Chapter 4

I took one last look at the luxury penthouse that had held my self-esteem hostage for the past two years.

Without a shred of hesitation, I turned the doorknob, leaving Kane’s keycard resting quietly on the entryway console.

Click.

The sound of the latch engaging sent a phantom ache through my knees, dragging my mind right back to a rainy night a year ago.

I’d just finished a double-pay shift at a corner diner and completely wiped out on my bike riding home in the downpour.

When I pushed through the apartment door, bleeding through my jeans and sporting road rash on both arms, Kane didn’t even look up from his financial magazine.

He just pinched the bridge of his nose in disgust.

"Go wash off. You’re going to ruin the rugs," he had said, his voice completely flat.

When I finally stepped out of the bathroom, gritting my teeth as I swabbed my cuts with iodine, he walked over and flicked his limitless black card right into my lap.

He spoke with the casual arrogance of a king giving alms to a peasant. "Take it. As my girlfriend, there is zero reason for you to kill yourself for minimum wage.

You look like you just crawled out of a gutter, and it’s embarrassing for me."

Back then, I was stupid enough to mistake his condescension for clumsy affection.

But I never blew a single cent of it on myself.

Even when my grandmother’s heart failed and they rushed her to the ICU—when the lead surgeon handed me an ultimatum on the exorbitant bypass fees—I only swiped that card because I had a gun to my head. Every single transaction went straight into a faded pocket ledger.

I worked three jobs, swearing to pay him back every dime before graduation.

Today, that ledger sat right next to the black card.

The crisp slam of the door this morning had severed the final tie—money, emotion, and whatever dignity I had left—between me and Kane.

Half an hour later, I was standing inside the most dilapidated dorm on East Campus.

I’d kept this cramped single—a mandatory leftover from freshman year—though it had practically devolved into a storage closet.

Pushing the door open, the air smelled heavily of rotting wood and trapped dust.

Too exhausted to even make the bed, I curled up on the bare mattress in my clothes.

But there was no time to lick my wounds. At exactly 6:00 AM, my phone lit up, vibrating aggressively against the wood. Across campus, group chats were detonating.

The State Football Championship had just been officially canceled.

By 9:00 AM, I was standing on the second floor of the Athletics building.

Slam!

A massive playbook hit the mahogany desk so hard loose defensive schemes scattered across the floor.

Coach Miller was vibrating with rage, the veins in his temples threatening to blow.

I stood at rigid attention in front of him.

"Explain this to me!" Miller roared. "Wynne, you’re the cheer captain! You’re the logistics coordinator for this entire post-season! Forty-five boys bled for this! Eight months of prep!

And now you’re going to look me in the eye and tell me how our master playbook ended up sitting, pretty as a picture, in our rival’s locker room?!"

I dug my nails into my palms, forcing myself to stay grounded. "Coach, the playbook transport yesterday—"

"I don't want to hear excuses!" he snapped, wild-eyed with a mix of fury and heartbreak. "Do you have any idea how many D-1 scouts were going to be in those stands today? Do you realize this cancellation just ripped full-ride athletic scholarships away from at least five kids who can't afford college otherwise? As the coordinator, this catastrophic screw-up falls entirely on you!"

I knew as the head of logistics I carried the ultimate liability, but before I could get a word in to lay out the truth, the office door flew open, hitting the wall with a loud bang.

"Coach! This isn't on Wynne!"

It was Brody, our starting linebacker, his eyes rimmed red.

Trailing right behind him was my cheer co-captain, Chloe, and a handful of other core starters. They’d clearly caught wind of the execution and rushed over to intercept.

Brody marched up to my side, a muscle ticking in his jaw. "Wynne didn't prep or transport the playbooks yesterday. That was Daisy, the new rookie on the squad!"

"It was her," Chloe chimed in, her voice shaking with disgust.

"She took the master binders and conveniently 'got lost,' walking our entire hand of cards right under the rival team’s door. Wynne is the victim here. She fired Daisy on the spot last night, and now she’s taking the bullet for it!"

The target shifted instantly. Coach Miller froze.

"...Who?" The coach sucked in a harsh breath, snatched the desk phone, and barked at his assistant outside. "Get this Daisy girl in my office. Now!"

The ten-minute wait felt like a decade.

Finally, footsteps echoed down the hall. Daisy appeared in the doorway, looking like a stiff breeze could knock her over.

She was swallowed up by an oversized white hoodie—a highly calculated choice to make her look small and fragile.

Her eyes were swollen like walnuts, darting around the room like a terrified doe before snapping to the floor the second they met the Coach's glare.

"Coach..." she murmured quietly, twisting the hem of her sleeve. "You wanted to see me?"

But what actually made my breath catch in my throat was the towering figure stepping through the door right behind her.

Kane.

He was wearing his letterman jacket—the ultimate symbol of his reigning authority as our star quarterback.

He leaned into the room, naturally angling his body in a fiercely protective stance at Daisy’s side.

The entire room went dead silent. Every single eye pivoted to my face.

Everyone in this office knew Kane was my boyfriend. Yet here he was, less than twelve hours after I’d dumped him. There was no desperate attempt to fix us.

Instead, he was parading into the execution block, aggressively defending the girl who had single-handedly destroyed my reputation and their futures.

I stood completely paralyzed, suddenly realizing that every tear I’d shed overnight was the punchline to a massive, cosmic joke.

Kane’s dead-eyed gaze swept past Brody and the others, eventually locking onto the rigid line of my spine.

He let out a low, mocking scoff.

"Wow, Wynne," he said, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "I thought you got it out of your system yesterday when you and your little clique ganged up on a clueless freshman in the locker room. But I guess I underestimated you. Running to the Coach’s office to spin lies and cover your own ass? That’s a new low."

He turned his head, his eyes visibly softening as he checked on Daisy, before whipping back to me, his gaze dropping to sub-zero.

"You want to talk about destroying the championship? Looks to me like the only one trying to tear this team apart is you."