The Billionaire playboy Who Couldn't Let Her Go

The Midnight Shift

Ivy POV

The fluorescent lights of the 24-hour convenience store hummed a steady, mind-numbing B-flat that vibrated straight through the soles of my waterlogged sneakers. Outside, the autumn rain wasn't just falling; it was throwing itself violently against the plate-glass windows, blurring the neon gas station sign across the street into a bleeding smear of toxic red and green.

I leaned my weight heavily against the Formica counter, my fingers tracing the jagged edge of a plastic barcode scanner just to keep myself awake. This was the fourteenth hour of my day. Job number four of the week.

According to the digital clock glowing a cruel green above the ice cream freezer, it was exactly 12:14 AM.

That meant it was officially my birthday.

I was twenty-two today, though my reflection in the security mirror above the aisle looked closer to forty. My hair was a damp, frizzy nest from the sprint between the bus stop and the storefront, and my eyes were mapped with thin, broken red veins from a profound lack of sleep.

There was no cake waiting for me. There were no text messages lighting up my cracked phone screen with birthday wishes. The only gift I had received today was a fresh stack of past-due notices waiting in my mailbox this morning, each one stamped in a terrifying, aggressive shade of pink.

A sudden, aggressive gust of wind rattled the double glass doors, forcing a draft of freezing, damp air straight down the back of my oversized green employee vest. I shivered, pulling the thin sleeves of my faded gray thermal shirt down over my knuckles.

I couldn't afford to get sick. Being sick was a luxury meant for people with health insurance, people with savings accounts, people who didn't live in a constant, suffocating state of financial triage. If I missed a single shift here, or at the diner, or at the dry cleaners, or at the late-night call center, the fragile house of cards I had spent the last eight months building would instantly collapse.

My hand drifted down to the pocket of my jeans, my thumb brushing against the folded piece of paper I carried everywhere like a curse. It was the latest statement from the debt collection agency.

One hundred and forty-two thousand dollars.

Every time I looked at those numbers, a cold, sickening wave of vertigo washed over me. It wasn't my debt. I hadn't spent a single dime of it. I hadn't gone on luxury vacations, hadn't driven a sleek sports car, hadn't worn the designer clothes that had run up those lines of credit.

He had done all of that. The man I had foolishly trusted for three years, the man who had looked me in the eye and talked about a future together while systematically using my pristine credit score, my forged signatures, and my naive love to bleed me dry.

When the bank accounts were maxed out and the collection agencies started calling our apartment, he didn't offer a hand. He packed his bags in the middle of the night, emptied our shared checking account of its last three hundred dollars, and vanished with a girl ten years younger than me.

Because the accounts had been opened under my name, the law didn't care about the betrayal. The law didn't care about the tears or the broken heart. The law only cared about the signatures.

The debt was mine. Completely, legally mine.

So, while he was somewhere out there living a life entirely unburdened by consequence, I was working four separate jobs, living on instant ramen and stale coffee, surviving on less than four hours of sleep a night just to pay off the interest on his ghost.

There was no passive income. No wealthy parents to bail me out. No safety net. Just me, the cash register, and the relentless ticking of a clock that demanded money I didn't have.

The store’s electronic chime let out a loud, artificial ding-dong as the heavy glass doors slid open, cutting through the silence.

I instantly forced my spine straight, pasting a practiced, completely hollow customer-service smile onto my face before I even looked up.

"Welcome to Quick-Stop," I said, my voice sounding flat and mechanical even to my own ears.

A teenager in a dripping wet oversized hoodie slouched inside, his sneakers squeaking loudly against the freshly mopped linoleum floor. He didn't look at me. He just shuffled toward the back aisle, his eyes locked on the refrigerated energy drinks.

I watched him through the convex security mirrors, watching the way his hands hovered over the aluminum cans. My chest tightened automatically. If he stole something, the corporate policy was clear: it came out of the cashier’s paycheck if we didn't report it immediately. I didn't have five dollars to spare for a stolen Monster energy drink. I didn't have five cents.

Fortunately, he just grabbed a blue can, tossed a crumpled, soggy five-dollar bill onto the counter, and walked back out into the downpour without saying a word.

I smoothed the wet bill out against the counter, carefully placing it into the register drawer. The metallic click of the cash drawer sliding shut sounded like a prison door locking.

To pass the time and keep the exhaustion from pulling me under, I grabbed a rag and a bottle of blue glass cleaner from beneath the counter. I began to wipe down the plastic divider shields, moving my arm in slow, hypnotic circles. My feet throbbing inside my cheap shoes, a dull, aching heat radiating from my lower back all the way up to my shoulders.

I started doing the math in my head—a dangerous habit I couldn't seem to break. If I kept up this exact pace, working eighty-four hours a week for all four employees, and if I lived on a strict budget of fifteen dollars a week for groceries, I would be able to pay off the principal balance of the debt in exactly nine years, three months, and twelve days.

Nine years. I would be thirty-five. My entire youth, the best years of my life, were completely eaten alive by another person’s greed.

A sharp, hot prickle of tears stung the back of my eyes, but I fiercely blinked them away, swallowing the hard lump in my throat. I refused to cry over him anymore. Crying wasted energy, and right now, energy was a precious resource I needed just to keep my eyelids open until the morning relief shift arrived at 6:00 AM.

By 1:30 AM, the storm outside had reached a fever pitch. Thunder boomed overhead, rattling the metal roof of the building and causing the fluorescent lights to flicker violently for a terrifying three seconds. For a moment, I thought the power would go out completely, leaving me in total darkness with nothing but the sound of the rain.

“Please don't let the power go out,” I prayed silently, gripping the edge of the counter. If the registers went down, I’d have to write down every transaction by hand, calculate the tax manually, and answer a furious district manager tomorrow morning.

The lights stabilized, humming back to their stubborn, sickly yellow glow.

I walked over to the coffee station in the corner, my limbs feeling heavy, as if I were moving through water. The glass carafes were nearly empty, the leftover dark roast burnt to a bitter, sludge-like crust at the bottom from sitting on the heating element for too long.

I didn't care.

I dumped the remaining dark liquid into a paper cup, didn't bother adding sugar or milk, and took a long, burning sip.

It tasted terrible—bitter, acidic, and scorched—but the heat of it blossomed in my chest, forcing my sluggish blood to move again.

I looked out the window at the empty parking lot. The asphalt was black and glistening under the streetlamp, the heavy rain creating miniature rivers that rushed toward the storm drains. Nobody in their right mind was out in this weather. The city felt entirely dead, abandoned by everyone except the ghosts and the people too poor to afford a warm bed.

I leaned my back against the coffee counter, cradling the warm paper cup in both hands, letting the steam rise against my face.

Happy birthday to me.

I remembered my twenty-fifth birthday. Just a year ago. He had taken me out to a flashy, wildly overpriced rooftop restaurant downtown. He had ordered champagne, toasted to my beauty, and laughed loudly with the waiters, acting like a king. I had felt so incredibly loved, so secure. I had actually believed him when he said he was setting up a business portfolio that would take care of us forever.

I hadn't realized that the champagne was being charged to a credit card he had secretly opened in my name using my social security number. I hadn't realized that the entire night was just an elaborate smoke screen to keep me from asking why the landlord had left a warning on our door.

The memory didn't make me sad anymore; it just made me feel cold. A hard, unyielding layer of calloused armor has formed over my heart during these last eight months. I had learned the hard way that dependency was a trap. Trust was a luxury that ended in ruin. The only person who was ever going to save me was the person standing in these wet sneakers.