Chapter 1: Cool Cash
✓ Mara
"Three. Two. One."
I've been giggling and counting like I'm waiting for a rocket launch, but what I'm actually waiting for is Finn walking through my room door.
I'm on the edge of the bed with the little velvet box in my lap, and I can't stop smiling like an idiot.
One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of our relationship, and it still feels like we met yesterday.
I got him a medal customized, because he calls himself my MVP and I decided to make it official.
The door blows open, almost startling my ghost out of me.
No knocking. Just Finn, filling up my doorway with his gym bag already in his hand.
“Happy annivers…” The words clear off my lips once I notice something strange.
He isn't looking at me. That's the first thing I grab.
Today, his eyes went straight past me to the duffel bag he left here two nights ago, and he starts throwing his clothes in there.
I stand up and the box slides off my lap onto the bed.
"Finn? What are you doing?"
He doesn't answer. His hands work fast and mean, snatching shirts off the hangers like he ain't got time.
His charger flies into the bag. Followed by one of his hoodies I've been eyeing. Then his sneakers.
I grab his arm and he pushes me off so very mean that I'm left stumbling.
"I'm leaving, Mara. We're done."
The words don't land at all; must be some kind of anniversary prank.
"What do you mean we're done?" My voice peaks.
"We've been together a year, Finn. You don't just pack a bag and walk out. What the hell is this?"
He sighs like I'm ruining his morning, then he finally turns around.
The pure, disgustful look on his face gets me staggering back with shock.
He loosens the drawstring of the gym bag and pulls out a beautiful stack of hundred-dollar notes, banded together, still crisp.
He holds it up and smiles at me like it's a punchline.
"You actually thought a guy like me stuck around for a whole year because I loved you?"
My head spins immediately with those words.
I stare at the stack of dollar notes. "Where… where did you get that?"
"Zykiel Gunner."
The name goes through my chest, like a stab of a rusty knife.
"He paid me to date you," Finn says, dragging it slowly, enjoying every word landing.
"Every date. All that 'I love you.' Every fucking time I fucked you, Mara. It was all his money. He bought a year of your life so he could watch you fall for it."
I open my mouth and only a helpless gasp comes out.
"No. No, you're lying to me. This is a sick joke, right?"
He gives me a nasty, mocking laugh. Then fans the bills out in one hand, flinging them at my face like DJ Khaled does with his girlfriend.
They fall on my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. A rain of cash slowly dripping down my body and landing on the floor, scattered across my rug very prettily.
"Cool cash, huh?" He zips the duffel. "Consider it your severance money."
He steps over the money on his way to the door, and I'm still waiting for the prank to be over. But he's actually leaving.
"Finn, stop, please!" I move towards him without deciding to. My heart's in shreds and I can't hold myself together.
"Just tell me what I did. If I did something wrong, we can fix it, we can talk…"
"Fix what? There's nothing to fix. This was a job, and my contract's over."
"A job?" A cold, numb feeling guns my chest.
"Finn, you just called us a job, are you serious? We planned things. We planned a future…"
"Point of correction, Mara: you planned a future. I'm sure you must have known this, but I have a girlfriend. A real fucking girl. Somebody who actually matches who I am."
"A girlfriend?" My voice wears off.
I step close to him, so I can stare deep into his blue ocean eyes and hear him say that again.
"Then who am I, Finn? What have I been to you? A job you were paid to close?"
"Something like that." He shrugs, and that's when my heart shreds with pain.
"No! You're saying this to hurt me. Tell me what he did to you, Finn, please, just tell me what Zykiel did to you. Did he blackmail you to do this?"
"He didn't do anything except make me rich." He shrugs the bag higher on his shoulder.
"I put up with you for twelve months. Your broke ass. Your whining. Your filthy, clingy touches that make me wanna cut off my own hands!"
"FINN! How can you say something like that to me?"
He brushes his brown hair coolly, smiling. "Because the check cleared, bitch. God, I've been waiting for this day."
He steps close enough that I see my reflection in his cruel eyes.
"But I got good news, Mara. I just signed with the Gunner Wolves," he says instead. "Best news of my fucking life right?"
Gunner Wolves. That's Zykiel's independent hockey club.
"Finn, stop. Just stop, please?!" My voice grates as I rush to grab the box from my bed and run back to him.
"It's our anniversary. Our relationship is one year, today, and you're… you're just gonna..."
He actually stops walking. Turns around slowly. And there's no guilt on his face. He's only got the same mocking look sliding over my messed-up hair, my wet face, the little box in my hand.
"Our anniversary?” He blurts.
He looks around my apartment, checking out the water stains on the walls, the rug I got secondhand, all of it, like he's seeing it for the first time and hating what he sees.
"You got me a cheap medal and sat here waiting in this place to give it to me? Be serious for once.”
He shakes his head.
"I've never dated this far beneath myself in my life. It's fucking embarrassing."
He drags the door open and flips around. My poor heart hopes he's about to finally break the prank.
"By the way, Mara. You should get therapy. You scream in your sleep and it's creepy as hell."
My breath slips.
Aside from punching a hole into my heart with that insult on my panic attacks, he slams the door in my face. And the silence makes my ears ring.
I don't move for a long time, long enough that my legs start to ache from standing still. Because I'm waiting for the door to open back so he can tell me it's a wild prank.
But strangely, it doesn't.
A sick coldness digs into my heart and it hurts.
I look down at the floor. Hundred dollar notes resting beside my slippers.
All of that shared coffee, cuddling under the blanket, and laughing at each other's browsing history.
It was all…
My throat burns with a silent cry as tears run down my face.
I gave him my heart. And he left me on the floor with some compensation money that Zykiel gave him? Why did I not see this coming?
It just doesn't make sense yet.
Eventually, I lift the box in my hand and open it, taking out the medal.
The chain dances and glitters under the light, a hockey pendant hanging off it.
"To my MVP. Always." One tear drops onto the words I had them carved on it.
I wipe it off immediately, as if it fixes a piece of my heart that Finn just tore apart.
ZYKIEL GUNNER
The name feels like cold poison in my belly, waiting to kill.
I intensely hoped he'd forgotten I existed. But he hadn't.
He'd been scheming this the whole time, paying a man to hold my hand, kiss me, fuck me. A full year of my love life was bought out to make fun of.
Bang, bang, bang! The harsh knock comes from my wooden door and my heart flies, hoping it's not my landlord with his "RENT IS DUE" visits.
"Mara! It's Garrett!"
I wipe the stupid tears off my face and sigh deeply, throwing the box into my wardrobe before heading for the door.
Garrett's big smile is waiting to greet me at the front door, but nothing about this morning is cheerful.
"Hey, I saw that creep coming out of your room. And now I'm seeing tears on your face. What the heck is going on, Mara?"
I stare at my best friend, trying my best not to explode with sobs.
"Zykiel Gunner, that's what happened to me, Garrett."
"The fuck do you mean?" He asks, adjusting his glasses.
"He paid Finn to date me for a year, so… Finn just dumped my ass."
His wide eyes almost pop the glasses out of his face. "What the fuck? No, that's crazy. Finn is an idiot, but he wouldn't be that crazy."
"He threw his cash in my face, Garrett. That's the level of crazy he just pulled."
His gaze travels to the cash scattered on the floor, then back at me. "My God! Are you okay, Mara?" He holds my shoulder and I just shrug his hands off.
"I'm fine. I'm just… I'm totally fine."
"No, you're not! This isn't just about Finn being a scumbag. This is Zykiel being a total psychopath!"
"What kind of a cruel human being pays money to have a woman's heart broken?"
I pull a weak smile at him, because I honestly don't wish to talk about how embarrassing this is.
"Well… Zykiel Gunner is cruel enough to do that to me."
"He didn't just want to hurt you, Mara. He bought the guy in your bed. That is sick. That is pure, calculated control. You should report him!"
"Report him? I ruined his hockey career two years ago, Garrett. He's had his revenge and I'm not going to give it a second thought."
"You're letting him go free because you made a post two years ago that ruined his career?"
"Garrett! Garrett, just stop. I don't want to talk about it."
He takes his final words back, swallowing them, and I look at his hard ironed white shirt, tucked into his grey pants. He's a bit too sleek today.
"You should be at work. What are you doing here, by the way?"
"Well… you won't beli
eve it if I told you. Boss has a new gig for us," he says as he drops onto the bed.
"What kind of gig?" I ask, but his face turns pale.
"The thing is… this new gig involves Zykiel Gunner himself, and considering your new situation, I'm not sure how to deliver this news."
"WHAT!" I walk up to him, just to make sure I heard this right.
"What do you mean it involves Zykiel?"
"Mara, just calm down." He sighs, "Boss said the gig will pay beautifully, but…"
"GARRETT, TALK TO ME! WHAT KIND OF GIG?”
