MasukMark POVThe drive back from my father's house felt different.Lighter. Like something that had been sitting on my chest for two weeks had finally cracked loose and fallen away.I didn't know if he would make the calls. Didn't know if Mercer would get what was coming to him. My father said "I'll see what I can do," and with Theodore Kingsley, that could mean anything.But it didn't matter.What mattered was that I said what I needed to say. Stood in front of the most powerful man I knew and told him the truth. About Bailey. About us. About what I was willing to give up if the world kept trying to tear her down.I meant every word.The city was quiet by the time I pulled into my building. Normal Sunday evening. Streets mostly empty. The sky had turned that deep shade of blue that came right before full dark.I parked, grabbed my keys, and rode the elevator up to my floor.When the doors opened, I stopped.Bailey was standing at my door.She looked small. Smaller than I had ever seen he
Mark POVTwo weeks without Bailey, and I was falling apart.My times were worse than they've ever been. My focus was gone. My body showed up to the track every morning, but the rest of me stayed in that park on that bench, replaying the sound of her voice breaking as she told me it was over.I was the one who walked away that night. Turned my back and left, because staying would have meant begging. And Mark Kingsley didn't beg.But God, I wanted to.I tried to push through it. Tried to do what I always did. Train harder. Run faster. Bury everything under sweat and reps and sore muscles.It didn't work.Because every time I lined up at the blocks, I looked for her at the finish line.And she wasn't there.On a Sunday evening, I sat in my apartment with my father's voice ringing in my head.Fix whatever needs fixing.He was right.Something needed fixing.But it wasn't my times.I showered, got dressed, and drove to my father's house.The Kingsley estate sat on twelve acres of manicured
Bailey POVBy the end of the second week, I couldn't carry it alone anymore.The apartment was suffocating. The silence was deafening. And the memories from our time together kept tormenting at every turn.So I drove to Lola's.It was a Sunday evening. Our usual time. But nothing about this visit felt usual.I knocked.She opened the door.And didn't smile.That was the first sign.She stepped aside without a word and let me in. No greeting. No joke. No comment about how terrible I looked, even though I knew I looked terrible.I sat on the couch. She sat on the floor across from me, legs crossed, arms folded. I hadn't seen her since I got back from Atlanta and the rumors spread.The silence between us was thick. Heavy. The kind that only existed between two people who had something ugly sitting between them."So," she said finally. "When were you going to tell me?"My stomach tightened."Tell you what?""Don't." Her voice was sharp. "Don't do that. Not again."I closed my mouth."I as
Bailey POVThe first week without him was the hardest.I went to work, coached my groups. Ran drills, gave feedback. Said the right things at the right times.But I wasn't there.Not really.My body moved through the motions, but the rest of me had checked out. Like someone had reached inside my chest and flipped a switch, turning off everything that made me feel alive.I stopped eating proper meals. Coffee in the morning. Maybe a sandwich at lunch if I remembered. Dinner was whatever I could grab without thinking, usually nothing.Every night, I lay in bed with the lights off, my body exhausted but my mind wide awake. Replaying the same scene over and over. The bench. The park. His face when I said it had to end. The way his expression crumbled for half a second before the wall went up.The sound of his footsteps walking away.Fading.Until there was nothing.At the academy, I avoided the sprint section completely. Rearranged my schedule so I never had to be near him. He was back to
Bailey POVI called him Thursday night.Three days after Mercer's ultimatum. Three days of barely sleeping, barely eating, barely functioning. Three days of walking through my life like a ghost while the deadline ticked louder in my head with every passing hour.I had until Friday.Tomorrow.I spent those three days trying to find another way. Any other way. A loophole. A plan. Something that let me keep my job and keep him at the same time.There was nothing.Every road led to the same dead end.Him or everything else.I sat on my couch with my phone in my hand for twenty minutes before I finally pressed call.He picked up on the first ring."Hey," he said. His voice was easy. Relaxed. Like everything in his world was still intact.It made what I was about to do so much harder."Can you meet me?" I asked."Right now?""Yeah. Lincoln Park. Our bench."A pause."Everything okay?"No."Just meet me there."I got there first.The park was empty. The sky was dark, streetlights casting lon
Bailey POVThe weekend passed in a blur of anxiety.I checked my phone every hour. Refreshing the post. Reading the comments. Watching the number of shares climb higher and higher like a countdown to something I couldn't stop.Mark called twice on Saturday. Once on Sunday. Both times he told me his father's team was working on it. Getting the post taken down. Contacting the account. Threatening legal action.By Monday morning, the original post was gone.But the damage was already done.Screenshots lived forever. Group chats didn't have delete buttons. And the people who saw it before it disappeared had already made up their minds.I walked into the academy that Monday with my stomach in knots. Kept my head down. Coached my groups. Avoided eye contact with anyone who wasn't an athlete.For most of the day, nothing happened.No stares. No whispers. No sideways glances.Maybe it hadn't reached here yet.Maybe I was safe.Then, at 4:15, my phone buzzed with a message from the front desk:
Monalisa POV.Oh my God, I now have a boyfriend.Just like that.I didn't think he would agree to date me this easily, but he did.And he was the first boyfriend I ever had.Tommy had been a crush and Ethan had been a prospect.But Greg? He was officially mine.Well, for two months.It was more of
Monalisa POV.The question hung heavy in the air, between us, and his eyes bored into mine;Searching....Waiting....He was giving me another opportunity to back out, to give up and run away.I should stop here.If I had any self-preservation, I should tell him I wouldn't bend over and do as he pl
Monalisa POV. I couldn't believe my eyes. What did I just read? I knew I said rules don't scare me, but I was expecting a regular guideline, not an iron cage to lock me up in. I read the document again for the second time, to be sure I wasn't imagining things. "What the heck does he mean by I'm
Monalisa POV. I took in a deep breath and jerked the front door open. Seeing Ethan standing here, with a painful look on his face made me want to puke. "Mona, what's been going on?" He asked immediately, "I've been trying to reach you for days now." "Why have you been trying to reach me?" I







