Chapter 443: Those who Stay

Evening, right outside the Blacklist training center.

Nash had just come out of the locker rooms after three hours of intensive drills when his phone started vibrating in the pocket of his joggers. He sat down on the parking lot steps to answer. The name "Pinkie" appeared on the screen, and he knew exactly who it was.

"Hello?"

"H... hello? Nash? It’s Chloé. Well, you know that, it’s written on your screen, it’s stupid to say it, I..."

Her voice was tiny; she sounded like she was hiding at the back of a closet. Nash leaned back against the railing, a little more relaxed.

"Hey, Chloé. You okay?"

"Yes... No. I don’t know."

She sniffled.

"I didn’t want to bother you, but I don’t have anyone else to... well, I do have friends, but they’re not answering anymore. And since you told me I could call you whenever I wanted..."

"Is it that bad that your only backup is a selfish monster like me? Shit, what’s going on?"

"It’s my team... the Juggernauts."

She took a deep breath, and everything came out at once, like a dam breaking.

"It’s been falling apart since we saw each other in front of the Hell Gates with Snow. He spilled everything in front of everyone during the analysis meeting this morning. That I’d worn a Blacklist jersey, that I’d slept outside with an opposing player, that I didn’t respect the team. He said it like that, without sugarcoating, in front of everyone. Since then the coach won’t even look me in the eyes, the players step aside when I walk past in the hallway, and they kicked me out of my spot in the room. Now I’m all the way in the back, right next to the printer."

Nash stayed silent for a second. He pictured the scene, and frankly, he couldn’t help but snicker.

"Next to the printer... Well, it could’ve been worse, they could’ve kicked you out right away."

"It’s not funny, Nash."

"A little. Honestly, your Snow is way too dramatic. Listening to him, you’d think he was the one dating you."

"Don’t say that."

Her voice tightened all at once.

"He’s not wrong, you know. I’m the one who was careless. I disappeared without warning, I left my bag, I made it look like... and him, he spent the whole night looking for me. Fifty-two calls, Nash. He called me fifty-two times. He was scared, and instead of saying thank you, I gave him a reason to yell. It’s my fault."

"Maybe. But he didn’t need to make a show of it, and especially not in front of the whole team."

Nash ran a hand over the back of his neck, thinking.

"Listen. It’s normal for Snow to feel that way. But what he did was really dirty. When you worry about someone, you take them aside, you yell at them if you have to, but you don’t humiliate them in front of their coworkers. You can be wrong and still not deserve that, both at the same time."

A silence settled, then a small sound—impossible to tell if it was a stifled laugh or a sob that missed.

"You always say that with such calm... it’s annoying."

"Now I’m the one who doesn’t see what’s funny."

She laughed for real this time, a fragile laugh, like an old door creaking. Nash smiled: at least she was still able to feel things despite all this mess.

"You want to meet up?" he said without thinking. "I can come pick you up, we’ll grab something to eat, it’ll clear your head. I’ll even take you to that hot-dog stand, so you can show me your diagram on..."

He stopped dead. As he said it, he had seen the scene: him and Chloé together, on an Underground street, right in the middle of a tense period with the Juggernauts.

Impossible. With his luck, that would end up on the front page of a paper Snow would read.

"No," he corrected. "Bad idea. If someone sees us together, you won’t just be next to the printer, you’ll be inside it. Sorry, I spoke too fast."

"It’s okay," she answered softly. "You know, just the fact that you wanted to... and that you figured out on your own that it would be a problem, that’s already a lot. Before, I didn’t have anyone thinking about that for me."

She leaned back against the wall, her smile no longer fading.

"It’s already huge to be able to count on you now."

"It’s the least I can do."

He had answered simply. He could tell from her silence that it was exactly what needed to be said. No need for big speeches.

"And my diagram, I started it!" she added, suddenly full of energy. "Three pages. With a decision tree. If the contents are between two pieces of bread, if you hold it with your hands, if the bread is cut in half or not..."

"And the verdict so far?"

"For now, hot-dogs are sandwiches. But with exceptions."

"Obviously there are exceptions."

"You’re not listening! It’s scientific!"

"I’m listening, I’m listening. I’m just waiting for you to admit you lost."

She protested for a solid two minutes, inventing increasingly absurd technical terms. Nash let her, leaning against his railing, with a stupid smile on his face. Honestly, this girl was super pleasant to hang out with.

"There’s something else," Chloé said when she had finally finished her argument. "Rain wrote to me."

"Oh yeah?"

"Just one message. ’You okay?’ With the question mark."

She laughed nervously.

"For years, I sent signals, long messages, invitations... and he’d answer two words, when he answered. And today, the day I actually feel bad, he writes... and I don’t know what to reply. I haven’t answered him."

"You don’t have to do it tonight."

"I know. But it feels weird."

Nash didn’t try to advise her. He knew it wasn’t his place to play therapist.

"You’ll think about it tomorrow," he said. "Get some sleep. And if it gets too hard, call me back. Even at three in the morning."

"At three in the morning? Seriously?"

"Let’s just say I’m paying the consequences of my actions, so I’m sleeping very little right now."

They hung up not long after. She wished him good night three times in a row, and he wondered how a simple ten-minute phone call had managed to relax him more than a full massage. He stayed on the steps for a moment, phone in hand, watching the yellow light of the streetlamp on the parking lot.

Then his gaze hardened a little.

He recognized his share of responsibility in this mess; he wasn’t going to lie to himself about that. But the situation left him some room, and he saw it very clearly. Chloé was a key element of the Juggernauts. She had detailed Blacklist’s weaknesses and his own in one evening, better than anyone he had ever met, and without even thinking about it, the way one breathes. A girl capable of that had no business sitting next to a printer, in a team that no longer listened. And the quest was called Dream Team. He had done enough of these quests to recognize the pattern.

In the end, she would end up at Blacklist—that’s at least what he told himself. And precisely, her attention to detail and improvements already showed she would fill the team’s last weak point: the coach role. Neither Nash, nor Victoria, nor Dahlia really had the job; it was a mutual understanding. Nash decided because he was always right, and Victoria served more as decoration. In truth, her role was that of club president, not coach.

So, a quest titled Dream Team, involving an analyst who is conveniently on bad terms with her team, whose best player doesn’t want to forgive her.

You didn’t need to be Einstein to see where this was going. Nash eventually told himself that the faster she fell out with Snow, the faster it would happen.

He had therefore decided not to intervene, to let chance play its role. And if the situation between Rain and Snow didn’t improve... well, nothing would stop him from getting involved for real.

Sorry, Chloé, he told himself with a small smile. But I’m going to keep encouraging Snow to stay stubborn.

The next day. At Sarra’s bakery.

Since Nash had bought the place, the bakery never emptied. The homemade cakes sold out before the end of the afternoon, reviews spoke of a warm welcome and butter that "had taste," and the cash register numbers made Lina forget she had never wanted to work.

On the surface, everyone came for the quality, but for those in the know, half the customers came mainly for the legendary Big Titty Bakery: a pair of enormous breasts under a pink apron, undulating hips that filled every man’s heart with hope, and the innocent smile of a girl who suspected nothing.

Behind the counter, she cleaned a display case while leaning over, a cloth in one hand and a concentrated face, glasses sliding down her nose. With every movement, the apron fabric followed with a slight delay. The two employees stacking boxes behind the register watched her without watching her: one stared at a precise point on the case, the other counted the tickets for the fourth time, and when she straightened up, both looked away at the same time.

On the counter, right in front of her, Lina sat cross-legged and gobbled the shortbread cookies one by one, counting them out loud so it would look like an inventory.

"Forty-one... nom nom... Forty-two... nom nom..."

"Lina! There won’t be any left for the customers!" Sarra complained, puffing her cheeks, which wasn’t threatening at all.

Lina rolled her eyes.

"I’m doing you a favor, Big Titty Bakery. If we don’t eat them, they’ll go stale, and that would be wasteful."

"The stock always runs out," Sarra said, very seriously.

She set down her cloth, straightened up, and her gaze drifted for a moment over the empty, clean shelves as if over a horizon.

"I believe in this shop, Lina. I know it seems naive, but that’s our secret: every morning, we get up before everyone else, we knead, we taste, we start over, and we put into it everything good we have. The customers feel it, you know. They feel when it’s made with heart.

"Me, I never had big dreams. I just wanted to make something beautiful with my hands. And now there’s Mia who’s saving up to pay for her little sister’s school, there’s Théo who’s no longer afraid to go home at night. They work hard, both of them, and they smile while doing it. If we keep going like this, one day this place will be a place where no one will be ashamed of being hungry, or of having ambitions."

She placed a hand on her chest gently and smiled with a hopeful air.

"I think that’s what makes them come back. The effort, and the heart. Nothing else."

Her hand sank slightly into the fabric; the whole set bounced as one block under the apron.

Behind the register, the two employees had tears in their eyes, a box clutched against their crotches.

"I’d give a kidney to work here my whole life," the first one whispered.

"Yeah," Lina said, raising an eyebrow. "And the last ingredient of this recipe is a nice pair of big tits."

Sarra gave her a light elbow with no force at all, then slipped into Lina’s hand the shortbread she had set aside for her. Lina took it without looking at her and made it disappear into her mouth.

At the back table, Amara had taken her seat before anyone else. In front of her was a box of macarons from a caterer in the Spires that she had brought to make a good impression and that she didn’t dare offer. She kept pushing it with her fingertips, a little to the left, a little to the right, trying to figure out how to place it on the table as if she had forgotten it there by chance.

She took a breath and launched, in a tone she hoped was casual:

"Ah, by the way, I found this in my bag, I don’t even remember where it came from..."

"You bought it last night," Lina said, mouth full, without turning around. "I saw you coming out of the caterer’s."

Amara opened her mouth to answer, but the doorbell chimed before she could find what to say.

Zayela entered, a bag on her shoulder, and waved a hand toward the whole room.

"Hey everyone."

The two employees behind the register answered with a strangled and a little too polite "Good morning, Zayela." She nodded to them, kissed Sarra on the cheek in passing, and stopped dead when she saw the counter.

"Get down from there, Lina."

"I’m not doing anything wrong..."

"You’re sitting on the table where she works. Get down."

"Fine, fine."

Lina slid off the counter grumbling, and landed on the nearest stool like a cat just chased off a couch. Zayela set her bag on a chair, kicked aside Amara’s chair that was blocking the aisle, and noticed in passing that Sarra hadn’t taken the time to sit down since the beginning of the afternoon.

"You neither," she said to Sarra. "Put your tray down. Everyone to the back, we make one single table."

"But the shortbreads..."

"The shortbreads aren’t going to run away."

Sarra set the tray down. Amara was already pulling chairs to form an approximate circle, and Lina, after a theatrical sigh, ended up bringing an extra plate. They had settled in without thinking about it. It was always like that when Zayela was there, and no one could have said why, or how she had managed it: she never raised her voice, she didn’t threaten, she said things once, and things got done.

"She’s late," Amara said, looking at the time.

"She’ll come. And no one attacks her," Zayela said. "If she starts crying, no one snickers. Lina, that’s especially for you."

"Why me? I’m a sweetheart!"

"Exactly."

Saya arrived a quarter of an hour later, and the girls expected to see the sophisticated and insolent woman who seemed to be rising from her ashes. They ran into someone else: a coat that was too big, a scarf tied over her hair, a hollow and gray face, without makeup. She walked slowly, one hand pressed against the lower part of her belly, so slowly that one wondered if she might faint.

"Good evening," she said, bowing slightly. "Thank you infinitely for agreeing to receive me. I know I had no right to ask, so I thank you all the more. Sarra, your bakery is magnificent. Ladies, I won’t disturb you for long."

"Yo... Is she setting us up? My weirdometer is climbing," Lina murmured to Amara.

"Nah, I know the type. She’s gonna ask for a favor for sure. She must’ve practiced in front of the mirror."

"And what if we played along?"

Lina had a smile that promised nothing good. She stood up in one jump, without giving Amara time to hold her back, and approached Saya while bending low, one hand behind her back, the other extended toward the chair.

"Madame is welcome in our humble establishment. If Madame would be so kind as to follow me, I have cleaned Madame’s armchair with my own hands, and Madame is requested not to tire herself."

"Uh... thank you?" Saya said, who no longer knew where to put herself.

"You’re welcome, Madame."

Lina pulled the chair with a grand butler gesture... and pulled it a little too hard. The chair went backward, Lina with it, and she sprawled on the floor, taking the tablecloth, the plate of shortbreads, and half her dignity with her.

"Oh no..." Sarra sighed, one hand over her mouth.

"Oh my God," Amara said, putting her forehead in her hand, and she covered her eyes with a facepalm worthy of a tutorial.

Even the two employees, behind the register, started coughing to hide their laughter.

"Bravo," Zayela said, looking down at her, arms crossed. "A true professional. We should hire you, for real."

"Hey, I was just trying to do like her!" Lina answered from the floor, laughing, with a plate balanced on her stomach.

Saya frowned.

"Really? Because I look like a clown?"

A blank passed. All heads turned toward her at the same time.

Saya clamped her hand over her mouth. She looked at the others, eyes wide, as if her mouth had betrayed her without warning.

"Sorry. I... no. I didn’t mean to. Lina, excuse me, I’m..."

"She said it," Lina breathed from the floor, eyes shining. "She made a joke about me. Amara, you owe me ten credits."

"Pff... Take them from my nonexistent bank account."

Saya looked at them one by one, completely lost.

"What the...?"

"While you were taking your time to arrive," Zayela sighed, "they made a stupid bet. Lina was supposed to provoke you and make you react." She raised an eyebrow toward Lina. "Looks like she didn’t need to try."

"Sorry," Sarra said, with a small embarrassed smile, helping Lina up. "It’s just that you’ve been so tense lately."

Saya seemed less confused. She apologized once more, head lowered, but Lina waved away her excuses with a flick of the hand, putting the tablecloth back on the table.

"No one’s fooled," Amara added. "The little voice, the bow, the ’ladies,’ that works on Victoria, because she bought you. Us, we haven’t bought anything from you. There’s no point in playing the good girl with us."

"At least between us," Zayela added. "Victoria isn’t here. No one’s grading you."

"And you’re going to hurt yourself," Sarra said in her soft voice, picking up the fallen shortbreads. "Holding yourself back like that. It’s obvious you’re biting your tongue."

Saya scratched her head and exhaled:

"Fuck... Fine. Scold me a little anyway, so I remember the limits. I can’t be myself, given all the shit it’s caused me."

Zayela rolled her eyes.

"It’s true you’re good at getting yourself into messes. But it’s fine. Between us unemployed girls and you the slave, we can get along."

Lina burst out laughing, Amara followed, Sarra hid her smile behind a tray, and Saya, for the first time since she entered, let a real smile rise to her lips.

In the room, something had just shifted by one notch.

Saya finally sat down, gripped her cup between her hands, and looked Zayela straight in the eyes. Which, visibly, required a physical effort from her.

"I’m going to be direct. I need to talk to you, and I’d rather do it in front of everyone than find myself a reason not to."

"I’m listening," Zayela said, arms crossed.

"I’m sorry." Saya breathed. "For Nash. For everything I did to him."

The girls looked at her, then looked at each other.

"When he was nothing, when he was getting crushed by everyone, I was with him. He respected me, he asked permission for gestures that any other guy would’ve taken without asking. And me, I slept with Roam behind his back. I made sure everyone knew. I laughed with them when they made fun of him, I called him a shrimp in front of people who were just waiting for that, and I even said he had a small... well... Fortunately, that’s not the case anymore, so I mostly come off as a jealous liar."

She didn’t lower her eyes.

"You, you were his family, you saw what it did to him. I didn’t do that by mistake or weakness. I did it because I thought I could fall better elsewhere. I was wrong, and I have no one else to blame but myself."

"Nash had a small what?" Amara asked.

"You wouldn’t believe it, drop it," Lina said.

"It’s a bit... surprising," Sarra murmured. "Nash never talks about his past, so I didn’t know the circumstances. I just knew you were together at one point, that he had disagreements with the team, and that you had broken up."

Saya laughed softly.

"Well, basically, that’s the story. I humiliated him, and I left him for a dirty guy who made me prostitute myself to get victories, or just the basics."

She took a sip of tea, and her irony returned, thinner than before.

"You’re lucky, girls. Nash is a unique guy. He has so much power and success, and yet he treats you like queens. He gives you everything you want: fancy clothes, jewelry," she looked around the bakery, "this... He makes your dreams come true. I envy you enormously. You have a man of gold."

She set her cup down, and her fingers started turning around the handle.

"Do you know what the men of the Underground are like? Roam, who lets his girl get passed around by all the guys in the area for crumbs. Vargas, who used me to ’coach’ his team. And all the ones who came after, who took without asking and didn’t even look at me when they left. Outside, there is no Nash running the streets... Outside you have people whose only talent is in the worst horrors." Her voice broke on the word.

The girls weren’t laughing anymore.

"You want to know why I’m like this? Why I came like a living dead?" She fixed a point on the table. "They used me in exchange for rigged matches. Roam was there. He watched me. They said it had to be a show. And me, I acted like I didn’t care, because if you start crying, they want even more."

Her hand started trembling. She hid it under the table.

"I said no. I said it, and they laughed. They continued for a long time. After, they told me to wash with the hose, in the back room, with cold water, while outside they were congratulating Roam." She was breathing too fast. "And it doesn’t go away, you understand? I take a shower and I scrub until it stings, and I still feel their hands. I feel like a thing that was used and thrown away. A used thing. I disgust myself. I can’t even look at myself, and the worst..."

She placed her hand on her belly, and her eyes filled with tears.

"The worst is that I came out of it pregnant. And I don’t even know by whom."

Sarra let out a stifled sound. Amara, who had opened her mouth to say something, closed it. Lina, for once, had a white face, as if someone had cut her power. None of them knew where to put their hands, or their eyes.

"Saya..." Sarra began.

"I can’t..." Saya hiccuped, shoulders shaking. "I can’t think about anything else, I..."

"Saya."

Zayela’s voice was low and very firm. She had leaned over the table, and she had placed her hand on Saya’s, the one that was trembling.

"Look at me. Breathe. Slowly. There."

Saya obeyed, without stopping crying.

"It’s okay," Zayela said. "It’s over. That’s not you anymore, over there. You’re not in that warehouse anymore, and they’re not in this room. You’re here, in a bakery that smells like butter, with three idiots and me. You don’t need to think about it now. Please, don’t think about it anymore."

"I’m sorry..."

"Don’t apologize for that. Never for that."

Sarra had approached without a sound to slip a cup of tea into Saya’s free hand. Amara had ended up pushing the box of macarons toward her, without a word, with a gesture so awkward it could have been funny. Lina came to sit on the other side, without a joke, without a smile, and simply rested her head against Saya’s shoulder.

"I’m bad at comforting people," Lina murmured. "But I’m staying here, okay."

"Idiot," Saya breathed, between two sobs, and for the first time in a long time, it almost sounded like a laugh.

No one spoke for a moment. You could hear the ticking of the clock, the employees quietly tidying behind the counter, and Saya’s breathing calming, very slowly.

"Sorry," she finally said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "I didn’t come to tell you that. I came to apologize."

Zayela had listened to her all the way through with patience.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Whatever you want."

"That I hate you?" Zayela shrugged. "No. Honestly, I’m not mad at you anymore. What you did to him was disgusting, but if you want my opinion, Nash came out bigger from it. If he hadn’t taken that slap, he wouldn’t be what he is today. He turned everything into fuel. So no, you don’t need to get on your knees, and you don’t need my forgiveness."

"Yes."

Saya had answered too fast, and she knew it.

"Yes, I need it. Not out of kindness, by the way. I’m not going to lie to you: I’m in deep shit, I need a place, and I know they won’t give me one as long as I’m dragging this behind me. But it’s not just that."

She took a breath.

"You didn’t reject me. After everything I did, you came, you let me talk, and Victoria didn’t throw me out even though she had every right. I don’t want to be the one who takes advantage of what you have, who eats your cakes and sleeps under other people’s roof while waiting for it to pass. If I’m incapable of doing something as simple as apologizing for real, I’ll never have my place here. Never."

She placed her hands flat on the table so they would stop trembling.

"I’m sorry, Zayela. For him, for you, for everything I broke. I’m not asking you to love me, I’m asking you to let me fix what I can."

The silence that followed was so dense you could hear the shortbreads cooling on the tray.

Zayela slowly uncrossed her arms. She thought about the request, then the person, and she reached the conclusion Nash would probably have made in her place: a girl who admits she has an interest and says it to your face is more reliable than a girl who swears she has none.

"You’ve already paid enough," she said. "I saw the state you arrived in, I listened to what you went through. It doesn’t fix anything, but I’m not going to push you lower. It’s fine. I forgive you."

Saya closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again, they were shining.

"Thank you."

"And for your baby..." Zayela lowered her tone. "You’re going to need people around you when it gets hard. We’re here. Me, Sarra, Lina, even Amara, who pretends not to care."

"I’m not pretending," Amara grumbled.

"Yes, a little," Lina said.

"A very little bit," Amara conceded.

But there, Saya lost her smile. Her fingers had clenched on the edge of the table, and she was looking at a point on the wall, right next to Zayela, as if the sentence she had to say was written there.

"I..."

She stopped, opened her mouth again, closed it.

"What?" Zayela asked.

"It’s no longer relevant." She had spoken very low. "For the baby."

No one understood right away, then the horror came out of her mouth.

"I had an abortion yesterday."