CHAPTERS
1-3
Chapter 1 - Again
She didn’t wait. For the valet, for the door, for the world to catch up. She moved like a decision already made. Heels cracked against the pavement, sharp and urgent. Normally, that sound meant control. Dominance. But tonight? Tonight, they were warning shots.
The Rolls Royce, a custom, imported, don’t-you-know-who-I-am piece of luxury, purred behind her, abandoned. Disposable. A trophy to someone else. It didn’t matter. Nothing did, except getting to Max before it was too late.
Rain stung her face, slid down her neck, and soaked the cuffs of her coat and the silk blouse beneath. She didn’t blink. Didn’t slow. The valet shouted something. Whatever. Let him chase. Let the car idle. Let the whole city burn for all she cared.
The red ER sign carved through the storm—angry, throbbing against the wet night like an accusation. She stepped into its glow. Her breath caught. She’d made herself a promise. That she’d never walk back into one of these places for him. Not after last time. She’d meant it when she said it.
But here she was.
Again.
Her feet moved. The hospital doors hissed open. The lobby was too clean. Too quiet. Everything shined too hard, like the place had been scrubbed free of the truth. But she knew better. She could still smell it beneath the lemon and bleach—that copper-slick undercurrent of blood and fear. The reception desk loomed ahead like a checkpoint in occupied territory. She didn’t break her stride.
“Miss?”
Security stepped forward. Big. Blocky. Built like a vending machine that only served protein bars. His eyes said he didn’t want trouble. His posture said he'd start it anyway.
She met him with a look that could strip paint. Jaw locked.
“Name?” he asked, voice flat.
“Stone. Harper Stone.”
His reaction came fast, like a ripple under the surface—shoulders straightening, jaw tightening, eyes darting somewhere behind her like maybe backup was protocol for whatever she'd just triggered.
Not fear. Not respect. Just recognition. The kind that says, Oh. It’s her.
She saw it land. Saw the mental checklist fire behind his eyes. Briefed, warned, prepped—none of it was enough. He stepped aside. Not because he wanted to. Because his paycheck didn’t cover whatever the heck this is.
“You’re expected. Eighth floor.”
She gave him one nod. No thanks. No smile. Just noted.
The elevator doors opened like they were tired of waiting. She stepped in. Pressed the button like it had personally insulted her. Steel swallowed her whole. Silence pressed in. She shut her eyes. One breath. Controlled. Measured. A lie.
Floor 2.
The numbers blinked and crawled upward, arrogant in their slowness. She’d built empires faster than this thing climbed eight goddamn floors. Now she was trapped—mirrored walls pressing in, red digits pulsing like a dare, panic thudding behind her ribs.
Floor 4.
Max’s voice echoed in her skull, low and certain, from a night so long ago it felt like fiction. “It can’t rain all the time.” They’d been caught in a storm, soaked through, laughing like idiots. Ducked into a building’s lobby, dripping puddles on the marble—until the doorman tossed them right back out. He’d said it then. Smirking. Rain in his eyelashes. Like he believed it.
She opened her eyes and met her reflection. Hair clinging to her face. Mascara smudged and streaked, dripping like ink down porcelain. She looked like a clown. A rich, broken clown. And just for a second—just one—she almost laughed. The kind of laugh that climbs out sideways. That rides shotgun with grief. Because she used to laugh like that with him. Because even his voice was starting to fade. Because she didn’t know what waited at the end of this elevator ride—and that terrified her more than anything.
Floor 6.
She clenched her fists. Pressed her knuckles into the mirrored wall. Pain answered. She needed that. Come on. Come on. Fuck.
Floor 8.
The light blinked. The elevator stuttered. She took a deep breath.
Ding.
The doors began to open—And her world narrowed to the space between the crack. The hallway hit like a slap—beige, plastic, dead-eyed. It smelled like lost hope and recycled air. The kind of place where bad news gets whispered behind x-rays and masks.
A doctor stepped out of nowhere. Fresh out of med school or already ten years dead inside—hard to tell. He had that look, not a flash of humanity on his face, like he’d left it in a locker with his jacket.
“Miss Stone?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
She didn’t move. Not until she could cut the space between them with her voice.
“What happened?”
He didn’t even flinch. Just opened his mouth and let the script roll out like he’d recited it in front of a mirror a hundred times.
“Party that got out of hand. Alcohol. Benzos. Xanax, most likely.”
Her hands curled so tight her nails bit skin.
“Fucking Xanax? Is he—?”
“Stable,” the doctor said, calm as you please. “Lucky someone called 911 in time.”
Stable. Stable.
Not okay. Not recovering. Not alive and clear. Just not dead. Yet. A heartbeat above a morgue drawer. And this asshole said it like he was reading off a lunch order that came in wrong. Chicken salad instead of turkey. Oh well.
She stared at him, rage fizzing just behind her eyes. This is what you went to school for? To become a human clipboard? To say the words like they don’t mean anything? Maxwell Tate—Maxwell fucking Tate—is fading, and you deliver that news like you're checking inventory? He walks the line between life and death, and you sound bored. Like you’ve done this too many times and stopped giving a shit somewhere along the way. Like greatness doesn't faze you anymore. Like watching a god fall apart is just part of your Wednesday. He could be gone tomorrow, and all you’ve got is "stable." You’re the one person here who’s supposed to care—not cry, not collapse, but care. Be the last ounce of heart in a world that’s run out. But no. Just that glassy, polished look. No warmth. No soul.
And then she saw it—just a spec. A line in his forehead that maybe hadn’t relaxed in hours. The coffee stain on his coat. The tremor in the way he rubbed his temple when he thought she wasn’t looking. His eyes, bloodshot and heavy, held something else too. A weight. Like maybe he hadn’t slept in days. Like maybe just before this, he was telling a mother her daughter wasn’t coming home.
Her fury stuttered—just for a breath.
Maybe he wasn’t heartless. Maybe he was just empty. Used up. Burned out from trying to hold back a tide that never stopped coming. She hated him for that. And, stupidly, she pitied him too. She inhaled through her teeth, forcing her voice to stay level.
“Where is he?”
The doctor paused. Still calm. Then glanced down at his chart, then back up at her face.
“You’re not listed as family, but you were flagged as… important…Not our typical policy.” A breath.
“Can I ask—how do you know him?” he said, like he hadn’t just opened the gates to hell.
That stopped her. Not her body. Just her eyes. She stared at him like a knife staring at a throat. No pleading. No drama. Just cold, surgical intent.
“Take me to him.”
He blinked. Nodded... Of course he did.
“This way.”
Each step she took echoed louder than the last.
He stopped at a door.
“He’s not conscious,” the doctor said. “Should come around soon.”
She nodded. Said nothing.
He opened the door.
She stepped in.
There he was.
Max.
She didn’t breathe.
Couldn’t.
Something wrapped tight around her lungs—barbed wire made of grief and old, rotting fear. The kind that knew her story. The kind that never let go. Max looked like death was already halfway through the door—dragging him by the ankles.
She’d spent years turning herself into a fortress—walls thick, doors bolted, windows blacked out—and he kicked them in like caution was a word for other people. No hesitation. And thank God for that. He was the only one who ever looked at the wreckage inside her and said: Not her. Not this one. She stays. Now here he was. Dying. Or whatever cruel version of almost was stretched out in front of her.
She dragged the chair close, knees kissing cold steel, and locked onto the weak rise and fall of his chest. Barely there. Like the air itself was negotiating with him. She gripped his hand, but it felt like holding fog. His fingers slipped through hers like the tail end of something sacred.
She blinked. The hospital lights burned white-hot above. But all she saw was him—a constellation collapsing under its own gravity. The street-fighting kid with fire in his fists. The reckless teen who laughed in detention halls like he was already a legend. The gambler. The hustler. The myth. Then the man. The mogul who hijacked the future. Whose code ran beneath your fingertips every time you picked up a phone. He wasn’t part of the system. He was the system.
And now? Now he looked like a ghost wearing his own skin. Like none of it ever mattered. Like all that noise—the noise he was—had been leading here, to this cold, fluorescent silence.
It was fucking obscene.
He wasn’t supposed to go out like this. Not in a bed. Not in a hospital gown. Not with his eyes closed like a coward.
She swallowed hard. This wasn’t just grief. This was something deeper. Darker. Like watching the last part of her that still believed in a good ending bleed out quietly beside her.
Max had glued her back together once, when she was more ruin than person, more shard than shape. Like old china. Shattered in places, sure—but maybe beautiful in the way only broken things are. He never tried to hide the cracks. He made her feel like they were the reason she mattered. And now that glue was failing. The cracks widening.
Her reflection stared back from the IV stand—two versions of her blurred in the chrome—neither one whole.
If Max lost this fight—this slow, slithering descent into whatever darkness was gripping him—then what the fuck was the point? She wouldn’t just lose him. She’d lose herself again. And there was no one left to save her this time.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Her voice clawed its way out, raw and rasping. “Don’t you leave me in this goddamn world without you.”
Because she wasn’t just here for him. She never had been. She was here for them. For whatever half-broken, midnight-phone-call, fist-to-the-wall version of life they’d stitched together from scars and suffering.
He didn’t respond. But something twitched behind his eyes.
She leaned in close, forehead to his, tears soaking the pillow like holy water.
“You break…” she whispered. “I break too.”
And hadn’t that always been the truth?
“Max…” Her voice splintered like a mirror dropped on tile.
His eyelids fluttered. Parted. Lips cracked open, and the breath he gave back was barely human.
“Harp…”
Her name in that voice—that voice that once crashed boardrooms and courtrooms and stadiums—now sounded like it was made of ash and thread.
“Oh, Max…”
It wasn’t spoken. It was exhaled.
“You look like shit,” he murmured. A frail grin touched his mouth.
It hit her like a gut punch—the joke, the moment, the him of it all. That stupid little smile, still wired into her heart after everything. But it faded as fast as it came. Her own face hardened. Jaw rigid.
“This is it,” she said. “Your last shot. No more running. No more Houdini bullshit. I’m getting you help. And you’re taking it.”
He studied her face. No smile. No snark. Nothing clever. Nothing left. Just a slow blink that dragged time with it. Then a single tear cut down his face, tracing a line through the ruins.
He nodded.
“Okay.”
One word. But it was everything.
She held his gaze. Long enough to burn it into memory. Then she stood. Walked out without a sound. The door clicked behind her. She left the room. But not him. Not for a second.
She spotted the doctor. Her breath thinned with every step.
Each footfall landed harder than the last. The hallway buzzed under harsh lights, but all she saw was him—standing there, clipboard in hand, like this was the final box to check.
She didn’t slow.
Her words were smooth. Measured. But there was a blade beneath them. “I trust tonight’s visit will remain discreet?”
The doctor blinked, caught mid-thought. His eyebrow lifted.
“Miss Stone… the media already has it. The 911 call’s public.”
Her phone was in her hand before he finished the sentence. Notifications piling up—vultures already circling, ready to pick apart Max’s name. She didn’t need to read the headlines to know what they’d say. A vein pulsed low in her throat. They were already feeding off him. Not if she had anything to say about it. She turned back to the doctor—voice low, laced with something raw and cracking beneath it.
“Just… don’t forget they’re people. Not stats. Not cases. Sometimes they’re the only good thing left in someone’s world.”
For a beat, he didn’t say anything. Just blinked, slow and tired. His mouth opened like he might respond, but nothing came out.
She stared. Not at his badge. Not at his stained coat. At the man behind both. Did he get it? Did it register? His face didn’t shift, but something in his eyes glitched—just enough to catch. A sag in his posture. His hand hovered near his temple, like it wanted to tremble but didn’t have the strength. She couldn’t be sure. But for one second, she chose to believe he felt it. That beneath the waxed indifference, there was a hairline fracture.
She turned away. Hit the elevator button like it was the buzzer on a rigged game—no winners, only survivors. In the steel reflection, her eyes locked on her own—sharp as razors, rimmed with salt. Blood under her nails. Nowhere to put it.
They wanted a collapse?
Then they should’ve picked a different goddamn woman.
They weren’t getting one.
Not tonight.
Ding.
The doors opened.
She stormed out.
Ready for war.
Chapter 2 - Clear
The sirens howled, slicing through the night.
“Pulse is faint.”
“Get the defib. Now.”
Max floated. Not like an angel—closer to a balloon with the string cut. The world twitched in and out, skipping like a scratched record, the hiss of radio static buzzing through his skull. Asphalt pressed to his back, and blood warmed the cracks in the road.
Voices. Hands. Heat. Then—
Nothing.
No tunnel. No choir. Just light.
It swallowed the dark, swallowed him. It wasn’t warm. Wasn’t cold. It was just… waiting.
He ran. Feet pounding the corridor of some half-remembered place, some hallway from childhood. One with fluorescent lights that always flickered. One where you’d call out for Mom but only your echo answered. The walls stretched like taffy. The end stayed out of reach, like dreams the moment after waking.
And just as he thought he might break through—might reach it—
***
The sky above pried itself open in a deep indigo sigh, moonlight dusting the sea with a silver blade. The wind off the ocean was thick with salt and secrets.
Sara stood in the yard, barefoot and bold. Grass pressed between her toes. Her dress, loose and laughing around her legs, whispered of too many summers and not enough time.
She turned and smiled—God, that smile. Like the ones that came right before a goodbye.
“Come on,” she said.
Max stood on the porch like a ghost not quite ready to haunt. Arms crossed. Heart folded in on itself.
“I think I’m good right here.”
She cocked her head, hands on hips. “What’s wrong, Max? Too grown to run barefoot?”
He grinned, but it was the kind of grin that knew things. Like how the world worked. Like how summers ended, and girls left, and boys who weren’t born rich got stuck in towns like this, fixing engines or falling asleep at factory lights.
“Too bad,” she said. “I thought you might keep up.”
She ran—twirled, really—like the wind had made her its favorite thing and didn’t want to let her go.
Her dress spun, pale as memory. She moved like someone who didn’t know yet that you can’t outrun what’s coming for you.
He followed. Of course he did.
The air smelled like her. Citrus and sweat and something wild, like freedom in a bottle. He’d never be able to smell oranges again without remembering this moment and bleeding a little for it. She dropped into the grass like she belonged there, arms wide, like she could hug the world if it didn’t keep slipping away.
“Right here,” she said. “This is the spot.”
Max sat beside her, the ground solid and real beneath him. The stars above blinked like a warning.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer right away. The stars weren’t just stars to Max. They were problems. Patterns. Algorithms waiting to be solved. But nothing lined up right anymore. His brain buzzed with it—trying to make sense of something that was never built for sense.
“How much do you miss me when summer ends?” she asked.
He looked at her. Looked through her. Looked beyond her.
“A lot.”
She smiled, then bit her lip like the truth hurt her teeth. “I hate it,” she said, her voice dipping. “School’s just… a cage after this. And leaving you stings worse every year. I wish we could be in school together.”
He barked a laugh, low and bitter. “Yeah. Just gotta find a spare hundred grand lying around.”
She flinched. But she didn’t cry. Sara never cried. Not where people could see.
“That’s not why I—” she stopped. Looked up. “Just look. Look how big it is.”
***
“Clear!”
The voice punched through the void like a fist.
Then the fire came.
A white-hot slam that yanked Max back like he owed the world something. His back arched. His chest exploded.
The sky peeled open.
No breath. No ground.
“Charging again—”
A bolt of fire tore through his chest, his lungs locking as the world blurred. Then, a flicker. The sharp sting of antiseptic softened into salt air, and the night stretched infinite…
***
Back in the yard, the world hadn’t ended yet. Not for her.
“It’s beautiful,” Sara said again.
Max closed his eyes. Tried to memorize the shape of her voice.
“Feels like the earth’s trying to pull me through it.”
She laughed. “You’re so dramatic.”
“No, I’m serious. Like... if I let go, I’d just fall right through. Out the bottom.”
“What’s really going on in that head of yours?”
He hesitated. Always hesitated.
“It never stops,” he said. “My brain’s like a chalkboard that ran out of room. And the problem’s too big. I keep trying to squeeze more space out of it.”
She touched his arm, tracing invisible words. “Maybe you’re just wired different. Wired for something big.”
He snorted. “Different’s one word for it.”
“I like your brain,” she said. “Even when you overthink kissing me.”
He looked at her. Really looked.
“I still can’t believe you picked me.”
“What?”
“That night. At the dance. You could’ve picked anyone.”
Sara blinked. A beat too long. Her mouth opened. Closed. “Well… I didn’t.”
Yeah. Max knew. He knew she’d danced with the other guy first. The one with perfect teeth and a dad who owned dealerships. The one whose name people remembered.
But in the end, she’d walked out with Max. Stuck her hand in his. Pulled him toward something that still didn’t feel quite real.
He nodded, mostly to himself. “Guess even the moon landing could’ve been faked.”
She rolled her eyes. “God, not this again.”
“I’m serious. The shadows don’t line up. No stars in the footage. There’s even—”
She groaned. Climbed onto her knees, hair wild in the moonlight.
“You know what slows your brain down?”
“What?”
She kissed him.
It was the kind of kiss that rewired things. That sent power surging through old circuits. That made Max believe—just for a second—that maybe some things were real. Maybe some things could last.
His hands found her waist. Her fingers found his hair.
They kissed like they were trying to remember each other for a time they both knew was coming.
Sara pulled away just enough to whisper, “See? Lying in the grass isn’t so bad.”
Max dropped his head back and stared up at the stars.
“Not bad at all.”
Then—porch light.
“Sara? You out there?”
She froze. “Shit. It’s my dad.”
Max groaned. “No place to hide.”
“Stay still.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Hide in the dark.”
He didn’t move. Neither did she.
The night held its breath with them, two bodies tangled in the grass, the stars above their only witness.
For now. Because summer always ends. And even the strongest memories fade like old Polaroids. No matter how tight you hold on.
No matter how real it felt.
Somewhere, not far from here, a boy’s heart beat once more.
And somewhere else. Maybe a little further.
A girl let go.
***
Then—blinding white swallowed everything.
Max gasped, his chest heaving, his body jolting from an unseen force. The stars vanished. The night shattered. Only the unbearable brightness remained.
His eyes fluttered. Opened. Lips parted, a breathless rasp escaping. “Harp…” His voice cracked, sharp and brittle, like fractured glass catching the light.”
“Oh, Max…”
Chapter 3 - late
One day later.
Preston leaned back in his chair and swirled the last inch of tequila. The Irish bar wasn’t a place you found, it was where you ended up. The final stop on a slow slide of bad decisions. A waiting room for people avoiding home. The air stank of old whiskey and older regrets. Both soaked deep into the floorboards. No amount of time would lift the smell. The jukebox wheezed out a U2 track, Bono’s voice stretching thin through the haze. No one listened. Not really. Just a few old men hunched over their beers, clinging to the hour like it owed them something.
“Jesus, Vaughn, you look like a fucking funeral,” Tom’s voice cut through the noise, shaking Preston from his thoughts. Tom leaned on the sticky bar, lifting his pint of Guinness in a lazy salute. “Loosen up, huh? Ain’t that what this is for?”
Preston smiled like it hurt, shaking his head as he lifted his own glass. “Didn’t realize drinking with you required enthusiasm.”
Tom snorted, knocking back a long sip before setting his glass down with a dull thud. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
Preston didn’t answer. He let the hum of the bar settle around him. Soft conversations floated in the air. Ice clinked in glasses. Laughter erupted from the back corner. Regulars were locked in a card game that no one ever seemed to win. The room was soaked in years of easy indulgence and slow decay.
Preston rolled the stem of his Casa Azul Reposado between his fingers, adjusting the squared cuff of his sleeve after every sip. The tequila burned less now, settling into his bloodstream with a warmth that blurred the edges of everything.
Tom lifted his glass, watching the foam swirl. “Think he ever found what he was looking for?”
Preston tilted his glass, watching the ice slide like it held the answer. “Who the fuck could find anything if the streets have no names?”
Tom grinned, raising his pint in a slow salute. “Valid.”
The words faded under Bono’s rising wail.
Behind the bar, Barb popped the cap off a bottle, her movements exact, effortless. She was thirty-two but carried herself like someone who had seen enough to be done with the bullshit. When she first started here at twenty-one, there had been a glow to her, something soft that still let in the light. Now? Now, she moved like she owned the place, and maybe she did.
“Another Guinness, Tom?” she asked, already reaching for the tap.
“Yeah, Barb.”
Preston leaned on the bar, elbow sticking to something suspicious. “Guinness? Got 8,735 years left on its lease.”
Tom blinked. “The hell are you talking about?”
“St. James’s Gate. Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease in 1759. Forty-five pounds a year.”
Tom frowned into his pint. “That’s not a lease. That’s witchcraft.”
Preston lifted his glass. “Rent control, baby.”
Tom shook his head. “Who even owns it after 9,000 years?”
Preston shrugged. “Not our problem.”
Tom took a slow sip, then sighed. “Can I just drink my beer in peace?”
Preston leaned closer, conspiratorial. “Also has fewer calories than orange juice.”
Tom snorted into his glass. “Get out.”
Preston downed his tequila. “It’s a light beer, bro. Welcome to facts.”
Tom stared at him. “Why do you know this shit?”
Preston grinned. “Why don’t you?”
Tom glanced at his Guinness, then back at Preston. “I hate you.”
Preston raised his glass in a lazy toast. “Nah, you love me.”
I hate you Tom.
His eyes flicked toward the TV just as the red-and-white Breaking News banner slashed across the screen.
"Maxwell Tate was released from New York-Presbyterian Hospital this evening after last night’s emergency that resulted in a 911 call now made public…”
Preston’s grip on his glass tightened, the condensation slick beneath his fingertips.
Max.
The name alone sent something harsh and unwelcome through his chest. Like an old wound pressed with cold metal.
Tom snorted, shaking his head. “Hey, Preston, didn’t you go to school with that rich asshole?”
Preston didn’t answer. He studied the screen.
Central Park Tower. Reporters fighting barricades. Cameras flashed like lightning. Chasing a man who had spent his life running.
And just like that, he was gone—no longer in the bar, not really. He was sixteen again. Some no-name suburb. A muggy summer afternoon. Him and Max in his parents’ basement, reenacting Terminator scenes with squirt guns and way too much sugar in their veins.
“I’ll be back,” Max would growl, over and over in a fake Austrian accent, until Preston nearly pissed himself laughing.
They were just boys. Nothing special. Nothing dangerous yet. Just two kids with scraped knees and shared secrets. God, the way they used to cackle. Shoulders pressed together, lungs emptied by the kind of laughter you don’t realize you’ll miss until decades later when silence becomes more familiar than sound.
And maybe that was the part that hurt the most. Because Max never really came back, did he? The world had different plans. Big ones. Tragic ones. Plans that carved a chasm between them so wide it swallowed everything that mattered.
Preston had tried to bridge it, once. A text. A letter, even. But then life came roaring through like a drunk train—jobs, bills, bitterness, and all the excuses that start sounding like reasons after enough time.
And Max? He became Maxwell Fucking Tate. The one they wrote articles about. The one with satellites in orbit and political rumors whispered behind closed doors.
But to Preston, he’d always just been Max. Just that weird, brilliant, impossible kid who once tackled him in a pile of leaves and told him he’d never let anyone hurt him. And fuck, if that hadn’t been true—right up until the day they stopped speaking.
The last time he saw him, they were 22, maybe 23. Sitting on a cracked couch in a half-furnished apartment with cold pizza between them, the city humming like a secret outside the window. Max talked for hours—half-philosopher, half-madman—about a connected world. About how everything would talk to everything else, how the future was just waiting for the tech to catch up to the idea.
But Preston’s mind pulled further back. School. The contract.
Didn’t mean much then. Now it meant fucking everything. If he let it. The ball had been in his court for years. He knew it. Every day, he fucking knew it. Not just a thought. Not just guilt. But a debt.
Maybe that was enough.
Enough to get out of this dead-end bar, peel himself off this stool, and do something about it. Before the next headline wasn’t about a hospital discharge—but a fucking obituary.
He took one last look at the screen, then downed what was left in his glass. It burned.
Good.
Maybe that meant he was still in there.
And maybe, just maybe, Max was too.
The TV pulled Preston back. The reporter eager to slam another nail in the coffin. Mic pushed into some pretty boy in all black. A bartender. His voice cut through next, smug and full of self-importance. “Guess what? Guy didn’t leave a tip. Not a cent. He never does.”
A smirk. Another flash. And just like that, the world had another reason to hate Maxwell Tate.
Tom laughed. “Wahh fucking wahh. Poor little rich boy. Send some of that struggle my way.”
Preston squeezed the glass.
Fuck off, Tom.
He barely glanced at Tom as he took another sip, letting the burn of tequila do the talking. He hadn’t liked him in college, didn’t like him now. A filler for the silence Preston refused to face.
“Hey, Barb, another round!” Tom’s voice cut through the bar’s lull, dragging a few annoyed glances.
He waved a thick arm her way. “And turn that up! My buddy here used to rub elbows with that rich prick!”
Barb arched a brow and smiled like she knew something you didn’t as she adjusted the volume. Bono faded beneath the anchor’s steady cadence.
She slid another Guinness across the bar, shaking her head at Tom. “That’s why your friend’s drinking fancy tequila. Too good for our beer.” As she poured Preston another.
Preston let his eyes drop to the varnished surface, its glossy finish catching the light in cracked, distorted lines.
A pew for sad songs and half-spoken confessions.
He was tired. Bone-tired. Not just from the day, or the bar, or the endless carousel of banter that never meant a goddamn thing. He was tired of the easy stereotypes, the lazy weight of blame people threw like darts at anyone who had more than them.
Rich people were soulless pricks. Fine.
But poor people—
They turned their scars into flags. Wrapped themselves in suffering like it was armor, like pain made them holy. Like misery was a prize only they had earned.
And maybe that’s what bugged him the most—this idea that struggle gave someone more claim to truth. That just because your life was harder, you understood something deeper. Like pain was a currency only they could spend. Like the rest of the world hadn’t bled too, just maybe in quieter ways.
It all felt like theater. And he was done auditioning.
Done pretending he hadn’t seen the worst of both sides.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he’s for everyone, not just the pricks who can’t afford their gifts.
Mostly though, Preston hated himself. For sitting here. For watching Max’s life from the outside. For letting himself become another faded figure in the crowd Max had left behind.
Tom clapped him on the back, jolting him from the spiral. “Jesus, lighten up, man. I’m just messing with you.”
Preston didn’t look up from the bar. “You know something, Tom…”
Tom leaned in, still grinning. “What’s that, pal?”
“He wasn’t always rich,” said Preston.
“That so?”
Preston exhaled, the words heavier than he expected. “Yeah. And he’s the farthest thing from an asshole you’ll never meet.”
Tom barked a laugh. “Wow, easy champ. You’re talking like you’re friends. You and Maxwell Tate? Keep dreaming.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
“I was,” Preston whispered.
“Was what?”
Preston swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “His friend.”
Tom scoffed. “That so?”
Preston nodded, eyes flicking toward the TV. “His best friend.”
Tom snorted, turning toward Barb. “Hey, Barb! You hear that? My man Preston was besties with Maxwell Tate.”
Barb barely lifted an eyebrow, balancing a tray on her hip. “I knew you were fancy, hun, but not that fancy.” Her smiled fading as the thought hit her. “So why are you here, doll,” she gestured around the room—the stale air, the melting ice in his glass, “when he’s up there?”
Fuck.
The words landed like a brick through a stained-glass window.
Preston reached for his tequila, drained it in one pull, and slammed the glass down. “You know what,” he muttered, signaling for the check. “That’s a great fucking question, Barb.”
Tom frowned. “Whoa, buddy. Where the hell you going? We just sat down.”
Preston didn’t answer. He pulled a crisp $100 bill from his wallet and slapped it onto the bar.
More than the tab. More than the moment deserved.
“Dude. My wife gives me one night out a month. Can you at least pretend to let me enjoy it?” said Tom.
“Next time, pal,” Preston said, rising from his stool. “I’ve got something to do and somewhere to be.”
His eyes flicked to the TV. “And I’m already late.”
He nodded toward Barb. “Keep the change, doll.”
“Thanks, sweetie.”
Her eyes followed him as he marched toward the door.
The night swallowed him as he stepped outside. Rain misted the air—fine and relentless, the kind that ignored umbrellas, slipping past collars and soaking through in slow, invisible layers. It clung to his coat, settled in his hair, beaded on his lashes.
Max always said the city looked different in the rain, like it was trying to start over. "Water washes everything clean, even the ugly parts," he once said, watching droplets snake down the glass of a high-rise. "Anyways, doesn’t matter if you believe me, because it can’t rain all the time."
Max said a lot of things.
Preston wanted to believe him—he really did.
That things could be rinsed clean.
That redemption didn’t always come with a price.
But some things didn’t wash away.
They just sank deeper.
Time to find out who was right.