Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Jace says breakup like a threat, and my body reacts before my pride does.
That is probably the most humiliating thing about me.
Not that I still care. Not that my pulse still trips when he goes cold. Not even that I can recognize, by the shape of his silence alone, whether tonight is going to be a punishment or a test.
It is that after all this time, some stupid part of me still leans toward him when he starts pulling away.
We are standing in the shadow of the science building at Westbridge Academy, where every brick probably has an opinion about GPA, internships, and whose future is worth more. The late afternoon air smells like cut grass and rain on hot pavement. Around us, students spill down the steps in expensive uniforms and louder ambitions, everyone pretending they are not checking the ranking board updates on their phones every ten minutes.
At Westbridge, people fall in love like they’re applying for scholarships. Carefully. Strategically. Preferably with someone whose name looks good next to theirs.
I used to think Jace and I were the one thing here that existed before strategy.
That belief has not aged well.
“If you’re going to keep doing this,” Jace says, one shoulder against the wall, voice flat with that lazy cruelty he wears like cologne, “then maybe we should just end it for real.”
End it for real.
As if he didn’t say some version of that every time I asked for anything inconvenient. As if the relationship hasn’t already been dragged over enough broken glass to count as dead twice.
He looks polished in the unfair, effortless way he always does, tie loosened, dark hair slightly messy on purpose, face calm because he’s not the one being gutted. He always looks like someone who has never had to doubt being chosen.
I fold my fingers tighter around my bag strap so he won’t see them shake. “I asked why you stopped answering me,” I say. “That’s not exactly doing this.”
“Mae.” My name in his mouth is a warning and a habit. “You were spiraling.”
I nearly laugh.
Spiraling. Another nice word for reacting like a human being.
A translucent line of text blinks into existence in the air beside him.
[Breaking news: local boy invents female emotion, acts burdened by it.]
I close my eyes for half a second.
There they are.
The bullet comments started appearing three days ago, floating into view at the worst possible moments like a live audience only I can see. No one else reacts. No one else looks up. Which means either I have developed a highly specific stress-induced hallucination, or the universe finally got tired of watching me embarrass myself in peace.
Another comment pops up under the first.
[Girl, he threatens breakup the way rich people threaten to call their lawyer.]
I stare past Jace’s shoulder so I won’t stare directly at the words.
“You disappeared for half a year,” he says, lower now, as if he’s the injured one. “You know things changed. You can’t come back and expect everything to stay the same.”
There it is. The softest knife.
My illness, repackaged as my failure.
I was gone from school for six months. Six months of hospitals, recovery, makeup work, and the quiet terror of watching your life continue without you. Even now, back in uniform, back under the fluorescent brutality of Westbridge, I still feel like someone trying to re-enter a moving train. My language scores are still strong, but the rest of my confidence feels patched together with caffeine and denial.
At Westbridge, rank is not just rank. It is social currency, moral worth, and future proof. If you drop, people don’t ask whether you were sick. They ask whether you’re still dangerous.
Jace knows that. He also knows exactly where the bruises are.
“I’m not asking for everything to stay the same,” I say carefully. My voice comes out softer than I want. I hate that. “I’m asking why you keep making me feel like I have to earn basic decency from you.”
His jaw shifts. Not guilt. Annoyance.
“You always do this,” he says. “You make things heavier than they are.”
[Translation: your pain is inconvenient to my vibe.]
[Mae Bennett, CEO of apologizing to the person who stepped on your throat.]
I want to tell the bullet comments to shut up.
I want to tell them they’re wrong.
The problem is they’re funny because they’re not.
Jace glances at his phone, then back at me. “We’re going to Velvet tonight. Tyler booked the back section. Just don’t start anything there, okay?”
The words land harder than the threat did.
We’re going.
Not are you going. Not do you want to come.
He says it like my attendance is as automatic as gravity.
And the most pathetic part—the truly, spiritually degrading part—is that he is not entirely wrong.
[Do NOT go.]
[She’s going.]
[Of course she’s going. She’s still in the stage where humiliation counts as quality time.]
My face burns.
“Fine,” I hear myself say.
Jace’s expression eases by a fraction, victory so casual it almost doesn’t register as victory at all. “Good.”
Then he pushes off the wall, brushes past me, and leaves me standing there with the comments hovering in my peripheral vision like tiny cruel angels.
[Westbridge ranking update: Mae Bennett, top student in self-betrayal.]
I should go home.
Instead, that night, I go exactly where Jace expects me to.
Velvet Room Lounge looks like money trying to flirt.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Low amber lights. Velvet booths. polished black tables. A wall of glass bottles gleaming like jewelry. The music is soft enough to talk over, loud enough to blur whatever should have embarrassed people into silence. It is the kind of place adults call tasteful when what they mean is expensive.
It also feels unmistakably Hayes.
Not warm. Not welcoming. Controlled.
Even before I see Jace, I can feel the way this place belongs to his world. Staff nod when he walks by. Tyler is already draped across one of the curved booths like he owns stock. Chloe sits beside him in a black top that somehow manages to look effortless and deliberate at the same time, one glossy wave of hair over her shoulder, smiling like she arrived exactly where she intended to be.
And Jace—of course—slides in beside Chloe, not across from her.
Not touching, exactly.
Just close enough to make the lack of touch feel intentional.
The seat opposite them is the only one left open.
For me.
“Mae!” Chloe says brightly, like we’re cousins at a holiday brunch instead of enemies with good posture. “You made it.”
I could still leave.
Instead, I sit.
Tyler lifts his glass. “There she is. Jace’s girl finally showed.”
The phrase snags somewhere under my ribs. Pre-breakup framing. Group habit. Ownership with a smiley face sticker slapped over it.
Jace doesn’t correct him.
Of course he doesn’t.
A bullet comment drifts across the table.
[Ah yes, nothing says romance like being treated as legacy property.]
“Traffic?” Chloe asks me, chin propped in one hand. “Or were you deciding whether to punish him longer?”
Her tone is light, almost playful. If anyone quoted it back, she’d be able to deny every sharp edge.
“Neither,” I say.
“Mae’s too nice for punishment,” Tyler says with a grin. “That’s half the problem.”
Jace smirks into his drink.
Half the problem.
Like my failure here is not leaving sooner.
Like the issue is that I don’t know how to be mean, instead of the fact that cruelty has become a group sport around me.
A server drops off another round. Chloe leans toward Jace to say something near his ear, and he turns just enough that I catch the line of his mouth loosening into a real smile—the kind I used to wait for like it meant weather changing.
He says something back. She laughs and touches his forearm, just briefly, just in passing, with the precise confidence of someone who knows she will be allowed.
The room feels too warm.
“You okay, Mae?” Chloe asks. Faux concern now. A sweeter knife. “You look pale.”
I almost tell her I used to spend weeks waking up to the smell of antiseptic and still felt less sick than this.
Instead I say, “I’m fine.”
[She is, in fact, not fine.]
[Medical update: patient exposed to concentrated secondhand disrespect.]
Tyler chuckles at something on his phone and glances up. “People at school are already betting on who takes top rank this term. Adrian Sterling or our boy Jace. Westbridge is sick in the head.”
The name barely catches my attention, just another sharp new shape in the school rumor mill. The transfer genius. The new number one. The boy people talk about like he was engineered in a lab to ruin curves and self-esteem.
Jace rolls his eyes. “Let them talk.”
“You hate that they talk,” Chloe says, smiling.
“I hate stupid people talking like they know anything.”
“Same,” she says, and he laughs again.
Not with me. At ease with her.
I look down at the condensation gathering around my untouched glass. A thin ring of water spreads over the black tabletop.
Something about it—cold moisture under my fingertips, the wet circle marking where something had been and then wasn’t—pulls on a thread in my chest.
And suddenly I am back in the worst birthday of my life.
It had rained that day too.
Not dramatic movie rain. Just a fine, miserable drizzle that made the whole city look rubbed out at the edges.
I had spent too long deciding what to wear because Jace had promised dinner. Not a grand promise. Not roses and violins. Just us. Just something normal enough to feel precious. He knew birthdays mattered to me only because they were one of the few days I let myself expect to be chosen plainly, without guessing.
I waited in my room at seven. Then seven-thirty. Then eight.
By eight-fifteen, my messages still unread, I called.
No answer.
At eight-twenty-three, Tyler posted a story from a private room at Velvet. Balloons. Champagne flutes. Chloe in the middle of the frame, laughing while someone off-camera shouted congratulations for her latest test score jump.
Jace’s voice was in the background.
I remember the feeling with disgusting clarity: how my stomach dropped first, and then my dignity tried to catch up.
He called me back at nine-forty-one.
“What?” he said, sounding annoyed.
I stared at my own reflection in my dark bedroom window. “You forgot my birthday.”
“I didn’t forget.” A pause. “Chloe was upset about her grades. We were already out.”
Already out.
As if plans with me were vapor and plans with her were carved in stone.
“You said we’d have dinner.”
“You’re seriously doing this right now?” he snapped. “She finally improved, Mae. Not everything is about you.”
The shock of that nearly made me laugh. “It’s my birthday.”
“And you’re making me regret calling.” His voice had gone colder, sharper. “I knew you’d be difficult about this. Chloe’s been under pressure, and instead of being supportive, you’re acting childish.”
Childish.
Difficult.
Unsupportive.
I had sat on the edge of my bed in the dress I’d chosen for him and felt my face go hot with shame, like I had somehow committed an offense by being hurt.
“I’m not saying you can’t celebrate with her,” I whispered. “I’m saying you left me waiting.”
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“You always twist things.” Exhale. Irritation. As if he were managing me. “I said I’d make it up to you. Why can’t you let anything go?”
Like generosity. Like I should thank him for rescheduling my own disappointment.
That was the night I understood something terrible and still did not leave.
Not that he could hurt me.
I already knew that.
It was that he could hurt me, blame me for bleeding, and I would still spend the next day wondering if I’d been too sensitive.
Back in the lounge, laughter crashes over the table and drags me into the present.
Tyler is shuffling a deck of cards he found from somewhere, because of course a place like this has custom cards for rich teenagers pretending recklessness is personality.
“Okay,” he says. “New rule. Since everyone looks like they need entertainment, truth or dare. But actual stakes. Punishment if you chicken out.”
“Very middle school of you,” I say.
“And yet here you are,” Jace says.
The comment lands cleanly. Tyler grins like that means the mood is fixed. Chloe tucks her legs under her and leans closer to the table, interested.
“Punishment how?” she asks.
“Depends on the crime,” Tyler says. “You dodge a dare, you get assigned something worse.”
A bullet comment slides past my drink.
[Breaking: group of emotionally stunted rich kids invent ritualized humiliation.]
[Mae, stand up. Walk out. Discover feminism.]
I almost smile, which feels deranged under the circumstances.
A few rounds go by first, harmless enough to be insulting. Tyler admits he once paid someone to write an apology text. Chloe refuses to name the hottest teacher and gets assigned to post an ugly selfie angle to her private story for five minutes, which she does with theatrical suffering. Jace takes dare over truth and downs something amber and expensive without blinking.
Then Tyler points at me with the edge of a card. “Mae Bennett. Your turn. Truth or dare?”
Every face shifts toward me.
That is the thing no one tells you about humiliation before it becomes familiar: sometimes it is not loud. Sometimes it is just the sensation of multiple people waiting to see what you will permit.
“Truth,” I say.
“Boring,” Chloe sings.
“No, let her be strategic,” Jace says, gaze on me. Calm. Interested. Dangerous. “Ask her something useful.”
Tyler arches a brow. “Useful? Damn, okay. Mae, are you still hung up on your childhood sweetheart, or are we all allowed to move on with our lives?”
Chloe lets out a soft laugh behind her hand.
There it is. Not subtle anymore.
I feel heat climb my throat. “What a shock,” I say. “Tyler asks a question with all the emotional sophistication of a frat basement.”
He barks a laugh. “So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a no to your question because it was pathetic.”
“Cute,” Jace says. He doesn’t sound amused. He sounds like he is watching me choose whether to kneel. “But you didn’t answer it.”
[They’re not playing a game. They’re checking whether you’ll humiliate yourself voluntarily.]
I look at him. Really look.
At the ease in his posture. The confidence. The absolute certainty that no matter how ugly this gets, I will be the one left managing the mess.
Maybe that’s why I say it the way I do.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that some people confuse history with permission.”
For a second, the table goes still.
Tyler makes a low ooo sound, trying to turn it into banter. Chloe’s smile tightens, interested now in a sharper way.
Jace’s eyes harden.
Not enough to lose control. Just enough to punish.
“Fine,” he says softly. “If truth’s too hard for you, take a dare.”
Tyler should have stepped in then. Anyone should have.
Instead he spreads his hands. “Rules are rules. Refuse the question, take the dare.”
My stomach sinks. “You’re serious?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Jace says.
There it is again. My reaction as offense. My pain as performance.
Chloe tilts her head. “Come on, Mae. It might be fun.”
Fun. The word nearly makes me choke.
“What’s the dare?” I ask, because apparently my survival instinct has unionized and left the building.
Jace leans back, one arm along the booth behind Chloe, expression almost lazy again.
“Simple,” he says. “Tomorrow at lunch, you walk over to Adrian Sterling in the cafeteria—”
Tyler starts laughing before the sentence is even over.
Jace keeps going. “—and take food straight off his plate. In front of everyone.”
The table erupts.
Chloe covers her mouth, delighted. Tyler slaps the table. Even over the music, I can hear the blood rushing in my ears.
I stare at Jace. “What?”
“You heard me.” His eyes stay on mine. “You wanted to prove you don’t care what people think. So prove it.”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“Or don’t.” He shrugs. “And everyone can draw their own conclusions.”
About what? That I’m weak? That I’m still obedient? That I’m too scared to make a scene unless the scene is my own dignity dying slowly in public?
The bullet comments flash in quick succession now, almost overlapping.
[He picked Adrian on purpose.]
[Not a dare. A test.]
[Translation: dance, Mae.]
Jace’s mouth lifts at one corner, the expression almost intimate if you didn’t know him. If you didn’t know that this is what he does when he wants to see how far your self-respect can be bent before it snaps.
My skin feels too tight.
Adrian Sterling. The new top student. The boy every ambitious parent in Westbridge is suddenly using as a benchmark. The one whose name has been stalking every conversation about rank for weeks.