. So, tomorrow? We’re on.” Blair’s face softened in a way I hadn’t seen in years. Her eyes practically melted. “It’s a date,” she whispered. I watched, my mind blanking out. The world felt like it had hit a sudden, jarring pause. The jeers, the music, the clinking glasses—it all swirled into a high-pitched ringing in my ears that had nothing to do with deafness. “Babe? Where did you go?” I blinked, and suddenly Blair was in front of me, fitting the hearing aid back into my ear. She smiled, sweet and practiced. “So happy you’re zoning out?” I was supposed to be happy. Eighteen. Accepted to her dream school. Confirmed relationship in front of all our friends. It was supposed to be the season finale of a perfect teen drama. But now, when I opened my mouth, my throat felt like it was full of sand. The others jumped in, covering their tracks with seamless lies. “Wes! You missed it. Blair was just saying the sweetest stuff about you while she cleaned your device. Seriously, made us all jealous.” “God, I wish I had a childhood sweetheart.” “You’re a lucky bastard,” Carter said, clapping me on the shoulder hard. “Getting a girl like Blair? That’s good karma.” I remained silent. I scanned their faces. The smiles, the thumbs-up, the jokes about being the best man at our wedding. Not a single crack in the facade. They were terrifyingly natural liars. It hit me then—how many times had this happened before? How many times this year had she taken my hearing aid out, looked me in the eye with a tender smile, and whispered something vile while I just nodded like a fool? If I hadn’t gone to Zurich. If I hadn’t been cured. I would have spent the rest of my life thanking her for loving me, never hearing the glass shards hidden in her honeyed words. “Whoops,” Carter said suddenly, pulling his hand back from Blair’s shoulder as if he’d been burned. He looked at me with mock apology. “Sorry, Wes. You know how we are. Just messing around. Don’t get jealous, man.” Blair laughed, swatting his arm. “Stop it. You treat me like one of the guys, you forget I’m actually a girl.” They started chasing each other around the booth, playful and intimate. Everyone else watched like it was the most normal thing in the world. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. I turned to leave. Carter was there in a second, blocking my path. His eyes narrowed. “Everyone came here for you, Wes. You’re just gonna leave?” Blair came over, ruffling my hair like I was a golden retriever. “Come on, you haven’t even opened your presents. Don’t be a brat.” I flinched, stepping back to avoid her touch. I ignored the sudden confusion clouding her face. I looked her dead in the eye and spoke clearly, calmly. “We’re breaking up. Don’t contact me again.” Then I walked out. My phone started blowing up before I even reached the parking lot. Blair: What is your problem? Everyone made an effort to be here for you. You’re being incredibly rude. Blair: Carter was just excited. He’s loud and outgoing, not quiet and timid like you. He apologized immediately. Why are you so insecure? Then the group chat chimed in: Friend 1: Wes, that was too much. Friend 2: Storming out like a diva? What did we ever do to you? Friend 3: Unbelievable. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. I stared at the screen, a cold laugh escaping my lips. “Who’s the one being too much?” I muttered. I blocked them. One by one. Then I left the group chat. When I got home, I told my parents the abbreviated version. “I don’t love her anymore,” I said, sitting at the kitchen island. My parents looked at me with concern, and suddenly, the dam broke. The ache in my chest swelled into my throat. “I don’t want to go to NYU with her. I don’t want to be with her. I don’t want to marry her.” My mom didn’t ask questions. She just pulled me into a hug, wiping my tears. “Wes, honey, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world.” “We’ll handle the engagement. We’ll break it off tomorrow. You go wherever you want for college. We’ve got your back. Always.” My dad walked me to the living room and placed the silver cake knife in my hand. “We didn’t get a chance to bring the cake to the venue before you came back,” he said softly. “It’s better this way. Just the three of us. A quiet birthday.” “Eighteen years ago, you made me the happiest man alive. Don’t cry, birthday boy. Make a wish.” I managed a watery smile. Under the warm gaze of my parents, I blew out the candles. Just as I was about to cut the cake, the doorbell rang. It was Blair. Outside, a summer storm had broken. Rain was coming down in sheets, thunder rattling the windows. She was soaked to the bone, water dripping from her hair onto the porch, but she didn’t seem to care. She just stood there, smiling, holding out a velvet jewelry box. “Look. I picked this out just for you.” “Stop being moody. Everyone is waiting for you at the club. And stop saying we’re breaking up, okay? It’s not funny.” I looked at the necklace in the box. It looked familiar. Carter had been wearing a watch from the same designer collection tonight. A matching set. I didn’t take it. Blair’s arm stayed suspended in the air. After a long moment, she dropped it, annoyance creeping into her tone. “Did you take the wrong meds today or something?” “You were crying tears of joy when I agreed to date you. Now you’re stone cold? What happened to the sweet, obedient Wes?” My chest tightened. I didn’t even want to argue. For years, I had been living in a dream, convinced she was my soulmate. I thought we’d go to New York, get degrees, get married, have kids. Tonight, the dream had been brutally dissected. She didn’t love me. To her, I was just the debt she owed because I saved her life. I was an accessory she’d outgrown. I took a deep breath. “I’m not playing games. The breakup is real. Stay away from me.” Blair snapped. She threw the box on the ground, her eyes flashing with anger. “Wes, are you done with this bullshit—” “Blair!” My dad stepped in front of me, his voice booming. “Watch your language.” “You’re soaking wet. Go home, take a shower, and get some rest. It’s late. We won’t be inviting you in.” My mom stepped up beside him, handing Blair a slice of cake wrapped in a napkin with a polite, frozen smile. “Wes already made his wish. He doesn’t need your gift. Take the cake and go.” “Get home safe. It’s dangerous for a young girl to be out alone.” Blair stood there, stunned. She knew something was wrong. My parents had always adored her. They treated her like a daughter. They never kept her on the porch. She opened her mouth to argue, but the heavy oak door slammed shut in her face. I didn’t have much of an appetite. I ate a few bites of cake and went to my room. My dad sat on the edge of my bed. “Wes, are you sure about this?” Fathers know. He knew how much I had worshipped her. I looked down at the white hearing aid in my hand. The one she had customized for me. People change so much. When we first moved to this estate, I used to follow her around like a shadow. “Blair, wait up!” Then came the fire at the factory. I remembered the training my parents gave me. I got out. Blair didn’t. I saw the flames licking the sky. I saw her frozen in the window. I didn’t think. I just ran back in. I dragged her out. We were almost clear when the secondary tanks blew. The shockwave shattered my eardrums. I woke up in a silent world. My parents were devastated. Her parents were guilty. I became withdrawn. I lay in bed for months. Blair stopped going to school to be with me. She brought me candy I didn’t eat. She realized hospitals depressed me, so she snuck me out to the audiologist to get this specific hearing aid. She had painted tiny fish and stalks of rice on it herself. She put it in my ear with clumsy, gentle fingers. “Wes, I’m going to protect you now.” “My tutor said the universe is infinite. It never dies. You’re going to be okay, Wes.” “Fish only have a seven-second memory, but I don’t. I’ll remember. I’ll always keep you safe.” Only I remembered that vow. If nine-year-old Wes could hear eighteen-year-old Blair say, I wish you’d just died, he would have broken down. But I had spent nine years being the “deaf kid.” I’d grown a thicker skin than she realized. I accepted her change of heart. People grow up. People drift. I saved her life. The Jackson family gave my father’s company a 50% concession on shipping routes for a decade. The debt was paid. We were even. I looked at my dad. “I’m sure.” That night, with my dad’s help, I logged into the portal. I declined the offer from NYU. I accepted the offer from Stanford. I thought I’d be awake all night, but I slept like a baby. I woke up at noon to two voice messages on WeChat. From Blair. Her voice tinny through the speaker, cold and commanding: “Wes, if you’re done throwing a tantrum, unblock me. Grow up.” “Carter feels terrible about you leaving early. He actually went up to the roof and threatened to jump because he thought he ruined your night. I had to talk him down.” “We’re going to Aspen for a ski trip before college starts. I’m bringing him so he can clear his head. Don’t be jealous. Honestly, if he hurts himself, it’s kind of your fault.” I laughed out loud. Carter? Killing himself? Please. The guy loved himself more than Kanye loved Kanye. He called himself “The King of the Hill.” He mocked guys who studied. But he was manipulative. I remembered my friend Miles’ birthday four months ago. Miles had set up a romantic confession for a girl he liked. Carter ruined it. He walked in, loudly asking, “Damn, Miles, you got moves. You practice this on all the girls?”

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As long as I could remember, I knew my mother had thrown me away. But Pa always spun a different yarn. He’d tell me she loved me more than anything, that she only left because she had to, and that the moment I was old enough, I needed to go find her. For years, I thought it was just his twisted way of letting me dream of a mother’s warmth. That was until social media found its way deep into our mountain holler. One night, Pa was scrolling on his phone when he let out a sudden, jagged whoop. “Weed, look at this! This is your Ma! Get your things, girl. We’re going to the city to get her back.” I stared at the glowing screen. The woman in the video was striking, her features sharp and elegant, carrying herself with an effortless, old-money grace. For the first time, a seed of doubt took root in my chest. My mother was a Boston socialite? A professor? How could a woman like that have anything to do with our rotting cabin in Black Creek Holler? Still, I packed my meager belongings into a plastic bag and followed Pa onto the long-distance bus heading northeast. … As the rusted bus rattled its way out of the Appalachian foothills, I pressed my face against the smudged glass, greedy for every glimpse. This was the very first time I had ever seen the world beyond the tree line. Beside me, Pa’s voice droned on, thick with chewing tobacco and self-importance. “You see, Weed? Nobody loves you like your Pa does.” “Any other family would’ve sold a useless girl like you off to be married by now.” “Ain’t I good to you? Taking you all the way up to Boston to find the bitch who dumped you.” I kept my head bowed, my dirt-caked fingernails digging so hard into the seams of my jeans that my knuckles turned white. I knew the truth. Pa wasn’t taking me to find a mother’s love. He was using this trip to squeeze more money out of my own flesh. Just a few nights prior, I’d crouched outside the kitchen window, listening to him drink moonshine and strike a bargain with Harlan, the holler’s patriarch. “Twenty grand. Cash. Not a penny less,” Pa had slurred. “Your half-wit boy ain’t ever gonna find a girl who’ll wipe his chin and warm his bed for the rest of his life, ‘cept my Weed. Don’t you worry, Harlan. The girl ain’t never stepped foot out the holler. She ain’t been corrupted by the outside. She’s dumb as a stump and obedient as a dog.” I glanced over at Pa, who had finally snored himself to sleep against the rattling window, and I let a small, bitter smile touch my lips. Pa didn’t know me at all. I wasn’t dumb. And I certainly wasn’t obedient. My first teacher had been the “crazy woman” chained up two cabins down. Crazy Helen, they called her. Everyone in the holler said she’d lost her mind. But I knew better. When the men were out hunting, she would slip me old, crumpled newspapers her captors used for kindling. Through the cracks in the floorboards, she taught me the alphabet. She taught me how to add and subtract. She painted pictures with her words, telling me about a world beyond the mountains—a world of glass skyscrapers, airplanes, and bullet trains. She told me that little girls were meant to be more than just breeding stock. It broke my heart. Last winter, she begged me to help her run. I stole some of Pa’s sleeping pills and laced the meat for the guard dogs. But the mountains were too vast, the snow too deep. They caught her before she reached the highway. They dragged her back to the center of the holler and beat her to death in front of everyone. The frozen ground drank her blood until it was entirely red. Truth be told, only two women had ever made it out of Black Creek. Me, and my mother. But our holler was a graveyard for brilliant women. Besides Helen, there was Donna. She lived in the hog pen behind Harlan’s property. She was the one who taught me where to strike a man to make him drop. She used to stroke my tangled hair, her eyes heavy with a sorrow I couldn’t quite name. “You’re so sharp, Weed. You learn so fast.” It wasn’t until Pa showed me that video that it clicked. I was sharp because I got it from my mother. Thinking of this, I turned my head to study Pa’s sleeping face—his slack jaw, the yellowed teeth, the greasy hair. A familiar, intoxicating urge surged up the back of my throat. It was the urge to reach into my backpack, pull out the packet of rat poison I’d hidden there, and empty it down his snoring throat. Just a few grains. That’s all it would take. He would foam at the mouth and seize up, twitching until his heart stopped, just like the black rats in our barn. My hand slipped into the bag. My fingers brushed the cold, crinkling paper. But slowly, deliberately, I let go. Not because I was afraid. I let go because I needed to see my mother’s face, just once. People like Pa and me, people born from the mud and the rot—we probably both deserved to die. But there was a new girl they’d brought into the holler just three days ago. A beautiful girl with terrified, bird-like eyes. She deserved to live. I was going to save her. The bus drove on, eating up the miles through the night. Eventually, the endless trees gave way to concrete, and we pulled into the massive, echoing cavern of the city terminal. Pa jerked awake, wiping drool from his chin, and dragged me off the bus by my elbow. We stepped out into the crushing wave of Boston commuters. He looked around at the towering buildings and the sea of moving bodies, then snapped his gaze down to me. “Well, Weed? You like all these fancy people? You like the big city?” In a fraction of a second, I shrank into myself, pulling my shoulders to my ears. I put on the pathetic, terrified face of an ignorant hillbilly. I shook my head frantically, letting my voice tremble. “No, Pa… I’m scared.” I whimpered. “There’s too many folks. It’s too loud, it hurts my head. I wanna go back. I wanna go feed the hogs.” Pa stared at me for a long moment before his face split into a wide, rotten grin. “That’s my girl.” He spat on the pristine concrete. “A golden palace ain’t nothing compared to your own dirt floor. Now you remember, we’re just here to fetch your Ma. Once we drag her back, I’m locking her in the root cellar till she gives me a proper son. Then nobody in the holler can call you a motherless stray no more.” He dug out his shattered phone, swiping through the app with a dirty thumb until he found her profile again. On the screen, my mother stood at a university lectern, wearing a sharp, tailored blazer. She was speaking with such poise, radiating a quiet, luminous confidence. It was a version of womanhood I didn’t know existed. The more I watched, the more awestruck I became. She was a respected academic, an elite. The contrast between her world and the sour, unwashed stench radiating off the man beside me was nauseating. But then I clicked on the comment section. “Isn’t Dr. Prescott the one who went missing for a year in her twenties?” “Yeah, she went down south to volunteer in some rural school and got abducted. Took her years to recover mentally when she finally got back.” “It’s a tragedy, honestly. If she hadn’t lost those years to trauma, she’d be tenured by now. I heard she still struggles with the administration.” My heart violently seized. My fingernails bit into the meat of my palms. The old women in the holler always gossiped that my mother abandoned me when I was barely a year old. Which meant… if she hadn’t stayed that extra year just to nurse me, to keep me alive, she could have escaped sooner. She could have soared even higher. Pa, entirely oblivious to the storm raging inside me, yanked my arm. We navigated the labyrinth of the subway system, the stench of our clothes earning us disgusted glares and wide berths from everyone we passed. As we walked, Pa leaned in close, his breath hot and putrid against my ear. “When we find her, you listen to me. You throw yourself right at her. Grab her legs and wail like a stuck pig! You scream, ‘Ma, why did you leave me!’” His eyes gleamed with malicious excitement. “I’ll make a massive scene. I’ll holler for a DNA test right there in the street. These rich city folks, they care about their reputation more than their lives. Once I threaten to drag her name through the mud, she’ll do anything to keep us quiet. She’ll come right back to the holler just to shut us up.” Suddenly, his grip on my arm tightened like a vice. “But if you screw this up, Weed… or if you get any funny ideas about running… when we get back, I’m putting you up for Holler Law.” The blood drained from my face. My body betrayed me with an uncontrollable shudder. Holler Law. The ultimate punishment. When a woman tried to run, the men would strip her naked and throw her in the shed out back. They would take turns for three days and three nights. Aside from Donna, who now dragged herself through the hog pen on shattered legs, no woman had ever survived it. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, keeping my eyes fixed on the pavement. “I hear you, Pa.” By the time Pa had asked enough horrified strangers for directions, the sun had set. We finally stood outside the wrought-iron gates of the prestigious prep school where she taught, but the campus was dark and locked down for the night. Pa hocked a glob of phlegm onto the manicured brick walkway. “Fancy school, my ass. Closing up before dark.” A security guard stepped out of the booth, resting his hand on his belt, and sternly waved us off. Pa tried to put on a greasy smile and step forward, but the guard’s unyielding glare stopped him dead. We weren’t getting in. Pa patted the wad of crumpled bills in his pocket—the money from selling our last breeding sow. He refused to spend a dime on a motel. Instead, we found a dark, damp underpass not far from the campus. Above us, the rhythmic rumble of city traffic pounded like a mechanical heartbeat, headlights bleeding into a river of gold across the wet asphalt. I curled into a tight ball on a bed of discarded newspapers, shivering as the Atlantic wind whipped through my thin jacket. A little ways down the sidewalk, a family was taking an evening stroll. The little girl was dressed in a fluffy pink coat, clutching a pristine porcelain doll. She was riding high on her father’s shoulders, giggling like a princess surveying her kingdom. “Daddy, I want that ice cream!” “You got it, sweetheart,” the father laughed. “Mommy, I don’t want to go to ballet class tomorrow,” she whined. The young mother reached up, affectionately squeezing the girl’s hand, her eyes melting with absolute adoration. “Be a good girl for class, and we’ll go to the aquarium after, okay?” I stared. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t breathe. So this was what life was like out here. Girls out here didn’t have to haul water. They didn’t get beaten with fire pokers. They could ride on their father’s shoulders and whine about dancing. My mother… she must have grown up just like that. Loved. Sheltered. Radiant. She was meant to be elegant and untouchable. She was never meant to be chained by the neck next to a trough of pig slop, treated worse than an animal. “What the hell are you staring at? Keep your eyes to yourself!” Pa’s harsh bark shattered the quiet moment. He’d caught the desperate longing in my eyes, and for a second, something like guilt flickered across his rugged face before hardening back into resentment. He grunted, digging a crumpled dollar bill from his pocket. He marched over to a corner bodega and returned a minute later, tossing the cheapest, chalkiest lollipop he could find into my lap. “Eat it. Don’t ever say I don’t provide for you.” I peeled the plastic back and put it in my mouth. It tasted like artificial strawberries. But no amount of sugar could wash away the suffocating bitterness coating my throat. Pa lit a cheap, unfiltered cigarette. In the orange glow of the cherry, his face looked monstrous. “You remember this, Weed,” he growled through the smoke. “We’re sleeping in the dirt tonight because of your selfish bitch of a mother. If she hadn’t run off, if she’d just stayed and done her duty to the family, we wouldn’t be begging on the streets.” He took a drag, his eyes narrowing. “Or, if she loved us, she would’ve brought us to the city to live like kings. It’s her fault we’re poor. All her fault.” I kept my head down, rolling the candy around my tongue. On the outside, I nodded meekly. “You’re right, Pa. It’s all Ma’s fault.” But deep in my chest, a quiet, terrifying fire began to burn. You’re pathetic, I thought. Every man in the holler was a parasite feeding off the blood of women. Old Man Higgins built his new cabin by selling his eldest daughter to a miner. Harlan bought his truck by pimping out his terrified wife to the logging crews. They drained the life out of us, stood on our cracked bones, and called us worthless. My mother was a scholar. She belonged under the warm glow of a lecture hall, changing the world. She never should have been forced to wash the mud off this monster’s boots, and she certainly never should have been forced into his bed. Suddenly, a bright, melodic laugh cut through the noise of the traffic. My heart skipped a beat. My head snapped up. Across the street, bathed in the amber glow of a streetlamp, a woman was walking beside a man in a tailored wool coat. She was holding a stack of books against her chest. It was only a profile. It was fifty feet away. But I knew. It was her. Under the city lights, she looked like a painting. Alive. Free. But then, as if feeling the weight of my stare, she paused. She turned her head and looked directly toward the shadows of the underpass. Our eyes met. The beautiful smile vanished from her face in an instant. Her pupils dilated. Even from across the street, I could feel the sheer, unadulterated terror radiating off her. She recognized me. She recognized him. Before I could even process what was happening, she grabbed her companion’s sleeve, her breath catching visibly in the cold air. She spun around on her heel, stumbling over her own feet as she half-ran, half-dragged the man into a dark alleyway, disappearing from sight. She fled like prey spotting a wolf. I pulled my gaze away, my entire body violently shaking. I was vibrating with a chaotic mix of adrenaline, awe, and heartbreak. She was right there. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Why are you shaking?” Pa eyed me suspiciously, squinting into the dark street where I’d just been looking. But the pavement was empty. I bit the side of my tongue so hard the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. I used the pain to anchor myself. I pulled my knees to my chest, making myself look small and frail. “Pa… I’m freezing…” I chattered, letting a pathetic sob slip out. “The wind down here… I’m scared.” It was a convincing performance. Pa relaxed, sneering in disgust. He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with the heel of his boot. “Useless little runt. Can’t even handle a breeze. Go to sleep! We gotta be up at dawn to ambush that bitch.” He cursed under his breath, rolling over on the cardboard, turning his back to me. I leaned my head against the freezing concrete pillar, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. My mind raced, replaying the image of my mother. She looked so brilliant. So full of life, just like all the other women walking these city streets. Not like the women in the holler, with their dead, milky eyes and hollowed-out souls. If Pa dragged her back… No. Never. Thinking about what I had to do tomorrow made my stomach twist into knots. I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me. The next morning, I squatted alone on the sidewalk outside the academy’s wrought-iron gates. Students in crisp, pressed uniforms walked past, shooting me curious, disgusted glances. I was wearing an oversized, threadbare jacket, my jeans splattered with mud, my hair a matted nest. I looked like a feral animal dropped into a country club. I didn’t care. I just watched every face that walked through those gates. Minutes bled into hours. The morning bell rang, a sharp, piercing sound. The courtyard emptied. The heavy iron gates slowly rolled shut. My chest caved in. She didn’t come. Panic, cold and suffocating, began to rise in my throat. I couldn’t just sit here. I took a deep breath, pushing myself up from the pavement. I locked eyes with the campus security guard. He was wearing a dark uniform, a badge glinting on his chest, a heavy radio on his hip. According to what Donna had taught me, he was the law. I sprinted toward the gate, slamming my hands against the bars. “Arrest me!” I screamed, my voice tearing through the quiet morning. “Please, arrest me! I killed someone!” The guard jumped back, eyes wide in shock. I closed my eyes, gripping the cold iron, bracing myself for whatever fate had in store for me now. But then, a trembling, fragile voice whispered from just over my shoulder. “…Is that you?” I whipped around. My mother. She was standing right there, not even two feet away, her face pale as a ghost.

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Eighteen years old. That was the year the sound of my unraveling was broadcast over the intercom to the entire campus of St. Jude’s Academy. He told me I was his favorite, his muse. He coaxed my hand away from my mouth, his voice a velvet trap. “Don’t be afraid, Nina. No one will know.” And so, every desperate, breathless sound I made was amplified into every classroom, every hallway, every office. The next day, the bulletin boards were plastered with my love letters and photos of me on my knees before him, shirt unbuttoned, eyes wide with a devotion that looked pathetic in glossy 4×6. I was expelled. He was suspended. But he was Roman Kingsley. He just brushed the dust off his designer suit and slid back into his life of privilege. Before he left, he torched the earth behind him with two sentences: “The sins of the father fall on the daughter. Your father plays the saintly teacher, but behind closed doors, he was harassing my sister.” “Bella is dead because of him! You deserve this. You deserve every bit of it.” I flew at him, screaming, a feral thing trying to claw the arrogance off his face. He backhanded me so hard I hit the linoleum floor. My father saw it. My gentle, soft-spoken father, who had never raised a voice in his life, threw a punch. Roman’s bodyguards swarmed him. They beat him into the pavement while shouting the vilest things about him, about his daughter. My father lost his mind that day. He snapped. My younger brother, Archie, tried to demand justice. He was struck by a car two weeks later. Hit and run. Mom remarried. She couldn’t look at us anymore. I had no home. To pay for Dad’s psychiatric care, I learned that shame was a currency. I went from honor roll student to adult film star. Five years later, I was under the studio lights, arching my back, selling a fantasy. I didn’t notice when the director’s chair was taken by someone else. Until I looked up. It was him. … I tilted my head back, lips parted, letting out a fractured, breathy moan. “Cut.” That was the thirteenth time today. Roman Kingsley leaned back in the director’s chair, his tone dripping with unvarnished disdain. “Is that supposed to be desire, or are you having an asthma attack?” He swirled a pen in his hand, not looking at me. “I want heat. I want surrender. I want a sound that makes a man hard, not confused. What the hell was that?” My face burned. My throat felt stuffed with cotton. Five years ago, I had buried my face in the crook of his neck, biting my lip to stay quiet. He hadn’t liked that. He’d pried my hands away, whispering lies. “Nina, your voice is pure. It’s intoxicating. Like a songbird.” “Let me hear you. I want to hear you.” So I let him. And the microphone on the desk caught it all. The static hiss, the wet sounds, the whimpers. The whole school heard. The scholarship girl and the golden boy, desecrating the broadcast booth. On the set, the crew looked down, pretending to be busy with cables and lights. “Again,” Roman commanded, his eyes turning to ice. “And put some effort into it. You look like a corpse.” The male actor’s hand moved up my ribcage again, his touch clinical and hesitant. I closed my eyes, trying to hide the humiliation. “Cut.” Roman stood up this time. “It’s unnatural! You’re touching her like she’s made of balsa wood.” The actor was sweating, nodding furiously. I felt a pang of pity. He was young, likely his first time on a set like this. I offered him a small, reassuring smile. “Cut!” Roman roared it. His eyes were blazing. “Whores don’t smile like that! If you can’t act the part, get off my set.” I swallowed the acid rising in my throat. I brushed my hair back, deepened the curve of my lips, and cast a heavy-lidded, predatory glance at the crew. “Like this, Mr. Kingsley? Is this better?” I heard audible swallows around the room. Roman’s face went rigid. He gave a cold, sharp laugh. “Start over. Too much fabric. I can’t see the lines. How is the audience supposed to buy it?” I didn’t hesitate. I stripped off the top. Underneath was a sheer white lace bustier, cut dangerously low. The fabric was whisper-thin, leaving nothing to the imagination. Someone in the back inhaled sharply. Roman sat back down. When he saw me, hatred seemed to radiate off him like heat waves. “Action.” The actor’s fingers were trembling. I watched his panic, then took the lead. I guided his hands to my waist, pressing my body flush against his. “Cut!” Roman kicked the chair next to him, sending it skattering. “Nina Russo! Throwing yourself at men in front of a room full of people? Do you have no shame left?” “Cheap.” He spat the word out, turned on his heel, and stormed out. The actual director, a nervous man named Dave, hurried over after a few stunned seconds. “Vivian, don’t take it to heart,” he said, using my stage name. “Look, this is a soft-core romance, plot-heavy… but the investors call the shots, and when Mr. Kingsley walks in…” I nodded, pulling my robe tight around me. “It’s fine, Dave. I get it.” I really did. I’d done far worse for far less. They wrapped for the day. Dave paid me the remaining five grand in cash to smooth things over. I didn’t dwell on it. Since the day my life imploded, I had learned the art of numbness. I went downstairs, hailed a cab, and headed to my second gig. In the backseat, I checked my balance. Five grand. That covered Dad’s facility for two weeks. It was enough to buy a bouquet of white hydrangeas for Archie’s grave. They put a mask on me before pushing the cart out. The table was marble, cold enough to burn my skin. As I was wheeled past the VIP section, the hairs on my arms stood up. I prayed he wouldn’t recognize me. But the moment the chef placed the first piece of sashimi on my collarbone, I heard that familiar, mocking laugh. “God only knows where they found this one,” Roman said to his date. “I wonder if the goods are still intact?” The woman asked, voice syrupy sweet, “Does it matter?” Roman’s gaze felt like a physical weight dragging over my skin. “For Nyotaimori? It matters. It symbolizes purity. Who wants to eat off a dirty plate?” My nails dug into my palms. The event manager, a greasy man in a tuxedo, bowed low to Roman. “Mr. Kingsley has a discerning eye. But I assure you, while she isn’t… pristine… she has a natural fragrance. You’ll understand once you taste.” The double entendre hung heavy in the air. The men around the table chuckled, eyes gleaming with appetite. “Natural fragrance?” Roman mused. “Well then. Let’s see.” He clenched his jaw, watching as the chef laid the food out on my body. With every cold slice of fish, every dollop of roe, my muscles spasmed involuntarily. It was freezing. I wanted to shiver, but I didn’t dare. “Interesting centerpiece,” someone muttered. “Professional model?” “Who knows. Skin’s good, though.” I grit my teeth. Ten thousand dollars. That was the fee. Dad’s care for the next month was secured. Roman’s mood seemed to darken with every minute. The manager sensed the tension. “Mr. Kingsley… do you know her?” Roman scoffed. “Know her? Hard not to. She seduced her own teacher. High school scandal. Broadcast her moans over the PA system for the whole student body.” The air in the room shifted from hunger to sordid curiosity. One of the investors leaned in. “So, you’ve… sampled the merchandise?” Roman lifted his heavy lids. “Sampled?” He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. She’s filthy.” The cold seeped into my bones. I suddenly remembered a winter, years ago. I had run away from home, and he found me in the park behind the school. He took off his cashmere coat and wrapped it around me. “Are you an idiot? Freezing out here like this?” He rubbed my hands to warm them. I thought he was the kindest person in the world. I didn’t know then. The kindness was a lie. The cold was the only real thing. A hand pinched my waist hard. The manager whispered, “Stay still! You ruin this gig, you pay for it.” “Mr. Kingsley seems disgusted,” a guest noted. “Maybe we should send her back?” Roman’s date, a woman named Cecily, covered her mouth in mock surprise. “Oh my god. She does this often? That must be so… exhausting.” She blinked, feigning sympathy. “Roman, honey, if Miss Russo likes doing this, let’s not judge. Everyone has their own way of surviving.” Roman took a sip of his scotch. “True. She eats off this money. I’d be cruel to stop her.” He set the glass down. “But why the mask? Since she’s already laid bare, why hide the face?” The manager froze, calculating. I lay on the marble, stiff as a corpse. No. I begged silently. No. But the manager’s hand was already reaching for the silk mask. The room collectively inhaled as it came off. “Wow,” someone whistled. “A beauty.” “Those eyes…” I opened them and looked straight at Roman. He sat there, immaculate in his bespoke suit, radiating power and judgment. He looked nothing like the boy in the white shirt who used to help me with calculus. “Nina, you have a spark no one else has.” “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” Roman stood up and walked slowly toward the table. His eyes traced the line of my throat, down to the valley of my breasts. “Nina Russo. Don’t you feel any shame?” I stared at the ceiling. “Your family prides itself on being educators, don’t they? Is this what your father taught you?” “To strip naked and act as a dinner plate for men? Turns out the apple doesn’t fall far from the rotten tree.” How dare he speak of my father? My father had been catatonic for five years. The man who poured his soul into his students was gone, replaced by a shell. I looked at him, hatred finally piercing through my numbness. “Don’t you talk about him. You aren’t worthy to speak his name.” Roman smiled. It was terrifying. “Not worthy?” He turned to the crowd. “You gentlemen don’t know her? Let me introduce you.” He pointed a finger at me like a weapon. “Stage name Vivian. Real name Nina Russo. She does fifty scenes a year. She’s been in more beds on camera than you’ve had hot dinners.” The room exploded with whispers. “Wait, Lust & Lies? That’s her?” “I knew she looked familiar!” Roman raised a hand, silencing them. “I hear she takes any job. High budget, low budget. So, here’s a proposal. There are a lot of investors here. Make them happy. One business card, one movie deal. I’ll fund it.” “Twenty grand a pop. Better than lying here like cold cuts. Do you accept?” The room buzzed with excitement. “If Kingsley is funding, count me in!” The wasabi near my neck was making my eyes water. Twenty grand. I lifted my hand, picked a slice of salmon off my chest, and put it in my mouth. I chewed slowly, forcing my eyes to go soft, inviting. “Is that a promise?” I asked, voice steady. “If the gentlemen are willing to invest, who am I to say no to money?” Roman’s jaw muscles bunched. “Of course. If they invest, you give them a live preview. Right here.” I brushed my hair back, arching my back to emphasize my curves. “Then thank you, Mr. Kingsley, for the opportunity.” The manager looked like he’d won the lottery. “Ladies, perhaps you’d like to retire to the terrace? Gentlemen, stay…” Roman turned to Cecily. “Cecily, you’re my fiancée. I don’t want you seeing this filth. Go wait in the car.” “But Roman—” “Go.” I lowered my eyes. Fiancée. Cecily. Before I could process it, a business card was jammed into my cleavage. The gold-edged cardstock scratched my skin. The hands didn’t leave. Another hand reached out, sliding a card into the band of my thong. My bodice ripped under the pressure of the cards being forced in. Someone smeared fruit preserve from the platter across my collarbone. My face went pale, but the smile stayed plastered on. Roman gripped his glass until his knuckles turned white. He watched them touch me. He watched them shove cards against my skin, leave sticky fingerprints, leave marks. When there was nowhere left to put a card, and I was covered in red marks and food debris, the manager finally called it a night. The room cleared out slowly. I lay on the table, barely breathing. The sharp edges of the cards had cut me in sensitive places. I sat up, limbs trembling violently. I picked the cards off my body one by one. Thirty-five cards. Some had smears of blood on them. Roman stood in the shadows, his eyes red-rimmed. I held up the stack of cards and shook them at him. “Mr. Kingsley. Thirty-five cards. I expect half the payment upfront. That’s three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” He smashed his glass on the floor. Shards flew, nicking my ankles. He stormed over and grabbed my chin. “Are you insane? Is money that important? Or do you just enjoy this? Answer me!” His voice shook. His hand shook. I looked at him, a hollow laugh bubbling up. “Mr. Kingsley, are you worried about me?” He shoved me back onto the table. He leaned over, his breath smelling of scotch and rage. “Nina. I regret ever going easy on you.” “If I had known you’d turn into this… this thing… I wish I’d never met you.” I looked down and started picking up the cards I’d dropped. I stacked them neatly and gave him a polite, practiced smile. “Mr. Kingsley, the wire transfer… that’s still happening, right?” He stared at me. Then, pure, unadulterated fury took over. “You really are a money-grubbing whore. Is there anyone cheaper than you?” He pulled a black Amex from his jacket pocket and threw it at me. It hit my cheek, the plastic edge stinging like a slap. “Rot in hell.” He turned and walked out. I picked up the black card. I pulled my clothes on over my sticky skin, walked to the manager, and collected my base fee. I went to the nearest ATM. I transferred every cent of the $360,000 limit to the care facility’s account. Transaction Complete. The adrenaline crashed. I walked out of the bank and stood on the street corner, unsure where to go. I just walked. Aimless. Until someone shoved me hard. I stumbled, hitting my hip against a stone planter. “Why don’t you just die!” I touched my forehead; blood trickled into my eye. But I saw the face. Mom. She was holding a baby. Her new husband stood next to her. She wasn’t done. She lunged, tearing at my shirt. “Slut! Whose bed did you crawl out of this time? Who are you trying to ruin now?” Her nails raked down my neck, exposing the hickeys and bruises from the party. “Honey, stop!” Her husband tried to hold her back. I kept my head down. “I’m sorry. I just… I just came to deposit money.” “Don’t you talk to me!” She shrieked. “You curse! Look at you! Look at those marks!” She pointed at my neck. “My Archie… my baby boy was only fifteen… he’s dead because of you!” She collapsed onto the sidewalk, wailing. Her husband gave me a desperate look, signaling me to leave. I bowed deeply to her. “I’m sorry.” I turned and ran. I ran until my lungs burned, until I collapsed in a dark corner of a public park. I buried my face in my knees. Archie. My baby brother. He ran out that day to find Roman, to demand an apology. He never came home. Mom was right. I was a curse. I found a 24-hour urgent care. The doctor stitched my forehead without asking questions. “Any deeper and you’d need a plastic surgeon,” he muttered. I paid him and left. The next day, I went to the facility to see Dad. He was sitting on a bench in the garden, lecturing to an empty row of chairs. He held a tattered notebook. I sat on a stone stool nearby. He glanced at me, didn’t recognize me, and continued his lesson. “Bella Kingsley was my favorite student,” he told the air. “She was just… too fragile.” “There was a student teacher that year. Paul Gentry. He had his eyes on her.” “I warned her. I intervened. I stopped her from seeing him.” Dad’s voice cracked. Tears streamed down his weathered face. “But… later…” He choked on a sob. “Later, she was cornered by those delinquents… I didn’t protect her…” I sat there, my heart twisting. Dad had done the right thing. He had always been the protector. I handed him a tissue. “Don’t be sad, sir. It wasn’t your fault.” He took it. “Thank you, miss.” I reached for another tissue, but behind me, I heard a thud. I turned. Roman was on his knees in the grass. “What did you say?”

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The night before my dossier for a senior research fellowship was due, my boyfriend secretly submitted my name for a two-year deployment to the Cerro Chajnantor outpost—a brutal, isolated observatory seventeen thousand feet up in the Andes. When I confronted him, asking why he would do such a thing, he barely looked up from his phone. “Mia was using my laptop yesterday,” he said casually. “She must have clicked it by accident. It was just a harmless little joke.” “A joke? There’s a twenty-four-hour secondary confirmation. All you had to do was click ‘Decline’.” Mia. Mia Warren. She was the new first-year grad student Carter had taken under his wing this semester. Young, pretty, and constantly hovering around him with wide, adoring eyes. He knew exactly how the system worked. If a deployment application wasn’t explicitly declined within twenty-four hours, it automatically bypassed the grace period and went straight to the approval board. I was going to be sent to a frozen wasteland, completely cut off from the world, my academic momentum entirely derailed for two years. To him, my future, my relentless years of grinding, were just material for a cute little prank. The chill that spread through my chest was instantaneous. It didn’t take an hour; it took a single second for my heart to turn to ice. I didn’t say another word to him. I just logged into the portal and hit Confirm. Days later, when Carter saw the finalized deployment orders on my desk, the casual arrogance drained from his face. Panic set in. “That’s the high-altitude outpost! It’s practically a death sentence for your research right now! There was a twenty-four-hour window—why didn’t you decline it?” … When the automated email pinged in my inbox, confirming my deployment to the high-altitude observation station, I froze. Then, a quiet, white-hot fury ignited in my blood. Yesterday, I had given Carter my login specifically so he could submit the final paperwork for my promotion to Senior Research Fellow. My phone buzzed against the desk. A text from a colleague in HR. “Hey Nora, did you hit the wrong button on the portal? You’re queued for the extreme-altitude mission. You have a 24-hour cooling-off period to retract it.” Carter and I had been together for seven years. We were the golden couple of the astrophysics institute. Just three months ago, we had returned from a prestigious exchange program in Europe. Everyone in our circle knew we were planning a wedding next year. We had been looking at condos in Pasadena. My hands were shaking as I dialed his number. “I just got a deployment confirmation for the Cerro Chajnantor outpost. Why?” His voice came through the speaker, lazy and entirely unbothered. “Oh, that. Yesterday Mia came into my office to go over some data sets, and she saw I was compiling your files. She made a comment about how the high-altitude site is desperate for experts in galactic evolution, so she submitted your name as a joke.” He paused, his tone as light as if we were discussing what to order for lunch. “She’s just a first-year. She has this romanticized view of extreme-environment astronomy. She was just playing around, Nora.” “There is a twenty-four-hour retraction window. Why didn’t you cancel it?” Mia Warren. The fast-tracked prodigy Carter had recruited this year. She was fresh-faced, overly sweet, and whenever she looked at Carter, her eyes held an undisguised, breathless hero-worship. Carter knew the protocol better than anyone. He knew that if the application wasn’t manually retracted within twenty-four hours, it entered the formal audit process. Once approved, a deployment to that specific Andean outpost meant a minimum of two years. No reliable internet. Frequent power grid failures. A complete and utter severing from the cutting edge of academic research. “If I hadn’t checked my email in time, this transfer would be legally binding! She used my credentials without my consent, Carter. That’s a massive breach of protocol.” My throat felt tight, the words scraping out. I heard Carter sigh through the receiver, the sound thick with irritation. “God, Nora, since when did you become so uptight?” “It was a joke. Mia was going to tell you today anyway. Even if you missed the email, she would have reminded you by tomorrow at the latest.” “You want to report her to the ethics board? Fine, report me too. I’m the one who gave her access to the terminal.” He hung up. I stood by the window in the institute’s hallway, staring out at the empty, pre-dawn streets of the city. Suddenly, the last seven years felt like looking at a stranger through a distorted lens. All I had to do was click the Decline button at the bottom of the email. One click, and it would be over. But instead, I opened the observatory’s database. I started downloading the high-altitude acclimatization guide, the extreme-cold equipment manuals, the winter survival protocols. My finger hovered over the Decline button. Slowly, deliberately, I moved the mouse away. A knock at the door of the duty room pulled me back. “Dr. Jackson? Someone’s looking for you downstairs.” I found Mia standing in the main lobby, right in front of the showcase of our recent academic posters. She was holding two steaming cups of coffee, and when she saw me, her face broke into a radiant, sunny smile. “Dr. Jackson!” She offered me one of the cups. “I just got off the phone with Dr. Cole. He’s taking the team up to the Mount Lemmon observatory this weekend. Do you think it would be okay if I tagged along?” Her eyes were wide and clear, her tone earnest, as if she were genuinely seeking my blessing. It had been like this for three months. Ever since she joined Carter’s lab, she had mastered the art of wearing the most innocent expression while doing the most provocative things. I took the coffee but didn’t drink it. “What do you think?” Mia tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking down. “I don’t know… Dr. Cole said this observation run is critical. But I was worried you might misunderstand. I know you’re usually his partner for these things…” “Then don’t go.” She blinked, stunned. “You came to ask for my opinion, right?” I set the coffee down on the nearest table. “My opinion is that you shouldn’t go.” The color drained from Mia’s face. Before she could formulate a response, the elevator doors chimed open. Carter stepped out. When he saw us, a deep crease formed between his brows. “Mia, I told you to wait in the car. What are you doing up here?” “I just wanted to ask Dr. Jackson if it was okay… I was so afraid she’d be upset.” Mia’s voice dipped, lacing the perfect amount of vulnerability and hurt into her words. Carter walked over and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be silly. Why would you need to ask her? I don’t need anyone’s permission to bring my own grad student on a trip.” He turned his gaze to me, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and impatience. “Look at how much she cares about your feelings, Nora. And you? Are you really going to hold a grudge over that little deployment joke?” I pointed a finger at Mia, my voice deadly quiet but vibrating with rage. “She cares about my feelings? For the last three months, she’s been bringing you breakfast, leaving sticky notes on your desk right in front of me, fighting to sit next to you in every seminar, and posting those ambiguous, cozy photos of the two of you on her Instagram Story. Who exactly is she performing for?” “I am your girlfriend! She’s trying to edge me out right to my face!” “Every day it’s Dr. Cole this and Dr. Cole that. It makes me sick.” “To my face, I’m Dr. Jackson, but behind my back, she’s praying I disappear so she can monopolize all your academic resources. Isn’t that right?” Mia went completely pale. Carter stared at me as if I were a creature he didn’t recognize. “Have you heard enough of yourself, Nora? When did you become so bitter and paranoid?” “Mia is in my lab! It is my job to mentor her! Why is your mind so entirely in the gutter that you have to twist a perfectly normal mentor-student relationship into something dirty?” “Mia is generous enough not to hold this against you. Apologize to her right now, and we can put this whole ugly mess behind us.” A sharp, humorless laugh escaped my throat. “Are you insane? Apologize to this manipulative little girl? Not a chance in hell.” Carter’s lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “Nora. Do not push my bottom line.” Bottom line. The phrase hit me like a physical blow. Seven years ago, at the Mauna Kea summit, a freak blizzard had nearly torn the roof off our observation dome. He had held me in the freezing dark, his voice muffled against my hair. I’ll protect you for the rest of my life, Nora. You are my bottom line. That line didn’t belong to me anymore. “Then let’s break up,” I said. Carter let out a cold, dismissive scoff. “Fine. We’re done. Just don’t call me crying in the middle of the night when you realize what you threw away.” He turned and guided Mia toward the doors. As they walked away, I heard him murmur to her, “Just ignore her. You’re coming with me this weekend.” Back in my office, the glow of my monitor cut through the dim room. The countdown timer for retracting the deployment application read three hours. I opened a new tab and started pulling up the latest operational reports from the Andes station. Just last week, the extreme cold had caused a catastrophic equipment failure. Two engineers had been forced to hike six miles through a whiteout to reach a communication relay. Another outpost had to abandon half their research parameters because supply drops were delayed by storms. But it was also true that the air up there was thinner, the atmosphere utterly devoid of light pollution. It offered the most pristine view of the cosmos on the planet. The world’s top astrophysicists rotated through that site. If I survived two years there, the data I could collect would guarantee me a tenured professorship anywhere I wanted upon my return. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like a punishment at all. For years, I had molded my career to fit Carter’s timeline. I had wanted stability. I had turned down three different high-altitude fellowships just to stay close to him, to build a life together. I didn’t have to shrink myself anymore. I closed the browser. My phone lit up with a text from my best friend, Sarah. NORA! I just saw the physics department’s group chat. Someone posted a photo of Carter and Mia at the post-seminar drinks. They are practically sitting in each other’s laps! She attached a screenshot. The lighting in the bar was dim, but it was impossible to miss. Carter was sitting in the center of a booth, Mia pressed right up against his side. Someone had commented under the photo: Dr. Cole, you lost the bet! The penalty is hugging the woman closest to you for thirty seconds! In the accompanying short video, amidst the cheers and wolf-whistles, Carter turned and naturally wrapped his arms around Mia, pulling her in. My heart seized for a fraction of a second, and then, mercifully, it went numb. I texted Sarah back: I know. Then I reached for an empty cardboard box and began packing the reference books I would need for the mountains. I had less than a month before departure. Two weeks later, an administrative assistant from Carter’s lab dropped an elegant invitation on my desk. “Dr. Cole is hosting his grant closure banquet tomorrow night at the faculty club. He specifically asked that you attend.” “I don’t have time.” The assistant looked taken aback. “But Dr. Jackson… you co-authored half the papers on this grant.” “I have other plans.” She offered a polite, strained smile. “You get a plus-one. Dr. Cole made a point of saying he really hopes to see you there.” A few junior researchers at the nearby desks glanced over. I took the envelope. The night of the banquet, Mia was stationed at the entrance of the dining hall, wearing a blush-pink cocktail dress and clutching a framed ‘Excellence in Research’ certificate. When she saw me, her eyes lit up, and she hurried over. “Nora! You made it. Today was my formal thesis proposal defense. I was worried it wouldn’t be much of a celebration on its own, so I begged Dr. Cole to combine my little party with his big grant dinner.” I gave her a curt nod. “Congratulations.” “Thank you, Dr. Jackson!” Her smile was blinding. “We saved a seat for you at the head table.” I ignored her and found an empty chair at a table in the far corner of the room. It didn’t take long for Carter to find me. He looked sharp in a tailored charcoal suit, his jaw tight. “Nora. Move to the head table. What are you doing hiding back here?” “It’s quieter.” Carter took a deep breath, reining in his temper. “I let you have your space and give me the silent treatment for two weeks. Haven’t you thrown a big enough tantrum?” “We have sat next to each other at every single celebratory dinner for the last seven years. Are you really going to nuke this over a deployment application that you already canceled?” People at the adjacent tables were starting to stare. An older professor we both respected stepped in to smooth things over. “Come on, Nora. Come sit with us. The chair has been empty all night.” Reluctantly, I moved to the main table. There was an empty seat next to Carter. Before I could pull it out, Mia glided over, sat down effortlessly, and turned to Carter. “Dr. Cole, I was hoping we could finalize the itinerary for the Astronomy Society summit next month. Now that my proposal is approved, you promised you’d introduce me to the big names.” She turned her doe eyes toward me. “Dr. Jackson, you’re coming too, right? The three of us could go together.” I picked up my water glass. Just last year, Carter had promised that the next time the international summit rolled around, he was taking me. You need to network with the heavy hitters, he had said, straightening my lanyard in a hotel lobby. Let the people who say you only get published because of me see what a powerhouse you are on your own. My heart had fluttered then. I had felt so incredibly seen. Now, the coldness in my chest was just as real as that love had been. “The two of you should go,” I said smoothly. “I don’t have the time.” Halfway through the dinner, I slipped out to the terrace to get some air. Carter followed me out, his hand wrapping around my wrist. His palms were rough—calluses built up from years of handling heavy equipment in the cold. “Nora, what exactly is your endgame here?” “Exactly what I said.” I pulled my arm from his grip. He let out a frustrated, biting laugh. “How long are you going to hold this over my head? Is this still about the deployment?” “I talked to Mia. She swore to me she was going to remind you! Even if you never checked your inbox, she would have told you the next day!” I nodded slowly. “Then I suppose I owe her a thank you.” “Stop talking to me in that tone.” He stepped closer, his voice dropping into a demanding register. “You are coming to the summit with me next month. I promised you I’d take you, and I am keeping my word.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and strode back inside, the hem of his suit jacket slicing through the cool night air. The morning of the summit, at 8:00 AM, I stood by the window of my apartment, looking down at the street. Carter’s SUV was idling at the curb. Mia was leaning against the passenger side door, periodically glancing up toward my floor. I pulled the blinds shut. My phone vibrated. A text from Carter: Come down. This is your last chance. I typed back: I’m packing. I’m not going. You’re prioritizing packing over the most important networking event of the year? If you don’t come today, you’re going to regret it. He drove off with Mia. That afternoon, he posted three times on Instagram. Every single post featured Mia. Taking the newest addition to the lab to see how the titans of the field operate. The absolute wonder in her eyes reminds me of the early days. The kid got overwhelmed after getting praised by Dr. Sterling. Summit wrap-up photo. The new blood needs the exposure. The future belongs to them. The comments from our mutual colleagues started rolling in immediately. Is Dr. Cole acting as a mentor or a boyfriend here? So attentive! Where’s Nora? Did the golden duo finally split? Mia is definitely talented. Carter always had an eye for potential. Sarah screenshotted the whole thread and sent it to me, absolutely fuming. This little bitch is doing this on purpose! You guys might not be married, but everyone in the department knows you’ve been together for seven years. This is disgusting! She is literally stealing your life in broad daylight. Are you seriously not going to do anything? Was it disgusting? No. It was just intensely pathetic. But right on the heels of that thought came a massive, sweeping sense of relief. It only took one first-year grad student to show me exactly what seven years of devotion were worth. The more I had prioritized him, the more entitled he felt to my sacrifices. The retraction deadline for the Andes deployment was gone. There was no undoing it now. I threw myself into the preparations. Surviving at seventeen thousand feet required rigorous work. I stocked up on Diamox for altitude sickness, specialized thermal gear, heavy-duty vitamin supplements, and spent my weekends at the extreme-environment survival training center. Oddly enough, once I embraced the reality of it, I felt like I was breathing fresh air for the first time in years. A few days before my flight, I met Sarah for dinner. I chose a restaurant known for incredibly dense, caloric, heavily spiced stews—something close to the survival rations I’d be eating on the mountain. Sarah looked at me like I was an alien. “Carter’s Instagram is a public shrine to Mia right now, and you have the appetite to try out new cuisines?” “Why shouldn’t I?” I smiled, taking a bite. Work was work, and love was love. For years, I had coddled Carter’s ego and accommodated his moods, but this time, he had crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. The rich, heavy spices and the thick, warming broth were unexpectedly comforting. Walking back to my apartment, I actually found myself humming. Sarah linked her arm through mine, studying my face. “Are you really over it? Because from what I’ve seen online, Carter and Mia have practically been glued together since they got back from the summit.” I didn’t answer. Our path took us past the old brick buildings of our alma mater. I told Sarah I’d catch up with her later and walked alone toward the ivy-covered physics building. The rooftop observatory here was where Carter and I first met. I had been a terrified first-year master’s student; he was already the youngest rising star in the department. That night, my advisor had brutally dressed me down in front of the whole lab for miscalibrating a telescope, and I had hidden up here to cry. He found me, gently guided me to the edge of the roof, and pointed down at the sprawling, glittering lights of the city. Look down there, he had said. One messed-up data set. In the grand scheme of the universe, what does it really matter? From a weeping grad student, I grew into his most trusted co-investigator. We had spent countless nights on this very roof, debating galactic evolution, arguing over observation models, celebrating our breakthroughs. Before every major field deployment, we came here. Carter used to lean against the railing, staring at the distant silhouette of the university’s main telescope dome. Nora, the speed at which you’re progressing is starting to make me sweat, he’d say. I would look at his profile in the moonlight and laugh. Then you’d better keep running, Dr. Cole. Don’t let me leave you in the dust. In our third year together, at the Mauna Kea observatory, a piece of hardware I was responsible for failed, corrupting three days’ worth of irreplaceable data. The review board sat in a semicircle, ready to tear me apart and ship me back to the mainland in disgrace. Carter had stood up, physically placing himself between me and the board. I am the lead investigator on this project, he told them. I take full responsibility. I signed off on Dr. Jackson’s calibration protocols. If anyone is getting penalized, it’s me. He absorbed the entirety of the academic fallout and volunteered to stay an extra month in the freezing isolation of the summit to re-run the numbers. That was the night we crossed the line from colleagues to lovers. Now, with exactly three days left until my flight, the final approval for my deployment cleared my inbox. The elevator hummed as I rode it back down to the street. My phone buzzed. Sarah: Sent you the final checklist for your gear. Take care of yourself out there. I will, I replied. Stepping out of the main gates of the university, an alert from the Andes station flashed on my screen. Extreme wind warning. Ambient temperature -30°F. Mandatory equipment checks required every two hours. Two years. Maybe more. But this time, I was walking into the freezing dark because I chose to. The wind on the rooftop had been biting, whipping the hem of my coat around my legs. I leaned against the brick parapet, watching the city breathe below me. In the distance, the university telescope dome stood resolute; closer by, the lights in the apartment windows blinked out one by one. My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was my younger sister, Emma. “Nora…” Her voice was trembling so violently I could barely understand her. “Mom fell. She fell down the basement stairs. Her tibia is shattered, and she broke three ribs… one of them punctured her lung. They’re rushing her into emergency surgery right now. The doctor said with the operation and the ICU deductibles… they need a deposit of forty thousand dollars immediately.” My throat locked up. My mother had raised Emma and me on a threadbare pension. Lately, she had been complaining about a dull ache in her leg, but whenever I begged her to see a specialist, she just brushed it off. Just getting old, sweetie. A heating pad will fix it. “How much do we have to put down right now?” “They need forty thousand to clear the major surgical holds, but the rehab is going to cost way more…” I hung up the phone, gripping the cold iron railing until my knuckles turned white. I made decent money, but two years ago, I had donated heavily to the institute’s new telescope fund. Whatever was left of my paycheck had been dumped into the down payment for the condo Carter and I were supposed to buy. I pulled up my banking app. Available balance: $24,000. I scrolled through my contacts and called Carter. It went to voicemail. I called again. Four times. Not a single answer. Throughout our seven-year relationship, he had always made significantly more money than me, but we kept our finances fiercely independent. I paid the down payment on the condo; he was supposed to cover the renovations. When he didn’t pick up, I swallowed my pride and started calling my old mentors and colleagues. Within an hour, I had managed to borrow another $6,000. I was still $10,000 short. I rushed back to my apartment at 2:00 AM. While waiting for an Uber to the hospital, I opened Instagram. Mia had just posted a new Story. Added to Close Friends. The photo was dimly lit, but the background was unmistakable. It was the heavy mahogany desk in Carter’s home office. Sitting perfectly centered on the wood was a dark blue velvet box. Resting inside was a Montblanc fountain pen, the iconic white star logo gleaming under the desk lamp. The caption read: How incredibly lucky I am to have a mentor who gives everything to his students. Dr. Cole said this is a reward for finishing my first independent data set, and the best birthday present ever. I promise to work twice as hard to be worthy of this trust! The location tag was set to Carter’s apartment complex. The timestamp said it had been posted three hours ago. I stared at the pen. I remembered it perfectly. We had seen it at a luxury academic trade show last year. Carter had lingered over the glass case for ten minutes, murmuring, When I land that Department of Energy grant, I’m buying this for myself. The price tag was $3,500. More than my entire monthly take-home pay. My stomach violently heaved. Finally, I dialed Sarah’s number. She answered, her voice groggy but immediately shifting to alert when she heard my breathing. “How much are you short?” “Ten thousand.” “Send me the hospital’s billing portal link. I’ll cover it. Pay me back whenever. You’re about to leave the country anyway.” “Just focus on your mom, Nora. We’ll figure the rest out.” Carter didn’t call me back until noon the next day. I could hear the dull roar of an airport terminal in the background. He was flying to Chicago for an emergency symposium. “What happened last night? My phone died.” “Mia’s first paper got accepted by a peer-reviewed journal, so we had a little impromptu celebration.” I sat in the hospital cafeteria, staring at the blurry black-and-white image of my mother’s punctured lung on my tablet. “That’s an expensive pen to give a student, isn’t it?” Silence fell over the line. The terminal noise seemed to fade. “Nora, are you seriously policing how I motivate my own grad students now?” “Mia getting published in a core journal in her first year breaks every record our lab has. As her advisor, buying her a pen to encourage her to stay in research—how is that a crime?” Encouraging her was fine. Buying a gift was fine. But doing it in the middle of the night, in his apartment, gifting her the exact luxury item he had sworn to buy for himself to mark his own greatest triumph? That was not fine. I hung up. A moment later, a text from Carter popped up. Did you get the deployment paperwork sorted out with HR? None of your business, I typed back. I wasn’t going to tell him that I was already locked in. Once the final confirmation was stamped for the high-altitude post, only a catastrophic medical emergency could reverse it. Carter sent a voice memo, his voice tight with suppressed anger. “I know you’re just going to cancel it at the last second anyway. We’ve been partners for seven years. A place like that will break you. Stop throwing a tantrum. Do you really think you can survive in this field without me?” “You need to formally apologize to Mia. If you don’t, you can handle your own liaisons with the international committee. I’m not sticking my neck out to introduce you to the board.” We had an agreement. He was going to use his established network to introduce me to the titans of cosmology at the end of the year. I could build the connections myself, eventually, but having him vouch for me would have shaved five years off the process. It didn’t matter anymore. I wasn’t going to be here anyway. I opened his contact card, blocked his personal number, blocked his work number, and routed his email to the trash. I was going to the mountains.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “395305”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I was the eternal runner-up, the shadow to the golden boy’s light, until the day the Exchange System bound itself to my soul. Neon-bright commentary—visible only to me—began to scroll across my vision like a live stream chat from hell. [It’s over. This bitter, villainous side character has always been jealous of the male lead. He’s definitely going to use the System to steal the lead’s SAT scores!] [Thank god the male lead can hear the System, too. Now he can just coast, enjoy his youth, and sleep through the exams!] [Let the villain scheme. What does it matter? He’ll end up with a zero, and the lead will just get a building donated to Harvard in his name. Sweet justice!] Villainous side character? Me? I almost laughed. Who said I wanted to swap his test scores? What I wanted was something far more expensive. … [Congratulations, Host. You have been bound to the Exchange System. You have exactly one opportunity to initiate a trade.] I asked, internally, “Can I trade anything? Even exam scores?” [Of course. Please designate your target.] “Paxton Wentworth.” The moment his name left my lips, Paxton, standing a few lockers away, stiffened. His hands balled into fists. When he turned to look at me, his gaze was a cocktail of contempt and amusement. So, the commentary was right. He could hear us. Paxton Wentworth. The Valedictorian presumptive. The golden boy. And then there was me. The scholarship kid. The charity case. The eternal Salutatorian. He came from old money, a dynasty of wealth. My mother, Debbie, was their housekeeper. Debbie loved to remind me of my place. “Master Paxton is like fine china,” she’d hiss, cigarette smoke curling from her lips. “You’re just a paper plate. What makes you think you deserve to sit at the same table?” When Paxton’s entourage locked me in the gym locker room overnight, Debbie didn’t bat an eye. “You must have upset him. He wouldn’t discipline you without cause. You were born with a wretched fate, Dustin. Stop whining.” I used to think she was just terrified of losing her job, that her sycophancy was a survival tactic. Then the floating comments told me the truth: [The side character is actually tragic. He’s the real heir, switched at birth. His housekeeper ‘mom’ is actually Paxton’s biological mother…] [Tragic? Please. He deserves it. Who told him to be a snake and try to steal Paxton’s scores? Thank god Paxton is prepared. He’s going to tank the test on purpose so the villain gets nothing!] [Exactly. Once the villain is revealed as the biological son, the Wentworths will be too embarrassed to claim him. Paxton will crush him. Isolation, depression… he has it coming.] Isolation? Depression? Suicide? Sorry to disappoint the audience, but that’s not in my script. Because I’m not swapping grades. I’m playing for higher stakes. Between classes, Paxton sauntered over to my desk, that signature effortless smirk plastered on his face. “Dustin. Still clinging to second place, I see. Need a tutor?” Dustin. My mother named me that. I once asked to change it, telling her the kids called me “Dustbin.” She’d laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “You don’t like it? You ungrateful little brat. Your father died right after you were born—you’re bad luck. ‘Dustin’ is better than you deserve.” That name was the weapon Paxton’s friends used when they cornered me in the bathroom, forcing my head toward the toilet bowl. “You’re a Dustbin, right? Let’s see if you like the smell of garbage.” Paxton had watched from the doorway then, wearing the exact same smile he wore now. I kept my eyes on my textbook. “No thanks, Paxton. Your time is money. Focus on yourself.” “Aww, looking out for me?” Paxton chuckled, leaning in. “Let me let you in on a secret. I’m done with school. The teachers here are too slow. My parents hired five Ivy League consultants for private coaching at the estate. By the time finals roll around, the gap between us is going to be a canyon.” He beamed, radiating confidence. The floating text went wild. [Paxton is a genius! The fake tutor story will convince the villain to go through with the swap!] [Meanwhile, Paxton is going to party his way to graduation. The villain is going to swap for a blank sheet of paper!] [Who cares about grades when you’re a Wentworth? He can buy his way into Yale. This is the alpha energy we need!] True to his word, Paxton stopped coming to class. Guided by the commentary, I once followed him to a high-end club downtown. I watched from the shadows as he downed shots with girls who looked like Instagram filters come to life, disappearing into a private room for the night. I didn’t judge. We were eighteen. Choices were made. I chose to wear my oversized uniform and stick to my routine. Library. Desk. Sleep. Repeat. Without Paxton’s daily torment, I had more time to sharpen my mind. I knew he had spies in the classroom, so I played my part. I feigned exhaustion. I let my head hit the desk. But the moment the final bell rang, I vanished into an abandoned janitor’s closet in the basement to study until my eyes burned. If Paxton wanted a performance, I’d give him one. I was just dying to see the look on his face when he realized the swap never happened. Examination Day. The culmination of twelve years of hell. I walked to the testing center alone. At the gates, a black SUV pulled up. The Wentworths emerged, looking like royalty. And there, trailing behind them, was Debbie. They fussed over Paxton, adjusting his tie, handing him water. Debbie looked at him with a hunger, a desperate, fawning adoration she had never once shown me. She hadn’t been home in six months. She’d left me in our crumbling apartment in the worst part of town to live at the manor, catering to Paxton’s every whim. She didn’t leave a dime. If I hadn’t saved money from working nights at the diner, I would have starved. But it was better this way. When Debbie was home, the noise was constant. The abuse was physical. She looked at me like I was a stain she couldn’t scrub out. I never understood why. Now, watching the live comments and the tableau before me, the puzzle pieces locked into place. [I almost feel bad for the villain… his foster mom treats him like a dog and worships her bio-son. Even when he gets revealed as the real heir, his bio-parents won’t want him. A life without love…] [Whatever. He’s a cheater. If he wasn’t trying to steal the score, we wouldn’t get the satisfaction of the face-slap!] [Wait… is he actually going to swap? He looks calm. Focused. Paxton looks… hungover.] I suppressed a smile. Finally, a smart observer in the chat. Paxton caught my eye and waved, loud and obnoxious. “Dustin!” The crowd turned. “What are you smiling for? Feeling lucky?” He strode over, radiating toxic charisma. “I’m alright,” I said flatly. “You?” “Me? I’ve had those gold-medal tutors, remember? You’ve never beaten me before, and you certainly won’t start today.” He was baiting the trap. I looked him dead in the eye. “Paxton, take the test seriously. Good luck.” He sneered, his eyes glinting with malice. “Oh, for your sake, I will take it very seriously.” “Alright, that’s enough!” Debbie rushed forward, placing herself between us like a human shield. “Dustin, you gutter rat, don’t you dare distract Master Paxton with your bad juju. Get lost!” Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth approached, wrinkling their noses at my frayed collar. “Paxton, darling, don’t engage with the help. Focus.” This was the first time I stood so close to my biological parents. Thanks to the spoilers in the air, I felt nothing. No longing. No hope. No expectation meant no disappointment. I turned and walked into the exam hall. I had held my breath for eighteen years. Today, I would finally exhale. I attacked the exam with surgical precision. When the final pencil dropped, I felt like a samurai sheathing a blade. Meanwhile, the comments updated me on Paxton. [Paxton is a legend! He slept through the whole thing! He literally drooled on the answer sheet!] [I can’t wait for the swap! The villain is going to inherit a nap!] [Wait… why did the villain write so furiously? That didn’t look like someone expecting a free ride…] Paxton had ignored my warning. He had closed the academic door on himself. Good. I had already locked the other exits. A week later, the school held a projection assembly to estimate scores before the official release. Paxton stood up, chest puffed out. “I’m calling it. 1580.” The class gasped. A near-perfect SAT score. “That’s higher than your mocks!” the guidance counselor exclaimed. Paxton winked at me. “I had a breakthrough.” He turned the spotlight on me. “What about our runner-up? What’s your estimate, Dustin?” “About the same,” I said quietly. Paxton roared with laughter. “The same? You? Dreaming big today, aren’t we?” “Just telling the truth.” He didn’t believe me. He thought I was posturing, preparing for the swap. “Well,” Paxton announced to the room, “It looks like we have a rivalry. Dad’s already called the press. On results day, we’re going to live-stream the moment. You game, Dustin?” I nodded. “I wouldn’t miss it.” Especially since I knew that results day was the exact date Debbie had chosen for the big reveal. The day she planned to claim her retirement fund. Results Day. The classroom was a circus. Cameras, parents, students, and curious onlookers squeezed into the space. Paxton had done a great job hyping the “Battle of the Geniuses.” The comments were buzzing. [Paxton’s Harvard acceptance is already bought and paid for, but this is about dominance!] [The villain is going to be humiliated live on camera. I have my popcorn ready!] Students began logging into the portal. “1250! Yes!” “Damn, 1080… my mom is going to kill me.” “1420!” The camera swung to us. “We have two students predicting near-perfect scores. Gentlemen?” Paxton shot me a look of pure arrogance and typed in his ID. The screen refreshed. The room went silent. 0. (Incomplete/Void) “Zero? How is that possible?” The counselor stammered. “A system error?” Paxton remained terrifyingly calm. He looked at me, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. “Dustin. You really are ruthless. I thought you’d leave me with a low score, but a zero? You didn’t even try to make it look real.” The crowd murmured. “What’s he talking about?” Paxton stood up, voice projecting for the back of the room. “It sounds insane, but I swear on the Wentworth name this is the truth. Three months ago, I discovered Dustin bound a supernatural ‘Exchange System’ to himself. He planned to swap our exam results.” He paused for effect. “I knew I couldn’t stop him. So, I purposely tanked the test. I slept through it. I made sure that when he stole my score, he stole absolutely nothing!” Pandemonium. Flashbulbs exploded. Livestream comments poured in. “Is this real?” “Sorcery?” I stood up slowly, adjusting my glasses. “Paxton, failing is one thing. Inventing a sci-fi conspiracy theory to cover your shame is another.” “You know the truth!” he spat. “Do I?” I kept my voice soft, dangerous. “I saw you at the club, Paxton. Every night. While I was studying, you were doing body shots. And now you want to blame a ‘System’?” He flinched. The crowd’s gaze shifted. “I partied because I wasn’t going to let you profit from my hard work!” Paxton yelled, losing his cool. “And I don’t need the score! I’m a Wentworth! I’m going to Harvard anyway!” The door banged open. Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth marched in, followed by Debbie, whose eyes were bright with greed. “That’s right,” Mr. Wentworth boomed. “We have spoken to the Dean. A substantial donation has been arranged. Paxton’s legacy admission is secured.” [The Wentworths are dropping a whole building for him! Money talks!] [The villain is finished. He stole a zero and lost his dignity.] Emboldened, Paxton sneered at me. “Prove me wrong, Dustin. Log in. If your score is also zero, or remarkably low, it proves you tried to swap and failed!” “Check the score!” the crowd chanted. I smiled. “Alright.” I typed in my ID. Paxton held his breath, eyes glued to the monitor. The page loaded. No numbers appeared. Just a banner in bold crimson text: [SCORE PENDING. VERIFICATION REQUIRED. TOP 0.1% PERCENTILE.] “A shielded score?”

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I rented a beautiful loft right across from the university campus for my daughter, Piper, so she could focus entirely on her finals. I thought I was giving her a sanctuary. But only seven days into my business trip, my phone erupted. It was a call from her roommate’s mother. “Hello? Are you Piper’s mother? Your daughter is a total tramp. She leaves the bathroom door unlocked while she showers—who exactly is she trying to lure in?” The woman didn’t wait for me to speak. Her voice was a serrated blade of vitriol. “She’s skin and bones, looks like she couldn’t carry a child to term if her life depended on it. My son wouldn’t look twice at a girl like that.” “And she had the nerve to call the cops? Just wait until I spread this around. Let’s see who’ll want to marry her once I’m done.” My brain stalled, struggling to process the insanity, until a piercing, broken scream tore through the background of the call. It was Piper. “He was spying on me! He was watching me through the crack!” “Mom! Mom, please—” Piper was sobbing, her voice thick with a terror I had never heard before. My heart didn’t just break; it shattered into jagged shards of pure rage. … By the time I roared into the parking lot and sprinted up to the loft, the small, stylish space was swarming with people. “Officers, you can’t believe a word this little brat says! This is my daughter’s apartment too. As her mother and her brother, we have every right to stay here!” “Exactly! We paid our share. You can’t just kick us out into the street. Not happening!” A woman in her fifties—weathered, aggressive, and wearing a cheap tracksuit—was barking at two uniformed officers. I looked past her and saw Piper. Her face was a mess of tears, and there was a distinct, red handprint blooming across her cheek. “That’s not true,” Piper choked out, her voice trembling. “Kaitlyn was just staying here as a guest. I never took a dime from them.” “You little liar! You need to be taught a lesson!” The woman lunged, her hand raised to strike Piper again. One of the officers caught her arm mid-air. “That’s enough! Back off, now!” “Mom, just stop,” a girl about Piper’s age whispered, pulling the woman back. I recognized her: Kaitlyn. Piper’s “best friend.” According to Piper, Kaitlyn came from a struggling family—the kind where the parents prioritized the son and treated the daughter like an unpaid servant. Piper had told me Kaitlyn’s parents only gave her a two-hundred-dollar monthly allowance, and even that was framed as a “loan” she had to sign for. Piper, with her bleeding heart, had practically adopted her. She shared her meals, bought her groceries, and covered the cost of everything from shampoo to laundry detergent. Kaitlyn had seemed so grateful, running errands for Piper and defending her in petty campus squabbles. Even I had been fooled. I thought she was a good girl, a survivor. But looking at the wreckage of the apartment now, the only thing I felt was white-hot fury. “Did you touch my daughter?” I ignored the mother and daughter for a moment. My eyes locked onto the “brother”—a scrawny guy with bleached-blonde hair and a predatory, greasy gaze that was still lingering on Piper’s body. Before anyone could move, I acted. I didn’t wait for an explanation. I didn’t wait for justice. I lunged and planted a solid fist right into the center of his nose. As he doubled over with a howl of pain, I rained down a flurry of slaps and strikes across his pathetic face. “You disgusting creep! You think you can touch her? You think you can look at her?” I grabbed a handful of his fried hair, shoved him to the floor, and started kicking with every ounce of strength I had. “My son! My baby!” the mother shrieked, slapping her thighs in distress. “You hit my son? I’ll kill you!” She charged at me. I pivoted, caught her by the hair just like I had her son, and delivered a sharp kick to her midsection. “Mom!” Piper cried out, her voice a mix of shock and relief. “You’re a lunatic! Oh god, my stomach… it hurts!” the woman wailed, clutching her belly. “Kaitlyn, don’t just stand there! Help us!” Kaitlyn stood frozen, her eyes wide with terror. She didn’t move an inch. But I wasn’t done. I stepped toward Kaitlyn and delivered a stinging slap that sent her reeling. “That’s for letting this happen.” “Mrs. Bennett…” Kaitlyn sobbed, covering her face. “I didn’t have anything to do with this!” The officers finally moved in to separate us. “Alright, that’s enough! Everyone, sit down and shut up!” The older officer looked at me and the other woman with weary frustration. “Finals are in two weeks. Do you really want to spend them in a jail cell? If this escalates and someone ends up with a criminal record, say goodbye to any chance of a decent career. You want that for your kids?” The mother was still clutching her head. “I don’t care about college! I want money! This bitch is going to pay for hitting us!” The more she acted like a feral animal, the more I forced myself to look like the rational victim. I smoothed my hair and took a deep breath. “Officer, I’m sorry. I acted out of pure motherly instinct. My daughter is seventeen. She’s a child. These people invaded her home and harassed her.” I pulled Piper into my arms. We both played the part—the traumatized mother and the broken daughter. “Seventeen?” the woman spat. “She’s old enough to know how to flirt. She’s not some innocent lamb. Forget college, she should just start popping out kids already.” I gritted my teeth, my eyes turning cold. I had planned to just kick them out and be done with it. But she wouldn’t stop insulting us. “Enough,” the officer snapped. “I’ve heard enough. Look, there’s no serious injury here. If you have a dispute, settle it now while we’re here to witness it. If anyone starts swinging again, I’m taking everyone to the station.” The woman launched into a long, rambling sob story about how her son was a “good boy” and how Piper was “hyper-sensitive” and “obsessed with boys.” I cut her off. “I’m not arguing about ‘feelings’ or ‘he-said-she-said.’” I looked at the officer. “My daughter needs to study. I don’t have time for this drama. They’ve trashed the place and broken my property. I want them out, and I want them to pay for the damages.” The woman’s face contorted. “Pay? With what? The stuff was already broken! You’re just trying to scam us!” I scanned the room. It was a disaster. There were stains on the white rug, cigarette burns on the curtains, and the faint, sour smell of unwashed bodies. A pair of dirty socks lay on the velvet sofa. The washing machine was running, half-stuffed with cheap clothes that definitely didn’t belong to Piper. “If it was broken, why were you using it?” I countered. “Mom, he used my things,” Piper whispered, her eyes fixed on the floor. “I can’t stay here. I want to go home.” My heart sank. I realized that if I let this go, if I let them walk away with a win, Piper would lose her nerve. She’d grow up believing that when people hurt you, the only option is to run. I couldn’t let her believe that. “Mrs. Bennett, please,” Kaitlyn suddenly dropped to her knees. She was sobbing, looking up at me with desperate eyes. “My mom doesn’t have any money. I’ll pay you back, I swear. Once I get a job after graduation, I’ll give you every cent.” She turned to Piper. “Piper, I’m so sorry. I promise it won’t happen again. Please, please forgive me.” She started bowing, her forehead hitting the floor. Piper stepped back, horrified. “Kaitlyn, stop! Get up!” I watched the mother. She wasn’t moved by her daughter’s humiliation. She looked at Kaitlyn with nothing but disgust. “Worthless girl. This is about all you’re good for.” “We won’t leave until you forgive us!” Kaitlyn sobbed. The officers looked at me, their expressions softening. “Look, you clearly have money if you’re renting a place like this. They clearly don’t. You’re never going to see a dime of that money.” I refused to be guilt-tripped. I knew the washing machine—a four-thousand-dollar high-end model—was likely ruined. If I let them walk, they’d just find another victim. “Piper,” I said, my voice cold. “Look at her. This is the girl you called your best friend. She ate your food, used your home, brought her toxic family into your safe space, and let her brother treat you like prey. Do you still think she’s your friend?” Piper’s eyes filled with fresh tears as she looked at Kaitlyn. “Just go. Take your things and go. We’re done. I never want to see you again.” “Fine by us! You think we actually like you?” the mother sneered, finally standing up. Kaitlyn lowered her head in shame. The officers signaled that the matter was settled. The mother started throwing their belongings into mismatched suitcases, cursing Kaitlyn under her breath the entire time. The brother, Tyler, didn’t look at the cops. He looked at me—a cold, menacing stare that promised this wasn’t over. “Officers,” I said, “Since they can’t pay, I want a written confession. A statement of what they did and an apology. Surely that’s not too much to ask?” “That seems fair,” the officer agreed. Kaitlyn froze. A verbal apology is air; it disappears. But words on paper? That’s evidence. “If you won’t write it, I assume you don’t think you did anything wrong?” I challenged. “Or maybe your mother would rather find the four grand for the repairs?” The mother shoved Kaitlyn toward the table. “Write it! Just don’t mention me or Cody. If this ruins his chances of getting a job, I’ll skin you alive.” Kaitlyn wrote the letter, her hand shaking. I checked it, made sure it was signed and dated, and then watched them leave. As she walked out, Kaitlyn bit her lip and threw one last look of pure resentment over her shoulder. “Tell me exactly what happened,” I said, looking at the trashed apartment. Piper broke down. “I didn’t think she was like this, Mom. I thought we were friends. She started coming over to study, then she’d stay late on Saturdays. I didn’t want her walking back to the dorms alone, so I let her sleep over.” “Then she told me her roommates were bullying her. She said she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t study, and that getting into a good college was her only way out of that house.” She wiped her eyes. “I had no idea she’d brought them here. I was in the shower this morning, and I heard a man’s voice. I thought I was dreaming until I saw him through the door.” The memory of the brother’s eyes made her shudder. I felt a chill of my own. I couldn’t tell her my fears yet—she was too fragile. I just held her. “This is a hard lesson, Piper. Your home is your fortress. You never, ever let someone in unless you’re certain they’ll protect it as much as you do. We took a hit today, but we’re going to be okay.” I helped her pack her essentials. I wasn’t letting her stay here another night. Back at our house, watching her sleep, I finally allowed myself to think. For the next few days, I drove her to and from school myself. I also called her advisor. I was polite, but firm. “I’m worried about Kaitlyn’s family situation. There was an incident at the apartment I rented for Piper. The police were involved. I’m concerned it’s going to affect Piper’s focus.” The advisor sighed. “To be honest, Mrs. Bennett, I was going to call you. Piper is… she’s very sweet. Almost too sweet.” She told me that Kaitlyn’s grades were mediocre at best. She tried, but she just didn’t have the aptitude. Between her and Piper, there was a vast gap in natural ability. “Piper gets things on the first try. I have to explain things to Kaitlyn four or five times, and she still looks lost. But she’s persistent. She’s been hounding Piper to tutor her constantly. I told her to come to me with questions, but she always goes back to Piper.” I realized then that Kaitlyn wasn’t just a “poor friend.” she was a parasite who resented the very host she was feeding on. I warned Piper to stay away from her at school. Don’t eat anything she offers. Don’t go anywhere alone with her. I thought the school environment would be enough of a shield. Until I checked the drawer in the entryway. The ten thousand dollars in emergency cash I kept there was gone, replaced by a few lonely twenty-dollar bills. Then, the midterm results came out. Piper’s scores had plummeted. When she came home after her meeting with the advisor, she locked herself in her room and refused to speak. Something had gone horribly wrong.

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Seven years together. Every time I brought up marriage, my boyfriend suddenly developed hearing loss. That is, until the day I was scrolling through a local Reddit thread. “Deliberately giving my girlfriend the cold shoulder so I can surprise her with a proposal on her 30th birthday. Any advice?” The location tagged was the exact restaurant we were currently sitting in. The next second, the lights went out. My boyfriend took two steps forward and dropped to one knee. My breath hitched in my throat. The words I do were already trembling on the tip of my tongue. Then, a three-tiered cake fell from the sky, smashing directly over my head. My boyfriend’s female best friend leaped out from the shadows. She giggled, a sharp, piercing sound. “Happy dirty thirty, future wifey!” “Love the little surprise your good boy and I planned for you?” 1 The crowd erupted in cheers. Confetti cannons blasted overhead. Glitter mixed with thick, sugary frosting, sliding down my face in clumps. The “effortless, no-makeup” makeup look I had spent three hours perfecting was, in an instant, reduced to a total joke. But Blair wasn’t done. On the restaurant’s projector, she threw up a slideshow of my most tragic high school photos. The girl on the screen had her head bowed timidly, her frame frumpy and her face violently broken out in cystic acne. Blair let out a bark of laughter and slapped Cameron hard on the shoulder. “Damn, Mommy’s little boy, am I seeing things? Is that your gorgeous future bride on the big screen? I thought it was a before-picture for a tragic makeover show.” Cameron’s frat brothers exchanged glances, snickering behind their hands. “That’s brutal, man,” one of them muttered. Cameron kicked the leg of Blair’s chair. “Who told you to dig up these photos?” Blair put her hands on her hips, looking entirely unbothered. “Oh, so we’re getting an attitude now? You’re yelling at your creator?” “I seem to recall a certain someone who couldn’t aim straight into the toilet when we were kids. I basically had to potty-train you. Now you get a girl and suddenly you forget who raised you?” Cameron slipped one hand into his pocket and flicked her forehead with the other. “Are you insane?” The words were a reprimand, but the trailing edge of his voice dripped with an undeniable, sickening indulgence. “Where’s the lie?” Blair twisted her head to look at me. “Seriously, Jo, you don’t believe me? When we were kids he used to see who could pee the farthest—” Before she could finish, Cameron clamped a hand over her mouth. “Will it kill you to shut up for two seconds?” “Mmph! No!” They were practically tangled up in each other’s arms, half-wrestling, half-embracing. Bickering back and forth. The body language was electric, intimate. Anyone walking into the room would have assumed they were the couple. “Cameron! Let me go, or I’m suing for harassment.” “With that flat chest? Please, who’d want to harass you?” “Yeah, yeah, go touch your ugly bride.” “Watch your mouth.” “Blah blah blah~” I stood there, staring at the absolute absurdity unfolding in front of me. My chest felt like someone had pressed a heavy, scalding wet towel over my lungs. Suffocating. Humid. I couldn’t drag in a breath. I grabbed my purse. “You guys have fun. I’m done.” 2 Cameron took two quick strides and blocked my path. “Don’t take it to heart, Jo. She’s been living in Europe for too long, she just doesn’t have a filter anymore.” “We’re just messing around.” I shoved his arm away. “A joke is only a joke if the person being laughed at finds it funny.” The velvet ring box in my palm was pressing so hard into my skin it ached. I had it all planned out. If he didn’t take the initiative tonight, there was no shame in a woman proposing. I had replayed the exact sequence of the proposal in my head a thousand times. Will you marry me? I had practiced those five words for half a month. I had imagined a million different outcomes. But I never, ever imagined this. I never imagined he would use the very concept of a proposal as a punchline for a prank. A sharp, acidic burn flared in the back of my nose. By the time I realized what was happening, hot tears were already spilling down my frosting-covered cheeks. A flash of panic crossed Cameron’s eyes. He kicked one of his friends in the shin. “Hey, don’t cry. I’m sorry, okay? I screwed up.” “What are you idiots standing around for? Get over here and apologize to Jo.” The guys shuffled over, looking properly chastised. They mumbled reluctant apologies. While Cameron was lowering his voice to coax me, Blair suddenly snapped. “Why are you apologizing to her? We worked our asses off to plan this surprise. If she’s too stuck-up to appreciate it, fine, but what is this dramatic little performance?” “Throwing a tantrum over nothing. Women are so much drama. Next time you guys go out, don’t even bother inviting me.” Before she stormed out, she made sure to leave one final ultimatum hanging in the air. “It’s me or her. Choose.” Cameron froze. But his eyes remained locked on Blair’s retreating figure. Frantic. Anxious. I watched the way he looked at her. And suddenly, the agonizing throbbing in my chest just… stopped. It went completely still, like a pool of dead water. “If you want to go after her, go.” “I’m not stopping you.” 3 Having received his permission, Cameron practically sprinted out the door after Blair. Terrified he wouldn’t catch her in time. I went back to our apartment alone. A hollow shell, I curled my knees to my chest inside the porcelain bathtub. The frosting and the cheap confetti from the cannons had formed a concrete-like paste in my hair. The more I scrubbed, the more tangled it became. Eventually, my arms gave out. I collapsed into the murky, lukewarm water. My body temperature plummeted, then began a slow, feverish climb. As the bathroom tiles began to spin, the buzzing vibration of my phone echoed against the porcelain. I dragged myself up to answer it. The voice on the other end sounded distant, repeating my name with mounting urgency. “Cam?” I murmured instinctively. “Jo, it’s me,” my coworker corrected, her voice thick with second-hand embarrassment. I stared at the wall for a few seconds, then whispered an apology. “I forwarded the client feedback to your email. We’ve got a briefing in ten.” “Jo, you don’t sound right. Are you okay?” “I’m fine. Give me five minutes.” Trembling, I pulled myself from the tub. I tore through the medicine cabinet for Advil, but found nothing. Desperate, I dialed Cameron’s number. Usually, even in the middle of a high-stakes meeting, he would answer my calls on the first ring. Especially on the nights I was home alone. He used to stay on the line with me until the sun came up. But now. A dozen calls went straight to voicemail. Maybe the fever was making me delirious. Or maybe the crushing weight of seven years of repressed emotions was finally suffocating me. The more he ignored me, the more obsessive I became. I mashed the call button until my thumb bruised. Until a notification popped down from the top of my screen. An Instagram story from Blair. A mirror selfie. She was wearing a massively oversized white button-down. No pants in sight. The caption: [Who’s a good boy doing Mommy’s laundry? ~] The next slide was a Boomerang. Cameron, bent over the sink, vigorously scrubbing a pair of her blood-stained underwear. And right there, resting at the bottom of the sink, sinking beneath the frothy, pink-tinted water… was the custom platinum band I had bought for him. I stared at the screen for a long, long time. My hand, which had been suspended in the air, finally went slack. It fell to my side. 4 Cameron vanished for ten straight days. I only knew he was alive because of Instagram. Blair opened her boutique bar. From mixing drinks to seating VIPs, Cameron was doing it all himself. Cameron, the heir to a tech empire, a man who usually looked down on the world from a glass penthouse, was currently wearing a tight black bartender’s uniform, complete with a collar and cat ears, drawing in a crowd at the front door. One of his frat brothers texted me, telling me not to overthink it. [Bros help bros out.][Cam doesn’t even see her as a girl. Think about it, they grew up together, they’d take a bullet for each other. If they were going to hook up, it would’ve happened long before you came along.] I let out a single, cold laugh. I locked my phone and boarded my flight. For half a month, I ran on fumes. Business trips, endless meetings, rewriting proposals. I used work as an anesthetic. On the day of the final contract signing, Cameron, who had been MIA for weeks, suddenly materialized. He leaned against my office doorframe, spinning his Porsche keys around his index finger, an eyebrow cocked. “Why the shocked face? Isn’t today your big signing day?” Right. In the past, Cameron had always used his family’s connections to smooth the way for my deals behind the scenes. He would drive me to the client’s office himself. The moment the clients saw Cameron’s license plate, even the most stubborn executives would suddenly find a reason to give me a fair hearing. But I didn’t need that anymore. While he was burying himself in a hipster bar, I had closed the deal myself. It wasn’t until the client nodded and reached for the pen that I finally realized it. I could survive without him. “Go back and keep Blair company,” I said, brushing past him to grab my trench coat. “Baby.” Cameron softened his voice, hooking his index finger around mine. When the cold metal of his ring dragged against my skin, my mind violently flashed to that sink full of dirty, pink water. A wave of pure nausea rolled through my stomach. “Don’t touch me!” Cameron recoiled, genuinely taken aback by my shout. “What is your problem?” “Are you still throwing a fit because I didn’t come home for a few days?” “Didn’t I explain this over text? My bro was opening a bar, I had to be there to help out. I have my own life, Jo. I can’t orbit around you 24/7.” Bro? The absurdity of his word choice almost made me laugh out loud. For the past few days, my timeline had been flooded with videos from our mutual friends. Blair sitting in his lap, tipping bourbon into his mouth. The amber liquid sliding down his throat as he demanded another round. The most damning video was them playing Suck and Blow with a playing card. Their lips pressed together, separated only by a paper-thin barrier of cardboard. He calls that a bro? Hilarious. “Whether you were ‘helping out’ or just screwing around with Blair, you know the truth.” My words hit a nerve. His voice dropped an octave. “Enough. I’ve told you a million times, Blair and I are like guys. Why do you always have to make her the villain?” “Then stop doing things that make me cast her as one.” I finished gathering my files. He blocked the doorway, refusing to budge. “I said, I’m driving you.” The air pressure in the room plummeted. A standoff. I took a deep breath. Whatever. There was no point in arguing with a madman. The contract was what mattered. “Where’s the car?” 5 Inside the Porsche, the silence was suffocating. The passenger seat had been readjusted. It dug uncomfortably into my lower back. “My mom wants you to come over for dinner tonight.” “I don’t have time. I have a client dinner.” “I’ll have someone cover for you.” “No need.” The light turned red, and he slammed on the brakes. The tires shrieked against the asphalt. I had no idea what I had said to set him off this time. He whipped his head to face me, his eyes dark, his tone dripping with acidic sarcasm. “Jo, when does this end? You’re the one who was practically begging to get married, and now you’re the one refusing to see my parents.” “You’ve been picking fights for weeks. This is all because I didn’t play into your little hints about a ring, isn’t it? You didn’t get your way, so you took it out on Blair, and now you’re taking it out on my mother?” His face was slightly distorted with rage. So he knew. He knew the whole time I wanted to marry him. That unnamable, hollow ache rushed back into my chest. I thought of my Nana, lying in the ICU back in my hometown. That frail, shrinking silhouette. Smiling through the oxygen tubes, telling me she just wanted to see me settled and happy before she let go. I didn’t want her to leave this world with regrets. That was the only reason I kept bringing up marriage. During those brutal weeks she was in the hospital, I would finish work, rush to the airport, fly back home, and then catch a pre-dawn flight back to New York just to make it to the office. Six hours of commuting, day in and day out. I remembered one specific evening, stranded in the rain during rush hour, unable to hail a cab to the airport. Standing on a crowded Manhattan street, I was so desperate I could barely breathe through the tears. In my most helpless moment, the moment I needed Cameron more than anything. Where was he? He was throwing a massive welcome-back gala for Blair. New York City banned private fireworks. So he rented hundreds of drones, lighting up the night sky to mimic falling stars. Then, the drones rearranged themselves to form a glowing portrait of Blair’s face against the clouds. The crowd gasped in awe, holding up their phones to record the spectacle. And I was left standing on the wet pavement, staring up at that familiar face in the sky. I knew that face. It was the girl from the photo he had carefully cut out of his high school yearbook and hidden away for a decade. “Here’s the prenup. Read it over, and when you’re done acting out, sign it.” Cameron’s voice snapped me back to the plush leather interior of the car. “You have three days. After that, the offer expires.” 6 Cameron pulled over an entire block away from my office building. I knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to teach me a lesson. To force me to lower my head and come crawling back in the rain. He had no idea. Today was just a formality. Whether it was my career, or the rest of my life. I didn’t need him anymore. In the corporate conference room, the ink dried on the contract. Both my boss and I let out a massive sigh of relief. The company’s numbers had been slipping lately. This was one of the few lifeline accounts we had landed. My boss leaned back, asking me what I wanted as a reward. A massive year-end bonus, or a month-long vacation in Europe? I thought about it. “We just opened a new branch in Syracuse, right? I want to go.” “But aren’t you and the young Mr. Cameron—” My boss stopped mid-sentence, catching the look in my eyes. He smoothly pivoted. “Going back to your hometown is a great idea. Spend some time with family. The new branch is desperate for senior leadership anyway.” I took a sip of my black coffee. The bitterness coated my tongue. “Let me give you a heads-up now. Once Cameron and I are officially over, his family’s connections to our firm might take a hit.” My boss waved a hand dismissively. “Look, those CEOs gave you meetings because of the Cameron name, sure. But they aren’t stupid. They sign the checks because you do the work.” “That last client specifically requested you for the next quarter. Honestly, I’m less worried about his family pulling strings and more worried you’re going to take all my best clients with you to upstate.” “But… are you absolutely sure about this? You guys haven’t been dating for a year or two. It’s been seven years, Jo. A woman only gets so many seven-year stretches in her life.” I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the towering glass spire of Cameron’s family tech empire. The LED billboard on the side of the building was currently running a looped teaser for Blair’s upcoming birthday bash. I smiled. A genuine, weightless smile. “There’s nothing left to hold onto.” “I’ll just consider those seven years fed to the dogs.” 7 I had never actually planned to date Cameron for seven years. In the beginning, everyone assumed I was just a novelty to him. I thought the same thing. He used me to experience how the other half lived; I used his last name to lock down clients. A transactional arrangement. Nobody owed anyone anything. So, the first time I walked into my cramped studio apartment and found him wearing an apron, cooking pasta and doing my laundry, I thought he had been possessed by a demon. My best friend Harper’s assessment was blunt: “He’s just bored of being rich. He’s playing house—slumming it for fun. Give it a few months, he’ll crack.” I agreed completely. But no one expected the months to turn into years. He kept doing the chores. My cold, empty rental slowly filled with the warmth of another human being. I started to get greedy. The expiration date on our “arrangement” kept getting pushed back. In our third year together, my parents were killed instantly in a horrific car crash. Cameron, a spoiled, entitled trust-fund kid who had never flown commercial in his life, followed me onto a train, then a rusted Greyhound bus, and finally a pickup truck, just to reach my rural hometown to help arrange the funeral. I knelt by their caskets for three days and three nights. He stayed right beside me, never leaving my shadow. I forced myself to play the adult. I made polite conversation with distant relatives. I refilled the urns of coffee, set out the trays of stale cookies, and managed the condolences. Everyone in town praised me for being so capable, so composed. Everyone told me: You’re the oldest. You have to be strong. You can’t break down now. Cameron was the only one who saw the fractures in my armor. I expected him to offer some hollow, cliché comfort like, You don’t have to be strong around me. But he didn’t. That night, we were crammed onto a narrow, creaking twin mattress. He gently rubbed my back. And with his terrible, off-key pitch, he slowly, haltingly sang the lullaby my mother used to sing to me. The heat radiating from his chest bled through his thin button-down, chasing away the bitter chill of the November night. The emotional dam I thought I had reinforced so perfectly just… shattered. I wept like an animal. Snot and tears smeared all over my face, soaking his shirt. I don’t know how long I cried. Hovering between sleep and waking, I whispered into the dark, “Cam. I don’t have parents anymore.” He kissed the top of my head, his voice a soft rumble. “Then you marry me. From now on, my parents are your parents.” I opened my swollen eyes. Moonlight was spilling through the frosted windowpane, catching the lines of his face. His eyes were as bright as the stars. To say I didn’t fall in love with him in that moment would be a lie. But the tragedy was, the moment I finally surrendered my whole heart to him… He took a step back. 8 Handing over my accounts took three days. In my downtime, I gathered every designer bag, every piece of jewelry, and every pair of shoes Cameron had ever given me. I scheduled a luxury consignment service to come to the apartment. Exhausted, I slumped down onto the hardwood floor. A sudden draft sent a chill down my spine. I turned around. The front door was wide open. Cameron was standing in the living room, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked near his ear. His face was thunderous. Three of his frat bros hovered behind him. The air in the room instantly felt like a tribunal. “Care to explain?” I furrowed my brow, confused. Explain what? Was he mad I was packing up the things he bought me? Did he want them back? “Still playing dumb?” Cameron pulled a piece of glossy paper from his pocket and threw it at my feet. He leaned down, casting a dark shadow over me, his voice laced with venom. “When did you learn to play such cheap, manipulative tricks, Jo?” I picked it up. It was a sonogram. The one Harper had accidentally left on my coffee table last week. How did he get it? His friends muttered behind him: “I thought a girl like her would at least be decent. Didn’t know she was such a gold-digger. Refuses to sign the prenup, refuses to see your mom, and tries to trap you with a fake pregnancy instead.” “Women know women. Blair called it. What a psycho.” Before, they were just bros. Now that it was convenient, she was a woman who knew other women? A harsh laugh escaped my throat. Cameron’s expression darkened even further. “Get up. We’re going to the clinic.” “You are not keeping this.” I violently slapped his hand away. “Don’t flatter yourself.” “Did I ever say this was yours?”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “395291”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When the power went out at my house, one of my older brother’s friends kissed me in the pitch black. The problem? I had no idea which one of them did it. So, being the strategic mastermind that I am, I sent all three of them the exact same text message, packed with baseless accusations and a direct hit to their egos: “I know it was you. And just so you know, the mint gum didn’t hide your breath at all. Also? Your technique is garbage.” The results were instantaneous. And completely unhinged. The slick, cynical playboy: “If you hated it that much, I’ll never touch a cigarette again.” The hyper-athletic, golden retriever of a college jock: “Technique takes practice. Care to help me work on it?” The repressed, ultra-domestic CEO: “???” Who the hell was the culprit? But before I could even begin to cross-reference their alibis, my bedroom door nearly rattled off its hinges, and the real explosion happened. “Harper, who the f–k did you just send that text to?” 1 With our parents summering in Europe, my older brother Connor did what he always did: turned our house into a crash pad for his inner circle. The bass from the living room was rattling my teeth, and my eyes were practically crossing as I tried to study for my finals. Finally, I slammed my textbook shut. I marched down the stairs, fully prepared to channel my inner banshee and demand they turn the volume down. Right as my foot hit the bottom step, the power cut out. The entire estate was plunged into a suffocating, ink-black darkness. Connor, in his infinite wisdom, had drawn all the blackout curtains earlier to set a “vibe,” meaning I couldn’t even see my own hand waving in front of my face. “Harper, don’t panic,” Connor’s voice boomed from somewhere to my left. “I’m right here.” “I’m not panicking,” I muttered, pressing my back into the corner of the hallway, perfectly still. The space was suddenly cramped, bodies bumping into each other in the blind confusion. It was impossible to tell who was who. I’m vertically challenged on a good day, and every single one of Connor’s friends hovered around the six-foot-two mark. If I started flailing around, I was bound to grab something entirely inappropriate. I reached blindly into my pocket for my phone’s flashlight, but my knuckles brushed against the solid muscle of someone’s thigh. “Sorry,” I breathed. Before the word fully left my mouth, I felt a hand—warm and calloused—brush deliberately against mine. I didn’t think much of it. In the pitch black, accidental contact was inevitable. But then, the air shifted. Someone was stepping into my personal space. A tall silhouette loomed in front of me, the sheer physical presence of him radiating a heavy, undeniable heat. Before my brain could fire a single warning signal to my muscles, he moved. With lightning speed, he stole a kiss against my cheek. It was fleeting. A butterfly landing and taking off in the span of a heartbeat. A mistake, my brain rationalized. It’s dark. People are tripping over each other. But as soon as that shadow retreated, another presence stepped up. Or maybe it was the same one, emboldened. This time, whoever it was leaned down, the scent of something sharp and clean washing over me. And then, he had the absolute audacity to press his mouth directly over mine. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a good kiss. His lips were incredibly soft, carrying the faint, cooling trace of peppermint. But the sheer, brazen nerve of it sent a jolt of electricity straight down my spine. I shoved him back, my hands hitting a solid chest. Thankfully, the phantom kisser didn’t push his luck. He stepped away instantly, melting back into the darkness as if the moment had been nothing more than a fever dream. Ten seconds later, the backup generator kicked in. The house flooded with blinding, halogen light. I blinked against the glare, subtly wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. I stood in the corner, my eyes scanning the living room where three ridiculously gorgeous men were suddenly looking incredibly innocent. Which one of you sons of bitches was it? 2 Connor was the first one to jog over, looking at me like I was a frightened toddler. “You good?” I stared at him, my internal monologue screaming. I just got robbed of my peace of mind in the dark, and I don’t even know who to sue! Should I blow the whistle? Telling Connor would be a nuclear option. Knowing my brother, he’d flip the nearest piece of furniture and start throwing punches. It would be the end of this tight-knit circle forever. I hesitated. If I was being entirely honest with myself… I wasn’t disgusted. In fact, a quiet, rebellious part of me found the whole thing exhilarating. It was the thrill of the unknown, the quiet danger of the dark. Misinterpreting my silence, Connor assumed I was shell-shocked from the blackout. He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the massive sectional sofa. “Relax. You’ve got four guys in here to protect you. Even if a ghost showed up, we’d beat its ass.” The problem was, the sofa was currently occupied by an absurd amount of long legs. As I approached, the three of them shifted in perfect, silent unison, carving out a space for me right in the middle. I sank into the cushions, instantly surrounded by an overwhelming wave of expensive cologne and raw, masculine energy. I won’t deny it: my brother’s friends were objectively beautiful men. I just never expected to be on the menu. Who was the good- Samaritan who took matters into his own hands? I rested my chin in my hand, watching them casually set up a poker game on the coffee table. My mind went to work. First: Connor. We are biological siblings. Disgusting. Eliminated. Second: These guys weren’t strangers. They were essentially my childhood friends. We had grown up in each other’s backyards. The fact that one of them had been secretly harboring feelings—and acting on them in the dark like a feral animal—was wild. Desperate, but with excellent taste, I decided. I began my second round of deductions. Clue number one: He was tall. Helpful. That eliminated exactly one person in the room: me. Clue number two: Soft lips. Clue number three: Peppermint. I stood up and began pacing the room, stopping in front of Suspect Number One: Dean. Six-foot-two, devastatingly handsome, with a smirk that usually meant he was about to ruin someone’s life. He ran an upscale art gallery in the city and treated the world like it was his personal playground. As I stepped directly into his line of sight, he looked up. Our eyes locked, and for a split second, I saw a flash of genuine surprise—maybe even awe—cross his face before his mask slipped back into place. He shifted his posture, leaning back into the leather sofa and raising a perfectly arched brow. “What’s wrong, Harper? Want to learn how to play? Sit on my lap, I’ll deal you in.” I didn’t say a word. I just stared at him. Unblinking. Dean looked like a golden boy, but I knew his aesthetic was a lie. He was chaotic, cunning, and completely morally ambiguous. “Look into my eyes,” I whispered, leaning in closer. Dean’s hand actually twitched. He dropped a poker chip. A faint, treacherous flush crept up the back of his neck. Guilty. Extremely guilty. Especially considering he was currently chewing a piece of mint gum. My glare intensified. “Want one?” Dean asked smoothly, recovering his composure and offering me the pack of gum. I scoffed and turned away. The other guys didn’t even blink at our weird exchange. They were used to me being a nuisance. I could have called it a day right then and there. Dean was clearly the wolf. But a good detective leaves no stone unturned. Better to interrogate them all than let a guilty man walk free. I moved on to Suspect Number Two: Harry. Harry was a few years older than the rest of us. He wore tailored shirts, had the quiet, lethal build of a former rower, and had recently taken over his family’s hedge fund. He was the “adult” of the group. He hated when we ordered greasy takeout, so on weekends, he would quietly take over our kitchen and cook us restaurant-quality meals. He was steady, reliable, and deeply composed. I sat next to him, pretending to look at his cards, but my eyes were locked on his mouth. Nice shape. A little flushed. Definitely look like they’d be soft. Wait. Focus, Harper. Harry was rhythmically flicking a silver Zippo lighter open and shut. His gaze was anchored to his cards. He didn’t even glance in my direction. Probably not him. Harry was far too disciplined to pull a stunt like that. He was a gentleman, not a prowler. Feeling a strange, hollow twinge of disappointment, I walked over to Suspect Number Three. Cole. Connor’s best friend since high school, currently attending a D1 university on a track scholarship. He was built like a brick wall—broad shoulders, narrow waist, a ridiculous eight-pack that he found every excuse to show off. He loved antagonizing me, but he was also the guy who always brought me my favorite iced coffee without asking. If it was him, I was going to banish him to the friend-zone for at least a week. “What’s with the face, Harp?” Cole asked as I hovered over his shoulder. He tilted his head back, his warm brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “Someone annoying you? Point ’em out. I’ll put ’em through a wall.” “No one,” I said, not ready to drop the bomb. It was too embarrassing. Then, I caught a whiff of something familiar. “Are you chewing gum too?” Cole hummed in agreement. He unceremoniously reached across the table, grabbed the plastic container of mints sitting in front of Harry, and shoved it into my hands. “Harry brought them. We all had some. They’re not bad. You can have the rest.” I frowned, gripping the little plastic box. I looked back over at Harry. He was still staring down at the table, running his thumb over his lighter so aggressively I thought he might spark a fire on his jeans. Dammit. Suddenly, Harry looked incredibly suspicious. Why wouldn’t he look at me? I was back to square one. It was like taking a multiple-choice test where every single answer looked like “C.” That night, I lay in bed, staring at my ceiling until the early hours of the morning. Who was it? I was losing my mind trying to put the pieces together. Finally, tossing the duvet aside, I decided to go nuclear. I opened iMessage, copied a single, loaded paragraph, and pasted it into three separate chat windows. “I know it was you. And just so you know, the mint gum didn’t hide your breath at all. Also? Your technique is garbage.” 3 After pressing send, I dropped my phone on my chest and booted up a few rounds of Call of Duty to distract myself. Without Connor’s friends there to carry my squad, I got absolutely slaughtered. Five straight losses. Fuming, I backed out to the lobby and checked my phone. My notifications were blowing up. Cole: Wait, what? Does the smoke smell really bother you that much? (Ten minutes later) If you hate it, I swear I’ll never touch a cigarette again. (Sends a meme of a sad, wet golden retriever) I stared at the screen, my blood pressure spiking. Him?! Cole? Who gave that overgrown puppy the nerve to kiss me? I was halfway through typing a scathing reply when another banner dropped down from the top of my screen. Dean: Technique takes practice. Care to help me work on it? (Venmo notification: Dean paid you $1,000.00 for “Consulting fees. Text me back.”) Harry: ??? We need to talk. In person. I furrowed my brow, dissecting every single word. Wait. Their reactions were completely chaotic. Did I just throw a fake grenade and flush out three different snipers? Before I could reply and press the advantage, the wall vibrating next to my bed practically shattered. “Harper! Who the f–k did you just send that text to?” Connor burst into my room, his hair sticking up in every direction, his face flushed red with murderous rage. He was clutching his phone like he wanted to crush it to dust. “Which one of these degenerates put their hands on you?!” 4 I froze. I had been moving too fast. In my haste to text the three suspects, I had accidentally included my brother in the mass blast. Connor towered over my bed, a terrifying mix of protective brother and unhinged frat boy. “What do you mean technique? Explain. Now.” I swallowed hard, forcing my face into a mask of pure annoyance. I tilted my phone screen toward him, showing the DEFEAT screen from my game. “My gaming technique! Look at this. Five losses in a row.” Connor blinked, the murder slowly draining from his eyes as he processed the screen. He let out a massive sigh of relief, though his forehead remained creased. “Then what was that about their breath? Jesus, Harp, I thought one of my guys cornered you.” “No!” I doubled down on the lie, crossing my arms defensively. “I was playing with some random guy online who had a massive ego. He was talking so much trash, saying he’d carry me to a win, and he totally choked. I was just telling him he’s all talk.” Connor exhaled, his chest deflating. He tossed my phone back onto the mattress, a smug grin replacing his anger. “See? That’s what you get for trusting randoms. You need your brother’s squad if you want to rank up.” Before I could stop him, he was already opening their group chat. “Boys. Get online. We’re carrying my sister.” The replies rolled in within seconds. Cole: Your sister? Harry: Now? She’s not asleep yet? Dean: We’re playing with Harper? Connor: No shit, who else? She got screwed over by some trash-talking random who couldn’t back it up. Five straight losses. Let’s show her how it’s done. I rubbed my temples as I read the screen over his shoulder. Great. None of my suspects were asleep. And now I had to sit in a voice lobby with them. Fine. Two could play at this game. Let’s get on the mics. 5 Sitting in the pre-game lobby, I stared at the five avatars lined up on my monitor. It felt less like a squad and more like a police lineup. Time to push their buttons. “Mic check, don’t pretend you’re muted,” Connor barked into his headset, sprawling in the gaming chair he’d dragged into my room. A chorus of deep, static-laced yeahs and I’m heres filtered through my headphones. But Harry’s icon wasn’t lighting up. “Harry?” I called out, making my voice deliberately soft. “Are you there?” “…I’m here,” his voice crackled through the headset. It was lower than usual, tight, like he was forcing the words out through a clenched jaw. “Why aren’t you calling me ‘Dom’ tonight?” Dean’s voice slid through the audio mix, dripping with his usual, insufferable charm. “Because I don’t feel like it. Plus, I don’t know if your technique is even worth it,” I shot back, leaning into the double meaning. For the first time in his life, Dean didn’t have a comeback. Silence. The match started. “Connor, I’m following the sniper,” I said, ditching my brother immediately. “Come to my sector,” Cole said quickly. “I’ll cover you.” “Aww, thanks Cole,” I purred, using a sickeningly sweet voice I usually reserved for mocking him. Someone coughed violently over the mic. It sounded like Harry. Cole went dead silent for a full five seconds before managing a choked, “…No problem.” A few minutes later, Dean’s voice came over the comms. “Harper. Come grab this armor.” “Wait, what?” I stopped my character in her tracks. Dean never shared loot. Ever. Connor instantly noticed. “Dom, did you hit your head? Since when do you drop legendary gear for a support player?” “Because I want to,” Dean drawled, his tone lazy but deliberate. “Our Harper deserves the best.” Connor scoffed loudly into his mic. “Back off, man. You can flirt with half the city, but keep my sister out of it. Anyone tries to make themselves my brother-in-law, they’re dead to me. Friendship over.” The silence on the voice channel became absolute, heavy, and terrifying. 6 “Help! I’m pinned!” I shrieked a few minutes later, my character sprinting backward under heavy fire. Instantly, three heavily armed avatars converged on my location from entirely different sectors of the map. The poor enemy player, realizing he had just kicked a hornet’s nest, turned and bolted in the opposite direction. I stood still in the game as Dean, Harry, and Cole formed a protective circle around my character. “You guys are the best,” I said, dragging out the syllables to make it sound as overly affectionate as possible. “I feel sosafe with you.” “Harper,” Connor snapped, annoyed. “Stop talking like that. You’re giving me the creeps.” On my screen, Harry’s character suddenly strafed sideways and ran full speed into a brick wall. Dean laughed, a low, rasping sound. “Fingers slipping there, Harry?” “…Lag,” Harry replied, his voice completely devoid of emotion. “Harper, come take this kill,” Cole said. What the hell? Did someone spike the water supply? These guys were fiercely competitive, and suddenly they were treating me like fragile glass. I happily took the points, then hit the button for the all-match voice chat. “Watch out, guys,” I broadcasted to the enemy team. “My protectors are vicious. And they’re such gentlemen. They would never take advantage of a girl in the dark, right?” The sound of sharp intakes of breath echoed through my headset. Except for Connor cursing at a sniper, my three suspects went deathly, incriminatingly quiet. 7 I slept through the morning, waking up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. My bed had essentially taken me hostage, but my stomach was staging a violent rebellion. I was starving. I refused to walk down the stairs, so I called Connor. “I’m so hungry I’m hallucinating,” I groaned. “I’m already plating the food. I cooked,” Connor said. “You? Cooked? If Mom and Dad find out you’ve been feeding me garbage takeout and claiming it’s homemade, they’ll cut off your trust fund.” “I didn’t order out, shut up.” Twenty minutes later, I dragged myself downstairs in my pajamas. Connor was suspiciously crumpling up a brown paper delivery bag and hastily shoving it deep into the trash can. “Breakfast is served,” he announced, gesturing to a plate. I sat at the kitchen island, squinting at the food. “You made this.” “From scratch.” “Connor, did the family go bankrupt overnight?” “Don’t be dramatic. Even if we lost everything, I wouldn’t let you starve.” “Then why,” I asked, picking up a fork and pointing at a very suspect piece of meat on the plate, “does this sausage look exactly like a rat’s tail?” Connor didn’t miss a beat. He smoothly took the plate from under my nose and dumped the entire thing into the garbage disposal. “You’ve been staring at screens too long. Your eyes are playing tricks on you. That was artisanal organic pork. If you don’t appreciate the culinary arts, I’ll go make you eggs.” He walked away, leaving me staring at the sink. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” I muttered. “Economy must be rough if the rats are getting ground up into the breakfast links.” Connor paused at the fridge. “I’ll Venmo you two grand if you never tell Mom about this.” “Deal.” Principles are nice, but cash is better. Remembering there was leftover steak and vegetables from yesterday’s barbecue, I wandered out to the patio to dig through the outdoor mini-fridge. I was bent over, rummaging through the bottom shelf, when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I stood up and turned around. Dean. He was standing right behind me. He looked exhausted, shadows bruising the skin under his sharp eyes. He clearly hadn’t slept. I took a subconscious step back. He matched my movement, stepping closer until I was backed against the stone counter. His eyes—dark, calculating, and dangerously magnetic—dropped to my lips. “Why didn’t you text me back last night?” he asked, his voice a low thrum. “Do you actually think my technique is bad, Harper? Or were you just trying to get a rise out of me?” Classic. Of course his ego couldn’t handle the critique. It was him, I realized. The sly bastard. Anger flared in my chest. I raised my hand to shove him away, but his fingers wrapped cleanly around my wrist, pinning it lightly against his chest. He smiled, a devastating, ruinous curve of his mouth. “Do you want to try again? See if I can change your mind?” My breath hitched. Okay, yes, the man belonged on a billboard, but I wasn’t going to roll over that easily. I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where he could shove his technique, when a voice sliced through the tension like cold steel. “Try what again?” 8 Harry. He stood in the doorway, wearing a crisp white dress shirt, the top two buttons undone, revealing the faint shadow of a collarbone. He looked like an executive who was a second away from a hostile takeover. His jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack. Dean didn’t flinch. He slowly released my wrist, never breaking eye contact with Harry. “We were just talking about trying out Harper’s new gaming headset,” Dean lied smoothly. “You look tense, Harry. Bad morning at the market?” Harry ignored him. He walked over and handed me a sleek, matte-black garment bag. He shot Dean a look that could have frozen a lake. I practically lunged for Harry, grabbing the bag like it was a lifeline. If Dean was the wolf, Harry was the sturdy brick house I could hide inside. “You didn’t have to bring me anything,” I said, trying to diffuse the testosterone thickening the air. I unzipped the bag. My jaw dropped. It was a Dior dress. Custom. The fabric felt like spun water, and the embroidery was breathtaking. I stared at it, confused. “Harry… it’s not my birthday. Why did you buy me a dress that costs more than my car?” They usually brought me keychains from trips or bought my coffee. This was a statement piece. This was a declaration. Dean let out a harsh, mocking laugh. He crossed his arms, leaning against the counter. “Since when did you become a sugar daddy, Harry? Haute couture? Feeling a little guilty about something? Trying to buy her silence?” Harry turned his head slowly, his voice dropping to a lethal calm. “Watch your mouth, Dean.” Now I was completely lost again. If Dean was the one who kissed me… why was Harry acting like a man fighting for his life? “It’s beautiful, Harry, but I can’t,” I said gently, zipping the bag back up and holding it out to him. “It’s way too much. Not without a reason.” Harry stared at me, his eyes dark and incredibly sad. “Are you sure?” I nodded. Harry took the bag back, his shoulders slumping the slightest bit. He let out a quiet sigh. “Alright. I understand.” Dean smirked, unable to help himself. “How does the rejection feel, man?” Harry shot him a look of pure venom before turning back to me, his expression softening instantly. “Where’s Connor?” “Kitchen. Pretending to know how to use a stove. You better get in there before he burns the house down. You’re the only one who actually knows how to feed us.” I put my hands on Harry’s back and shoved him toward the glass doors. I felt the muscles in his back go rigid at my touch, his breath hitching slightly. Dean stood up straight, his competitive streak flaring. “I can cook.” I snorted. “You? Your cooking relies on aesthetic over survival. The last time you tried to make an omelet, it looked like a crime scene. It was a tragedy of modern biology.” Dean opened his mouth to argue, but— “Harper.” A third voice. Dear god, is there a revolving door on my patio? 9 Cole was leaning against the doorframe. But something was glaringly different. His usually dark, sweat-tousled hair had been bleached into a brilliant, striking platinum silver. All three of us stared at him in stunned silence. “You bleached your hair?” Dean asked, genuinely baffled. “Why do you look like an anime villain?” I blurted out. Cole rubbed the back of his neck, flashing his trademark, dimpled smile. He looked directly at me. “Do you like it?” I swallowed hard. Honestly? It looked incredible. It made his jawline look sharper, made his brown eyes pop. But more importantly, my brain flashed back to a conversation from high school. We had been sitting in the bleachers, and I, in a fit of absolute teenage delusion, had declared that my future boyfriend had to dye his hair silver for me. Not blonde. Silver. Why was he suddenly fulfilling a five-year-old teenage fantasy? Was it Cole? “Also,” Cole continued, stepping onto the patio, “I threw out my vape. I’m done. Smell me, there’s no smoke. But Harper… what did you mean last night when you said my technique was bad?” The air was sucked out of the space. The entire patio went dead silent. Dean shifted his weight, his eyes narrowing into slits. Harry adjusted his glasses, a slow, dark realization creeping over his features. Cole just looked at me, his eyes wide and earnest like a puppy waiting for a treat. Oh my god. They all thought they were the only one who got the text. And now, the golden retriever had just outed the entire operation. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. I was small, helpless, and completely out of my depth. So, I did the only logical thing. I screamed. “CONNOR! IS THE FOOD READY?!” I shrieked, sprinting past all three of them and bolting into the house. 10 Breakfast was an agonizing affair. I kept my head down, shoveling whatever Connor had managed to fry directly into my mouth, praying if I didn’t make eye contact, they would let it go. They did not let it go. Dean leaned back in his chair, spinning his fork between his fingers. He kicked me lightly under the table. “So. A mass text. You really had me sweating, Harper. I thought I’d actually done something wrong.” “Yeah, me too,” Cole chimed in, leaning across the table. “I literally woke up and checked my breath in the mirror for ten minutes. I smell great. Check.” He leaned his face toward mine, but Harry reached out and shoved Cole’s face away by the forehead. “Keep your germs to yourself,” Harry muttered. “I wasn’t doing anything, you’re just paranoid,” Cole snapped back. Connor, completely oblivious to the warfare happening at his own dining table, looked up with a mouthful of toast. “What mass text?” Cole paused, looking at me. “The one Harper sent last night. Saying someone had bad breath and terrible technique.” Connor rolled his eyes, waving his fork. “Oh, that. Yeah, Harper got matched with some toxic gamer online who choked a match. It was a whole misunderstanding.” Dammit. I couldn’t take it anymore. The idea that the actual culprit was sitting here, smugly eating my eggs and getting away with it, made my blood boil. The universe was playing a joke on me, and I was the punchline. I dropped my fork. It clattered loudly against the ceramic plate. I looked up, making eye contact with all three of them. “No,” I said, my voice ringing out clear as a bell. “When the power went out last night, someone kissed me in the dark.”

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Good news: I slept with an absolute goddess. Better news: We successfully turned it into a regular weekend arrangement. Bad news: She’s my newly appointed boss. My life is officially over. 01 “Again.” The warm weight of her body pressed against mine, skin sliding against skin. “Again?” I frowned, my voice gravelly. My mouth was saying no, but my body was embarrassingly honest. I turned my head and captured her lips. Victoria and I had spent the entire weekend tangled in her sheets, losing track of day and night. Even now, on Sunday evening, she looked deliciously insatiable, her eyes dark and heavy with intent. I dug through the chaotic pile of clothes on the rug, pulling out my shirt with a monumental sigh. “I can’t. Early morning all-hands meeting tomorrow. I absolutely cannot be late. We’ve got a new CEO coming in, and I need to make a good impression.” She lay back against the pillows, her pale, elegant neck exposed to the dim light. A slow, lazy smile curved her lips. “Fine. See you next week.” “Count on it.” Monday morning. I was suffocating in a stiff suit, my corporate ID practically burning a hole in my chest as I sat in the conference room. Paige, the team lead from the adjacent desk, leaned over, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Rumor has it the new CEO is gorgeous, young, and utterly terrifying.” I couldn’t care less about the new CEO’s aesthetic appeal. “I just pray to God she’s an actual human being.” Our previous boss had been a tyrant who treated us corporate drones like disposable batteries. It took a miracle for him to get transferred out. I just wanted someone who didn’t feed on misery. The boardroom doors swung open. The room erupted into polite, enthusiastic applause as the new CEO stepped into the spotlight. I looked up. My pupils dilated so fast the room blurred. It was Victoria. My weekend arrangement. The world is a sick, twisted joke. I wanted the floorboards to open up and swallow me whole. Mercifully, the room was packed. She hadn’t noticed me yet. I sank lower in my chair, my chin practically grazing the mahogany table. Suddenly, an elbow jabbed my ribs. Paige hissed, “Miles. Ms. Mercer is calling on you.” “Who is Miles?” The voice was crisp, commanding, and hauntingly familiar. I sucked in a sharp breath and dragged myself to my feet. The moment her eyes locked onto mine, a flicker of genuine shock shattered her icy, corporate composure. I felt a cold sweat prickle my spine. I had every reason to be terrified. When we met, I’d told her my name was Preston Miles. She stared at me. Two agonizingly long seconds ticked by. Then, a slow, predatory calm settled over her features. “Mr. Preston,” she said softly. “I understand your team is handling this project. Walk me through it.” 02 I delivered the shortest, most frantic presentation of my career. Victoria only asked two brief, pointed questions. The second the meeting adjourned, I bolted from the room like the building was on fire. I wasn’t kidding. During that excruciating sixty-minute meeting, I had drafted, revised, and finalized my resignation letter in my head. But then reality hit. The economy was a nightmare. I had a mortgage, a car loan, and a bi-weekly deep-tissue sports massage habit I couldn’t survive without. I decided I could just cover my ears, close my eyes, and keep cashing my paychecks. Paige burst out of the conference room, practically vibrating. “Oh my god. She’s mother. Did you see her? The waist, the legs, that lethal gaze? She’s the absolute ceiling of female perfection.” “If we have to be corporate slaves, at least we get a view,” she sighed dramatically. “I forgive the universe for three seconds.” I managed a weak laugh. “Girls appreciate beautiful women too, huh?” “Obviously!” Paige swooned. “Even in that tailored suit, you can tell her body is ridiculous. Her aura is off the charts.” Ridiculous didn’t even begin to cover it. It was flawless. And the way she felt under my hands was even better. But the mere thought that the woman who had been whispering my name into a pillow twenty-four hours ago was now holding my career in the palm of her hand made me want to evacuate the planet. The sharp click-clack of heels broke my spiraling thoughts. Rachel, the executive assistant, stopped at my desk. “Miles. Ms. Mercer would like to see you in her office.” I stood up. I was a dead man walking. Could a meteor just strike the earth now? Please? 03 The corner office was sprawling, a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows offering a sweeping, indifferent view of the city skyline. “Ms. Mercer. You asked to see me?” Victoria looked up from her laptop, her dark eyes lazily raking over my rigid posture. “Miles?” “Yes, Ms. Mercer.” She arched a single, perfect eyebrow, a wicked amusement dancing at the corners of her mouth. “Preston?” I played dumb. It was my only defense. “I’m sorry, Ms. Mercer. Who is Preston?” She let out a soft, breathy laugh and leaned back in her leather chair, studying me like a particularly interesting puzzle. “Drop the act. There aren’t two men on this earth with the exact same face and the exact same little mole.” My hand twitched. “What mole?” Victoria raised her hand, her manicured fingertip lightly tracing the skin just behind her own ear. The gesture was dripping with an intimacy we both remembered perfectly. Damn it. I have a small mole right behind my ear. The same spot this high-powered executive had been pressing open-mouthed kisses against just yesterday. My face froze. “Victoria Mercer is my real name, by the way,” she said, her voice dripping with irony. Well, the jig was up. She knew I’d given her a fake name. I threw my hands up in defeat, offering a dry, hollow chuckle. “Small world, Ms. Mercer.” She smiled, low and dangerous. “So, I’m the new CEO you needed to impress. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let you leave my bed yesterday.” I practically put my hands together in prayer. “Victoria, please. At the office, can we just pretend we don’t know each other? Strictly professional. No personal matters.” She looked at me for a long moment before giving a single, reluctant nod. I fled the office before she could change her mind. 04 My relationship with Victoria was supposed to be purely physical. Friends with benefits. A transactional escape. Six months ago, the girl I’d spent years quietly pining over finally got a boyfriend. I was crushed. I took my bruised ego to an upscale cocktail lounge and ended up sitting next to Victoria. She looked like she was having an even worse night than I was. To make matters worse, some creep at the bar had tried to slip something into her drink. I’m a decent guy. I warned her, helped her out of the bar, and flagged down a cab. But she wasn’t just grateful; she was aggressive. Her hands were instantly on me. I was vulnerable, mesmerized by her breathtaking face, and, honestly, thinking with my lower half. One thing led to another, and we ended up in her bed. That first time had been chaotic—two strangers fumbling in the dark. But we figured each other out quickly, tangling together until the sky turned a bruised purple with the dawn. Afterward, we established the ground rules: No feelings. Just bodies. Once a weekend. We were ridiculously compatible in that department. Every time we met, it felt like we were trying to break the furniture. It was the ultimate, mind-numbing release from the exhausting grind of my life. We never asked about each other’s private lives. I naturally assumed she was just another overworked professional like me, surviving the corporate machine Monday through Friday and needing an outlet on the weekends. Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine she was a CEO. And not just any CEO—my CEO. God. 05 For the first time in my life, I was dreading the weekend. And because I was dreading it, the week flew by with terrifying speed. Victoria was buried in transition meetings. We only crossed paths once in the lobby café, and I immediately pretended to take a phone call to avoid making eye contact. Friday at noon, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Victoria. [Where are we doing this weekend?] We never used the same place twice. Sometimes a hotel, sometimes the backseat of her car, sometimes, when we were feeling reckless, somewhere secluded outside the city limits. I typed out the excuse I’d been rehearsing for three days: [Sorry, Ms. Mercer. Heading out of town for my mom’s birthday.] Victoria: [Alright. But I thought we agreed to keep things separated? When it’s personal, call me Victoria.] Separated. Right. Like that was even remotely possible. Especially not when, just that morning, I watched her verbally eviscerate the lead of the marketing team. “Did you use your dick to think of this proposal?” she had asked, her voice dropping the temperature in the room to absolute zero. The silence in the boardroom had been deafening. The marketing lead looked like he wanted to cry. And honestly? Knowing his usual performance, it definitely wasn’t a long thought. When it was my turn to present, I felt like I was walking on a tightrope over a canyon of active volcanoes. Victoria had listened, her face an unreadable mask, before offering a cool: “The theoretical framework is stunning, Mr. Preston, but did you bother to consider the actual logistical execution?” I had stood there, speechless. Seriously, how was I supposed to sleep with her now? I’d rather take a vow of celibacy. 06 Another week passed. Right on schedule, her text arrived. [Where to this weekend?] Me: [Friend’s wedding. I’m a groomsman in the next state over.] Victoria: [You don’t have a single hour of free time?] Was it true what they said about women in their thirties? Her appetite was terrifying. Me: [Nope. The drive alone is seven hours round trip.] There was no wedding. I was just a coward. Two weeks of forced celibacy was starting to claw at my sanity. On Saturday, I tried to take care of things myself at home, but it was useless. My mind inevitably drifted to Victoria, to the arch of her back and the taste of her skin, and I only ended up more frustrated. Desperate for a distraction, I grabbed an Uber to the office. Making money was the only cure for misery. But the moment I swiped my keycard and pushed through the glass doors, my soul left my body. The universe hated me. Victoria was there. She walked out of the breakroom, a mug of coffee in hand. She stopped, leaning against the doorframe, and arched an eyebrow. “The next state over? Groomsman?” I let out a dry, panicked laugh. “The wedding was… unexpectedly canceled.” She let out a short, sharp laugh, completely devoid of humor. “Miles. You are hiding from me.” 07 I sat rigidly at my desk, plotting an escape route. But Victoria had already anticipated my flight response. My desk phone rang. “Bring the Q3 projections into my office,” she ordered, and hung up. I grabbed the folder and knocked on her heavy oak door. It swung open before I could finish the second knock, and a hand grabbed my lapel, yanking me inside. The door clicked shut. Victoria shoved me against it, her mouth crashing into mine. She tasted like dark roast coffee and expensive mint. For a split second, I tried to push her away, my hands coming up to her shoulders. But then the familiar, intoxicating heat of her washed over me. Rationality snapped. I dropped the folder. My hands tangled in her hair, kissing her back with a starvation I hadn’t realized I was harboring. She hooked a leg around mine, her hands already working the buttons of my shirt. Pieces of perfectly tailored corporate wear hit the floor. Her voice, husky and wrecked, brushed against my ear. “I didn’t think we’d unlock the corner-office achievement so soon.” I groaned. I was never going to be able to look at her oak desk or those floor-to-ceiling windows the same way again. Outside, the city lights flickered to life. Somehow, the afternoon had bled into the evening. Damn it, Victoria. I came here to work! When she emerged from her private executive washroom, her dark hair was damp, and a very distinct, reddish bruise marred her collarbone. “There’s a great spot downstairs. Let me buy you dinner,” she offered, adjusting her watch. I knelt down, gathering the scattered, thoroughly crumpled Q3 projections. “I’m not hungry.” Right on cue, my stomach let out a traitorous, echoing growl. Victoria let out a low, muffled laugh. “Come on. We’ve been working late. We deserve a meal.” I glared at her. She had entirely redefined the concept of working overtime. 08 The restaurant was a dimly lit, violently expensive place I only ever dared to visit with Paige and the team on payday. Victoria barely touched her food, instead using her chopsticks to continuously place prime cuts of meat onto my plate. It made my skin prickle with anxiety. “Ms. Mercer, please, eat. You don’t need to serve me.” Her chopsticks paused in mid-air. “We are off the clock. Use my name.” I kept my mouth shut, an uncomfortable knot tightening in my chest. Over the past six months, we had eaten together occasionally, but it was always rushed takeout in bed between rounds. Sitting across from her in a quiet, upscale restaurant, fully clothed, felt deeply intimate. It felt… real. And I hated it. I focused entirely on destroying the steak in front of me, chewing like my life depended on it to avoid the silence. By the time we walked out, a torrential downpour had overtaken the city. Victoria jingled her keys. “I’ll drive you.” I already had the ride-share app open. “No need. I’ll get an Uber.” Current wait time: 100 people ahead of you. Victoria glanced at my screen. “It’s pouring. You’ll be waiting an hour. Let’s go.” I walked toward her sleek black Bentley, instinctively reaching for the rear door handle. She stopped, raising an eyebrow. “Do I look like your chauffeur?” I definitely wasn’t going to treat my CEO like a driver. I moved toward the driver’s side. “I’ll drive.” She laughed, a genuine, chiming sound. “Get in the passenger seat, Miles.” The drive was silent, filled only with the rhythmic thrum of the windshield wipers. I stared out at the blurred city lights, my mind racing. Sleeping with Victoria had been the single most rebellious, uncharacteristic thing I had ever done. I liked the borders of my life drawn in thick, unyielding ink. Work was work. Pleasure was pleasure. Victoria had been a beautiful, localized storm I could step into on weekends. She knew my body, but she didn’t know me. That anonymity made it safe. But now she was the sky I worked under every day. Could I ever look at her across a boardroom table without remembering the sounds she made? If people found out, my career would be a punchline. I despised the unknown. As the car pulled up to my building, I unbuckled my seatbelt and forced myself to meet her eyes. “Victoria. We need to end this. We shouldn’t see each other on the weekends anymore.” Her expression shifted, a flicker of genuine confusion crossing her face. “Why? Just because I’m your boss now?” I couldn’t say yes. I still had to report to her on Monday. “I just think it’s time to stop. This was never meant to be a long-term arrangement.” The warmth drained from her face, replaced by a cold, impenetrable mask. I practically threw open the door and bolted into the rain. My chest felt tight, an uncomfortable, hollow ache settling behind my ribs. I shook my head, letting the cold rain hit my face. You’re just going through withdrawal, I told myself. You’re just going to miss the sex. 09 Monday morning. I had barely set my bag down when Paige rolled her chair over, her face a portrait of utter tragedy. “It’s over for us,” she whispered dramatically. “The Queen is taken.” “What?” “She has hickeys on her collarbone! Dark ones. Someone was going to town on her.” I choked on my own spit. Paige sighed. “I mean, a woman that gorgeous was bound to be off the market, but it still breaks my heart.” For the rest of the day, the internal office chat was a warzone of speculation about the CEO’s mysterious, feral boyfriend. [Whoever he is, he’s aggressive. There was more than one mark.] [I bet he bit her. And she didn’t even try to cover it up!] [Honestly? Good for her. Get it, Ms. Mercer.] [It feels like a flex. Half the VPs in this building have been drooling over her.] I stared at my monitor, my vision swimming. Guys, please. Have some dignity. It was me. I was the feral boyfriend. Even though no one knew, the paranoia alone was enough to shave years off my life. Thank God I was flying to Chicago tomorrow for a site visit. A whole week of not looking at Victoria Mercer’s collarbone. Tuesday morning. Airport terminal. I pulled my carry-on toward the VIP lounge, whistling softly as I looked for Mr. Mitchell, the VP I was traveling with. I froze. Why was Victoria sitting there, casually sipping a latte with her assistant, Rachel? Victoria was dressed down in an effortlessly chic cashmere sweater, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. She looked up, her eyes locking onto mine with terrifying precision. “Morning, Miles.” I looked around frantically. “Where is Mr. Mitchell?” “A sudden, severe stomach bug,” she said smoothly. “I’m stepping in.” My ears rang. The sky was falling again. 10 I had to admit, Victoria wasn’t a bad travel companion. She immediately upgraded Rachel and me to First Class without a second thought. Working closely with her over the next few days, I realized she was actually a phenomenal leader. She didn’t waste words. She was objective, ruthless when necessary, but always fair. She was a million times the executive our last boss had been. Since she took over, my job had actually become manageable. It made me want to protect my career even more. The negotiations in Chicago went smoothly until the final dinner. It was time to sign, but the client, a sleazy guy named Carlson, decided to throw his weight around. At the dinner table, he kept pouring me shots of Baijiu, demanding we drink to “cement the partnership.” I hated the stuff, but I braced myself, raising the glass. A pale hand reached out and clamped over my wrist. “Mr. Carlson,” Victoria said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “I’ll drink with you.” “I can handle it,” I muttered, trying to pull my hand back. Her grip tightened. It was an iron command. My heart did a strange, traitorous little stutter. By the end of the night, the contract was signed, but Victoria was obliterated. I practically carried her back to the hotel. She leaned all her weight against me, her eyes hazy, muttering curses under her breath. “Filthy… disgusting prick.” “Who?” I asked, struggling with the room key. “Carlson. If Madeline didn’t care so much about this merger, I would have drowned him in his own liquor.” “Who is Madeline?” Silence. The woman draped over my shoulder had passed out entirely. 11 With the contract secured, our flight was booked for the next afternoon. Riley, my oldest childhood friend, happened to live in Chicago. We met up at a dive bar to catch up, trading embarrassing stories and throwing back cheap beers. By the time we stumbled out onto the sidewalk, it was past eleven, and we were arm-in-arm, laughing hysterically. “Miles, you corporate sellout! Don’t forget the little people!” Riley shouted. “Never, Ri! You’re my ride-or-die!” We took two unsteady steps before our path was abruptly blocked. I blinked, my eyes focusing on a figure standing under the streetlamp. It was Victoria. Her face was carved from ice. “Victoria?” I slurred slightly. “What are you doing here?” “Where are you going?” she demanded, her voice tight. “Back to the hotel.” Riley’s apartment was an hour away in the suburbs, so the plan was for her to crash on my hotel sofa for the night. Victoria’s eyes darted to where my arm was wrapped around Riley’s shoulders. The ice shattered, revealing something raw and terrifying. She stepped forward and physically shoved Riley away from me. “You’re going to sleep with her?” Victoria’s voice cracked. She looked devastatingly betrayed. “You can sleep with her? But not me? Is her body better than mine? Is she better in bed? Are you more compatible?” I stood there, paralyzed by the sheer wind force of her jealousy. “Huh?” She was looking at me like I was the ultimate scumbag who had just broken her heart. It took me three minutes of frantic, sobered-up explaining to convince her that Riley and I had been friends since we were in diapers, and that the thought of sleeping with her was medically repulsive to both of us. Only then did the storm clouds in Victoria’s eyes part, her rigid posture finally relaxing. 12 Victoria insisted on walking back with us, helping me drag a now-unconscious Riley into my hotel room. Victoria stood at the foot of the king-sized bed, staring down at my snoring friend with a deep frown. “She is a woman, correct?” Victoria asked flatly. I nodded. “Yeah. Why?” Victoria turned to me, her logic impenetrable. “You are a man. Sleeping in the same room as a woman is inappropriate.” I stared at her. Riley and I had taken baths together when we were toddlers. She was essentially my sister. But trying to argue with a drunk, stubborn Victoria seemed like a losing battle. “Fine. I’ll go down to the lobby and book another room.” “No need,” Victoria said, not missing a beat. “You’ll sleep in my room.” Wait. We were a man and a woman. Wasn’t that also inappropriate? But she didn’t give me time to process the hypocrisy. She grabbed me by the shoulders and marched me down the hall into her executive suite. I was too exhausted to fight it. It wasn’t like we hadn’t shared a bed before. I grabbed a bathrobe and headed into the bathroom. A second later, the door clicked shut, and Victoria stepped inside.

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