Free Web NovelChapter 5: Believe In Fate
Tomorrow is the dinner, Liam knew the timing was right. Pushing further now would only cost him ground.
Victoria was a rational woman with plenty of life behind her. She’d think this through properly, and nothing was left to gain by arguing tonight.
He could see her again tomorrow, at the dinner, and let the rest sort itself out from there.
After they left the café, Victoria glanced at the roses still sitting on the passenger seat and asked, "Shall I drive you home?"
"No need. My place isn’t far, and I was planning to be out for a while anyway." He paused. "But I have a feeling we’ll see each other again soon."
He knew, better than she could guess, that women of her generation tended to believe in fate more than they let on.
"Why do you say that?" she asked, genuinely curious.Maybe it’s just a feeling. Could be nothing.
Victoria smiled and told herself this impulse of his would fade soon enough, that he’d go back to whatever the young man cared about and forget this had ever happened. She watched him walk off before pulling away.
The moment she was out of sight, Liam pulled out his phone and fired off a Telegram message to Ethan.
[Rage Quit Cafe. Now.]
[On my way, bro]
He didn’t head home. His mom would still be at work, and his beat-up flip phone barely loaded a page, let alone let him search properly. He needed a real computer for this.
Somewhere in this city, an eighteen-year-old named Sophie Miller was going about her evening with no idea that something had changed.
He couldn’t reach her yet. But he could start looking. He’d failed her once, and failed her daughter, Sarah, right along with her. He wasn’t about to spend another decade finding out what that cost him.
At the cafe, Liam grabbed a temporary pass, nobody bothered checking ID for a machine and an hour of bandwidth, and dropped a coin into the claw machine by the door out of habit, missing the watermelon plush by an inch before giving up and grabbing a free terminal.
He’d barely logged in when Ethan dropped into the seat beside him, two bottles of Coke in hand. "One for you, one for me."
Liam glanced at his best friend and felt something warm settle in his chest. Ethan was the kind of guy you’d walk past in a crowd without a second look, unremarkable in almost every way except one: he was relentlessly, stubbornly loyal.
In Liam’s past life, Ethan had spent his twenties broke and hopelessly hooked on gaming, skipping meals just to keep a Coke within reach while he played.
And then, somehow, years later, he’d turned it all around, built something real for himself, finally bought the life he’d always talked about.
And when Liam hit rock bottom, Ethan never asked a single question. He quietly pulled out the money he’d invested in crypto, an investment that would have made him a fortune someday, and handed it to Liam instead. "Pay me back whenever," he’d said with a shrug. "Or don’t. It doesn’t matter."
Sitting beside that same kid now, dressed in worn clothes and broke as ever, Liam felt a lump rise in his throat.
Sitting next to that same kid now, broke, sunburned from a summer of doing nothing, utterly unaware of what he’d become, felt like being handed something precious all over again.
"Dude, you were unbelievable today!" Ethan said, practically vibrating. "You confessed to Olivia’s mom. Did you catch her face? I heard she’d already been running her mouth to that snake Damien about how she’d shoot you down, didn’t even bother texting you a heads-up, because she figured she didn’t need to. And then you just walked right past her." He shook his head, grinning. "That wasn’t a confession, man. That was a mic drop."
Then something occurred to him. "Wait, did Victoria actually say yes?"
"What do you think? Of course she didn’t."
"Here." Liam pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and set it down in front of Ethan. "Get yourself set up for the next six months. Call it a thank-you for not asking me a single question today."
Ethan stared at the bill like it might be a trick. "Liam, you didn’t rob a bank or something, did you? I’m not going to prison over this."
"It’s from my mom. Just go buy your game credits."
That was enough. Ethan practically levitated to the counter, where the cafe’s manager, Mike Dawson, topped up his account and rang up six months’ worth of skins and credits.
"I want to see who’s got the nerve to outplay me at mid," Ethan said, cracking his knuckles. "Log in when you’re ready, we’ll run a match together. You call out enemy positions, I’ll hold the site."
"Go ahead and start without me. I’ve got something to take care of first."Too wound up to notice, Ethan was already logging in.
Liam opened Telegram and, with a slight tremor in his hand, searched for the number Sophie had once given him, back when it had actually been Sarah who’d shared it with him first.
He wondered whose account it was now: Swrah’s, or eventually her daughter’s. He wondered if reaching out this early would change anything at all.
The profile came up. Same photo, same familiar name. Liam’s pulse spiked as he tapped Add Contact.
He typed two words into the message box and hit send before he could second-guess himself.
[Hey there.]
