Chapter Three · I'd Rather Be Alone Than Drained Again. (2)

"I need to talk to you about the wedding," he said, without preamble. "The down payment's due Friday. You got the money, right? Mom said you're loaded now."

"Jax," I said, "where's your fiancée? I'd love to meet her."

Something flickered in his face — too fast for my parents to catch, but I caught it. "She's, uh. She's with her family. Pre-wedding stuff."

"Right. What's her name again?"

"Mia." He said it too quickly. "Mia, uh, Delgado."

"Great," I said, pleasantly. "I'll find her online. There's a designer in Pasadena I want to connect her with."

Jax's face went through a series of expressions that a mime would have envied. "She's — she's not online. She's old-fashioned."

"Mia Delgado, not online," Zoe murmured behind me, in the voice of a woman taking notes. "In this economy. Fascinating."

They left an hour later — with the client gift, two of my sample books "to show around," and a promise extracted from me to "think about" Saturday. My mother hugged me at the door with real tears in her eyes, and I stood there, stiff as a board, and let her.

Because I needed them gone. And because I had work to do.

Zoe found it first. Her friend Destiny worked casting for reality TV — specifically, the "surprise engagement" shows — and Destiny knew every professional fake-bride in Los Angeles. One reverse-image search later, "Mia Delgado" had a name, a rate card, and a feed full of testimonials.

NOT a real bride. I do proposals, divorces, and fake engagements for family-squeeze operations. DM for rates.

And under a photo of her with a champagne glass, in a comment thread: a screenshot. Of a group chat. Jax's phone, forwarded to the wrong chat, caught by Destiny's friend who happened to be in it.

The message said: Don't worry. Maren folds every time. Guilt's a hell of a drug. — JAX

The one above it, from my mother: Did the Guilt Work? She hasn't said no yet. Give her until Friday. Her birthday gift to us is a house.

The one below it, from my father: That's my girl.

I read them twice. Then a third time, slowly, the way you read a death certificate.

That's my girl. My whole life — the scholarships I'd won, the jobs I'd juggled, the years I'd spent paying their mortgage and their debts and their dreams — that's my girl.

Not: my daughter. My girl. Their claim on me. Their harvest.

Somewhere far away, I heard Zoe say my name, sharp with worry. I heard myself answer, very calmly: "I'm fine."

I was not fine. I was finally, finally not fine. I was standing in the wreckage of a lie I'd been telling myself since childhood — that they loved me, that it was real, that if I was just good enough, just generous enough, just small enough, I'd finally be seen.

They saw me. They'd always seen me. They saw a machine that made money and felt guilt and never, ever stopped paying.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number. One line:

You don't have to pay for love, Maren. It's the one thing that was never for sale. — K.

I didn't know how he knew. I didn't care how he knew. I stood in my kitchen, in my own studio, surrounded by the light I'd learned to build for other people, and I cried.

Not the polite, quiet crying I did in my car. The real thing. The ugly, animal sound of a woman finally letting herself break in a room where no one could sell the footage.

When I was done — when I'd cried until my chest ached and my eyes were raw and Zoe had wrapped me in a blanket and a lecture about the importance of self-defense classes — I did something I'd never done before.

I called my mother back. And I said no.

"Mom. I'm not paying for the wedding. And I'm not paying for a house. And I'm not paying for Jax's debts anymore."

Silence. Then, in that deceptively soft voice that had been sharpening knives for twenty-four years: "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." My voice was shaking, but it was mine. All mine. "The wedding isn't real. Mia isn't real. You've been running me like a machine since I was old enough to earn. I know about the group chat. I know about the rate card. And I know that 'that's my girl' was never about love."

"Maren Cole." Her voice went cold, and it was the coldest I'd ever heard it — colder than the crying, colder than the guilt, colder than every February in my childhood. "If you walk away from this family, you walk away from everything. We raised you. We gave you everything. And if you embarrass your brother — if you embarrass us — we will tell everyone what you are. The industry. The papers. Everyone."

"Go ahead," I said. And I hung up first.

For the first time in my life, I hung up first.

I stood in my dark studio, in the city that glittered like a spilled jewelry box, and I let the silence settle around me. I was twenty-four years old. I had one signature contract, one black card in my drawer that I still hadn't burned, and a family that had just declared war on the daughter they'd spent twenty-four years harvesting.

And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I wasn't afraid of what came next.

That's when I saw him.

Across the street, at the curb below my window: a tall figure in a dark coat, standing perfectly still, looking up at my window — at me — with the unhurried patience of someone who had all the time in the world.

The streetlight above him flickered. Died. The next one followed, then the next, a chain of small deaths marching up the block, until the entire street went dark around him — a pocket of night moving with him like a coat.

And when the lights came back, one by one, he was gone.

I told myself it was a trick of the light.

The light, however, was the thing that had been tricked.