Evidence
1036 Words
Chase's POV
The ring sits on my desk like evidence at a crime scene.
I haven't put it away. Since returning to my apartment, I've done nothing except stand in the kitchen for eleven minutes staring at nothing. Now I sit at my desk, staring at the ring box instead - which is somehow worse. The velvet catches the afternoon light, mocking me.
My phone buzzes. Again. I've ignored it four times already.
STERLING FAMILY OFFICE RE: Trust Distribution - Action Required by Close of Business
I open it because there's nothing left in me to protect by not opening it. My hands feel numb as I scroll.
The email contains exactly what it's held every month for four years, except this time there's no reason to keep deleting it. My father's lawyers have drafted the transfer documents for the twelve percent of Sterling Industries that becomes mine the day I turn twenty-two. That was three weeks ago. I've been sitting on this because signing meant admitting the life I built here was never the real one. It was always temporary. Always borrowed.
I scroll to the attachment. Digital signature line. My name - my real name, the one nobody on this campus has heard me use in four years - sits there waiting. The cursor blinks. Patient. Inevitable.
I think about Vivian's face at the fountain. You're a nobody, Chase.
She wasn't wrong. That's the part eating through me faster than anything else. For four years I let her be right about who I was, because the version of me that worked doubles at the diner and helped freshmen pass calculus for cash was a version she chose on purpose, with nothing to gain from choosing him. No ulterior motives. No calculations. That mattered to me more than anything my father's name has ever bought. It was the only thing that ever felt real.
And she still said no.
So what exactly am I protecting anymore? What's the point of this performance when the only person I was performing for just walked away?
I pull up the signature field. My hand hovers over the trackpad for three seconds that feel like three years. Then I sign it. Chase Alexander Sterling. Twelve percent of a forty-seven billion dollar company, transferred to a twenty-two-year-old who, forty-five minutes ago, was still hoping a girl would marry him for a ring he paid off with tip money.
The confirmation comes back instantly. Formal. Cold. Welcome to the board, Mr. Sterling.
I put my phone face down on the desk next to the ring box. I sit there in the silence of an apartment I'm never coming back to, and I don't feel like I won anything. I feel like I just closed the last door that was ever going to let me be someone Vivian picked without a reason attached. The air in the room feels different now. Heavier. Like it knows what I've done.
My phone buzzes again. Not the family office this time.
Sienna: are you okay
Sienna: chase answer me
Sienna: something's going around campus, have you seen it
I look at the message for a long moment, dread pooling in my stomach, before I make myself open my texts to see what she means.
Madison's POV
The DM comes back faster than I expect.
@afterhourstea: this is incredible. who's the guy
Me: chase sterling. as in Sterling Industries. he's been going to school here under a fake situation this whole time apparently
I don't actually know that for a fact yet, not really, but it's the kind of thing that sounds true. By the time anyone bothers to check, I'll already be a hundred thousand dollars richer in engagement, if not literal dollars. The DM that comes back three minutes later makes it clear it's about to be literal dollars too.
@afterhourstea: we want exclusive rights to the clip. can offer 15k for full unedited footage plus any follow up you get today
I read it twice to make sure I'm not imagining the number. My heart kicks up a notch.
Fifteen thousand dollars. For eleven seconds of video I filmed by accident because I wanted a good seat.
Me: deal. sending now.
I don't hesitate. I don't think about Vivian, not really - not beyond a flicker of something that isn't quite guilt, more like curiosity about what her face is going to look like in about an hour when this hits her actual name instead of just "campus proposal video." These accounts always figure out the names eventually. I might as well be the one who tells them first and gets paid for it. That's just smart business, really.
I attach the file. I hit send. My finger doesn't even shake.
Brianna texts me a string of exclamation points that I don't bother answering because I'm already watching the account's story update in real time, the way these things do when they smell money in a post.
BREAKING: Billionaire heir Chase Sterling proposed to his college girlfriend this morning using a diner-shift salary and a discount ring, pretending to be broke for FOUR YEARS. She said no. Called him a nobody. Then found out who he really was forty-five minutes later. This is not a drill.
Fourteen thousand views in the first ten minutes.
Thirty-one thousand by the time I finish my coffee.
I watch the number climb the way some people watch stock tickers, except this stock is a girl I've known since freshman year standing at a fountain with her whole face breaking open on camera. Some small, distant part of me knows I should feel worse about this than I do. That part of me is easy to ignore when the numbers keep climbing.
I don't delete the account thread. I don't stop refreshing either.
Sixty-two thousand.
Eighty-nine.
By the time the number crosses six figures, I've already spent the fifteen thousand dollars in my head twice - new laptop, that trip to Greece I've been planning, maybe finally getting my car fixed properly instead of just patching it together. Vivian Ashford hasn't even walked out to give her graduation speech yet. She has no idea what's waiting for her.
- Writer
