Chapter 29: Live Mic Drop
The days after Mark’s confession folded into one another, a blur of fluorescent library lights and dense legal textbooks that offered no real escape. Alexis moved through her routines mechanically. Class. Study group. The gym. She ignored the persistent buzz of her phone, the growing stack of notifications from Mark that shifted from pleading (“Please just let me know you’re okay”) to logistical (“The test is Thursday at 10 AM. I’ll go straight from there.”).
She didn’t reply. Speaking to him felt impossible. Every potential sentence dissolved on her tongue before it could form. What was there to say until they knew? Her mind was a locked room, and the key was in some lab technician’s hands.
Kelsie tiptoed around her, offering tea and terrible reality TV. “You’re in trial mode,” she observed one evening, watching Alexis scrub the already-clean kitchen counter with aggressive focus. “You’ve sentenced him already.”
Alexis stopped scrubbing. “I’m waiting for evidence.” But her voice lacked its usual conviction.
Thursday dawned gunmetal gray and drizzly. Alexis woke at 6 AM, her eyes snapping open before her alarm. She knew, with miserable certainty, the exact minute he would be walking into the clinic. She pictured it: the sterile waiting room, the awkward forms, the cold professionalism of the staff. She wondered if Tamara would be there, with the baby. The image of it—Mark and that woman, bound by this awful circumstance—made her stomach turn.
She dragged herself to her constitutional law lecture, but the professor’s voice was just static. Her notebook remained blank. At 10:17 AM, her phone lit up on the desk. A single text from Mark.
Mark: It’s done.
Two words. No drama. The finality of them was worse than anything else.
Her fingers hovered over the screen. Part of her wanted to ask how it went, if the baby had cried, what Tamara had said. The other, larger part closed the messaging app and put her phone away.
The wait for results was supposed to be three to five business days. An eternity. That evening, she broke her own silent rule and did the one thing she knew would hurt: she looked him up online.
His social media was eerily normal. Retweets of fan art, a promo for a new collaboration video, a funny clip from a recent stream. The comments were a sea of “W” and “King” and fire emojis. His digital kingdom, utterly unaware of the fault line cracking beneath its founder’s feet.
She clicked on his streaming schedule. He was live right now.
She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t. It was emotional self-harm. But her cursor drifted, hovered, and clicked.
The stream loaded. It was a Street Fighter VI tournament watch party, him and two of his RDC brothers on a couch, providing commentary. The usual setup. The massive screen behind them flashed with colorful combat. The chat scrolled at a feverish pace to her right.
Mark was on the far left of the couch. He was laughing at something his friend Des said, but it didn’t reach his eyes. They looked flat, glassy. He was wearing a plain black tee, a silver chain she recognized peeking out from the collar. He took a long sip from a water bottle, his gaze drifting away from the camera, lost for a second in the middle of a joke.
“Yo, Mark, you good, man?” Des asked, nudging him. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
Mark blinked, forced a wider smile. “Nah, I’m straight. Just thinking about these trash tier picks. Look at this guy’s combo.” He launched into technical commentary, his voice sliding back into its familiar, charismatic rhythm. But the performance was thin. Alexis could see the strain at the corners of his mouth, the slight tremor in his hands as he gestured at the screen.
The chat noticed.
Mark lowkey sad tonight?
He looks tired fr.
Stream feels off.
Where’s the energy, my guy?
She watched, her own breath shallow, as he tried to power through. He’d always been a performer, but never like this—never so visibly clinging to the persona as a life raft. During a loading screen, one of his co-hosts launched into a wild story about a convention meet-up, the kind of anecdote that usually had Mark adding his own hilarious spin.
Mark just nodded. “That’s crazy,” he said, his voice distant. He was staring at his phone, which was face-down on the couch cushion beside him.
The match resumed. A hype moment happened on screen, a perfect parry into a devastating super move. Des and the other friend leapt up, shouting. Mark flinched at the sudden noise, then slowly pushed himself to his feet, his celebration a half-second late, a beat out of sync. He ran a hand over his face.
“I’m sorry, y’all,” he said, his voice cutting through the celebratory noise. It was quiet, devoid of its usual timbre.
Des laughed. “For what? That was fire!”
“No, I’m… I’m sorry.” Mark looked directly into the camera lens. Not at the thousands of usernames scrolling past, but into it, as if he could see through the digital ether. His expression was stripped raw. “I can’t do this right now.”
The chat exploded in confusion.
Is he crying?
Tech issues?
MARK?
He ignored it. He turned and walked out of the frame, leaving his friends staring after him in stunned silence. The stream kept rolling, broadcasting the empty space where he had been. Des recovered first, chuckling nervously. “Yo, my boy’s having a moment, hold on. BRB, chat.” He muted the mic and got up, following Mark off-camera.
For a full minute, the stream showed an empty couch, the paused fighting game on the big screen. The chat was pandemonium, theories flying from food poisoning to a family emergency.
Then Mark walked back in alone. His eyes were red-rimmed. He sat heavily in his chair, pulled it up to the desk, and leaned into his personal camera. He didn’t look at his friends, who hovered uncertainly at the edge of the shot.
“I need to say something,” he began, his voice gravelly. “To one person. And since I’ve screwed up every other way to say it, I guess I’m saying it here.”
He picked up his phone. His thumbs moved across the screen, his brow furrowed in concentration. The studio was dead silent except for the hum of the PCs. He found what he was looking for, swiped, and then held the phone up to his camera.
The image that filled thousands of screens, and Alexis’s laptop, was a photo she had forgotten existed. It was from their third date, a selfie he’d taken of them crammed into a photo booth at a retro arcade. She was mid-laugh, her head thrown back, wearing a paper crown from a Skee-Ball prize. He was beside her, grinning not at the camera but at her, his expression one of unguarded, astonished happiness. It was a private, perfect moment. Now it was public.
“Her name is Alexis,” Mark said, his voice breaking. He lowered the phone, holding it against his chest. “And for the past few months, she’s been the best part of my life. The real part.” He took a shuddering breath. “And I… I messed up. I had something from before. A mistake. And I was scared to tell her about it. I thought I could fix it by myself.”
Tears were streaming down his face now. He made no effort to wipe them away.
“I was wrong. And now she’s waiting for me to prove that the mistake I made doesn’t have anything to do with us. With the future I want.” He looked straight into the lens again, his gaze piercing. “So, Alexis, if you’re watching this… I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m just telling you, and everybody else, the truth. The baby isn’t mine. The test will prove it. But more than that… you’re my family. You’re the only family I want. Everything else is just noise.”
He stopped. The silence in the studio was absolute. Then, softly, he added, “I’m signing off now. I’m sorry, chat. Love y’all. But I’ve got to go try and be the man she already thinks I am.”
He reached forward, and with a final, direct look into the camera, he ended the stream.
The screen went black. Then the “OFFLINE” graphic popped up.
Alexis sat frozen in the dark of her room, the glow of the laptop the only light. Her own face, laughing and crowned, hung in her vision. His words echoed in the sudden quiet. You’re the only family I want.
A torrent of sound erupted from her laptop speakers—the discordant ping of countless social media notifications. Her phone, lying silent on the bed, began to vibrate, skittering toward the edge. Text alerts. Instagram tags. Twitter mentions. The world had just witnessed a heart ripped open, and now it was rushing to comment, to dissect, to share.
She didn’t move to silence it. She sat there as the digital noise crescendoed around her, the tears on her cheeks cold and quiet, a private response to his very public plea. The wait was no longer just for a lab result. It was for her own heart to decide what to do with the shattered, terrifying, honest thing he had just laid at her feet.
The digital cacophony felt like a physical swarm in her quiet room. Alexis finally reached over and silenced her phone, plunging the space into a ringing quiet that was somehow worse. Her own breath sounded too loud. The frozen, laughing image of them from the photo booth was seared onto the back of her eyelids every time she blinked.
He’d shown that. To millions. He’d said her name.
“Family.” The word echoed in the hollow of her chest. It felt too big, too permanent, a lifetime promise tossed into a storm of his own making. She stood up, her legs unsteady, and paced the short length of her bedroom. The walls felt closer. Her throat was tight.
A new sound cut through the quiet—not a notification, but a direct, persistent knocking on her apartment door. Three firm raps. Then a pause. Then three more.
Kelsie was out. Alexis knew, with a cold, sinking certainty, who it was. The world moved too fast now. There was no more waiting. She wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands, took a breath that did nothing to steady her, and walked to the door.
She looked through the peephole. Mark stood there, head bowed, shoulders slumped under the drizzle still misting his jacket. He looked utterly spent, the adrenaline from the stream clearly evaporated, leaving only a raw aftermath.
She unlocked the door and opened it.
They stood facing each other across the threshold, the hallway’s dim light casting a long shadow between them. He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and desperate. He seemed older. The performed charm was completely gone, sandblasted away by sheer exposure.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a rough scrape.
“You’re trending,” Alexis replied. Her own voice sounded foreign, detached.
A grimace twisted his features. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “I know. I don’t care.” He shifted his weight. “Can I… can I come in? Or tell me to leave. Just tell me something.”
She studied him—the genuine anguish, the absence of any shield. This was the man from the balcony, from the coffee shop debacle, but stripped further back to the core. She stepped aside without a word.
He walked in, careful not to brush against her. He stood in the middle of her living room, seeming too large for the space, unsure what to do with himself. He glanced at her laptop, still open on the offline stream screen, and winced.
“That was…” He shook his head, searching for a word. “I don’t know what that was. It just came out.”
“It was a lot.” Alexis closed the door and leaned against it, arms folded. “You put our private life on main, Mark. You used our picture.”
“I know.” He turned to face her fully. “And I’m sorry. But everything private was already leaking out, one way or another. Through some lab, through her showing up at a coffee shop… I wanted to give it to you myself, for once. Even if it was a mess.”
“You didn’t give it to me. You broadcast it.” The anger was there, simmering under the shock. “You made my face part of your narrative.”
“It’s not a narrative!” The force in his voice made her flinch. He took a sharp breath, reining it in. “It’s my life. It’s our life. And I was tired of letting other people define it.” He took a step closer, then stopped, seeing her tense. “Alexis, look at me. Please.”
She did.
“The test is done,” he said, each word deliberate. “In forty-eight hours, we’ll know. But I know. I knew the second I saw that kid. There’s no universe where that’s my son.”
“You didn’t know a week ago,” she whispered.
“I was scared a week ago.” He didn’t look away. “I’m not scared of the test. I’m scared of you. Of losing you over a ghost.” He gestured helplessly at the space between them. “So I nuked it. I burned my own stage down so there’s nowhere left to hide. It’s just me now.”
The quiet hum of her refrigerator filled the room. She could smell the rain on his jacket, a damp, clean scent. She uncrossed her arms, her own defenses feeling brittle and pointless.
“You said ‘family’,” she said, the word feeling dangerous on her tongue.
“I meant it.” His eyes were glistening again. “Not like… not like a proposal or some shit. Like… you’re my home. The person I want to tell things to first. The person whose laugh I think about. That’s family to me. The one you choose.”
She thought of the baby in the stroller, a child who had no choice in any of this. She thought of Tamara’s smirk, of the cryptic “Miami” that was now a concrete hotel room. The complexity of it was a wall.
“And when the results come back?” she asked. “What if you’re wrong?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Then I handle my responsibility. But it doesn’t change how I feel about you. It doesn’t change what I want.”
“It changes everything,” she said, a hot pressure building behind her eyes.
“It changes the logistics,” he countered softly. “Not the heart of it.”
She wanted to argue, to dismantle his oversimplification. But the sheer, exhausted sincerity in his face disarmed her. He wasn’t pitching her. He was just stating his truth, consequences be damned.
He moved slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, and sat on the edge of her sofa, his head in his hands. The pose was so defeated. “I’m so tired, Lex.”
The use of her nickname, spoken with such weary fragility, did something to her. The anger bled out, leaving a profound exhaustion in its wake. She was tired, too. Tired of the suspicion, the waiting, the holding her breath.
She walked over and sat next to him, not touching, but close enough to feel the heat from his body. They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the city sounds filter through the window.
“The stream is going to be a nightmare,” she said finally, the practical part of her brain nudging forward.
“I know,” he sighed, lifting his head. “My manager is probably having an aneurysm. The PR team is drafting seventeen different apology tweets right now.” He looked at her, a ghost of his old humor in his eyes. “Worth it.”
“Don’t say that,” she said, but there was no bite in it.
“It is.” He reached out, his hand hovering just above her knee. A question. “I needed you to see me. All of it. Not the guy on the screen. The guy who’s scared and messed up and sorry.”
She looked at his hand, then placed her own over it. His skin was cool. He turned his palm up to intertwine their fingers, his grip tight, almost desperate.
“I saw you,” she said.
Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, fading as it moved across the city. Inside, they just sat, holding on in the quiet eye of the storm they’d created, waiting for the next wind to hit.