Chapter 1: Contractually Yours

Jem's POV

The woman I loved destroyed my life on a Tuesday morning, and the worst part was she looked beautiful doing it.

I kept replaying the events in my head while I stood in the rain at the bus stop, waiting for the last evening bus to arrive.

I couldn't stop seeing Mara's face. Her trembling finger pointed directly at me as she stood before the gathered crowd outside the police academy faculty building, her voice breaking with tears so perfectly timed they almost fooled even me.

"Yes, it's him. I saw him. He sold out the department's information to the criminals. He even told me to join him." Mara had lied.

Three years. Three years of studying beside the woman I love and whispering my deepest fears into her hands like offerings, trusting her with every fragile and ugly truth about myself—my mother's illness, my borrowed money, my desperate need to become something worth respecting.

And Mara had catalogued every single one of those confessions quietly, patiently, waiting for the exact moment they would be most useful as weapons against me.

Then she found her moment. She went to the investigation board and told them everything—except she twisted it, flipped it, turned my name into the villain and hers into the victim.

She claimed I had been leaking confidential information to the criminals we were supposed to be exposing. She said she had witnessed it personally. She said I had even tried recruiting her into it.

She lied so cleanly that even I almost believed her.

And the consequences came fast, like they had been waiting in the parking lot the entire time—

My scholarship was terminated before the day was over.

I was expelled from the police academy and escorted out like a criminal.

My mother's medical support was revoked immediately, and within twenty-four hours, everything I had spent three years building collapsed around me leaving me with nothing except anger, regret, and the crushing realization that I was doomed.

I wiped my hand down my face as I stood there in the rain, staring at the empty road ahead of me, feeling completely lost and broken.

And somewhere beneath all of that wreckage, my phone sat heavy in my pocket, carrying a notification that somehow felt like its own separate emergency—a message I didn't have the courage to read.

I pulled out my phone slowly and glanced at the screen.

DirtyLink.

DirtyLink is not a dating app. It's more like an anonymous social space where gay men explore curiosity privately—chat, flirt, share nudes, meet up and… probably fuck, if you want to.

No real names are being used on the app, no public photos, just usernames and conversations that carry a reputation for being discreet and dangerously intense and sexually naughty.

I had downloaded DirtyLink three months ago during a lonely sleepless night, I told myself it was just curiosity. That I was NOT gay and I just wanted to explore.

I never told anyone about it because I honestly wasn't certain about my sexuality yet. Deep down, everything seemed to point to one answer, but I wasn’t ready to face it yet. I just wasn’t ready to accept that I was gay.

I loved Mara, but there was always this gap inside me that I couldn't explain, something a woman's presence never quite filled.

Mara and I never had sex because women don't seem to arouse me. Not even when Mara is standing naked before me. I told myself it was just low attraction and with time, I'll be able to touch her and feel something.

But it was all a lie.

A lie I kept telling myself just to make me feel better.

Because on DirtyLink, whenever I chatted with this one particular anonymous user, that gap somehow felt smaller. I found myself attracted to him without ever meeting him, without knowing his real name, or even what he looked like. Yet somehow, this man made me feel the one thing I was completely terrified of admitting to myself.

He told me he was thirty-nine, and I was only nineteen, but the way he spoke sometimes made him sound like a reckless, naughty boy in his early twenties.

He was dangerously good with words and could probably make any man lose control with nothing but the things he said. He was far older than me, but somehow, I still didn’t care. He was him, and that was all that mattered.

He was the very first man that I ever sent my nude to. I have no idea why I did it. But I didn't regret it either.

And today was supposed to be the day I finally stopped running from it. After three months of conversation, we had agreed to meet in person for the very first time.

Except Mara had just burned my entire life to the ground this morning, and I couldn't bring myself to move from this bus stop, let alone show up to finally meet my anonymous gay friend from DirtyLink.

Without thinking, I opened the message. It had come in three hours ago from his username, D.W.

"You're late. I'm still here though. Table by the window. Can't wait to finally see you."

My chest tightened immediately.

I locked my phone and pressed it against my chest without responding. I couldn't go anywhere feeling like this. I was completely broken, and no amount of curiosity or longing was going to change that tonight.

Mara had really outdone herself today, leaving me with nothing but ruins, and somehow still managed to drain every last bit of excitement I had been saving up for tonight.

And I knew somewhere across the city, D.W was still waiting for me to walk through that restaurant door, and finally sit across from him at our reserved table for the very first time.

As if I couldn't put my mind at rest, I pulled my phone out again and stared at his message for a long time while rain swallowed me whole.

The message had been sitting there unanswered for three hours already, and I could almost picture him by that window, watching the restaurant entrance, checking his phone every few minutes and wondering what was keeping me.

Then I finally typed back;

"Something happened. I can't make it. I'm sorry."

I locked the phone immediately before he could respond, because reading whatever he said back would destroy the last piece of composure I was barely holding together.

I dropped my head back against the rain and closed my eyes.

My mother was going to lose her dialysis funding because of me. Because of Mara. Because I had trusted the wrong person so completely that I never even thought to question her.

The streetlight across the road flickered weakly.

I was so consumed by my own wreckage that I almost didn't notice the black SUV rolling to a stop on the opposite side of the street.

The car seemed too expensive and classy for this part of the neighborhood, sitting there in the rain like it had taken a wrong turn.

Then the driver's door suddenly slammed open and a tall man stepped out into the rain without hesitation, without an umbrella.

He was broad shouldered and sharp featured, the kind of man you notice immediately and then struggle to stop noticing because he was almost too good looking to be standing in the rain like this.

I watched as the rain soaked through his dark shirt immediately, pressing the fabric against his chest and frame that looked like discipline and danger packaged into one body.

Even from a distance, everything about him moved with this quiet controlled authority that made it impossible for me to look away.

He walked toward the bridge.

Climbed onto the ledge.

Opened his arms wide.

And was about to jump off.