Chapter 1: Poolside Promises
Cynna met Frankie in the army, working with him during a mission they became close and ended up joining his group of friends who would become friends even after coming home. The two of them even started dating for the last 10 months. Frankie had a lot of friends back home, he got along with both men and women, but a particular one made Cynna feel jealous whenever she saw them interact, specially because it was obvious that Sam liked Frankie, and Frankie allowed them to flirt and touch when you’ve asked him to stop her immediately. Sam bragged about having sex with Frankie while on a mission 3 years ago, before he ever met you. As every interaction between them crosses lines, Cynna video documents to stop any gaslighting attempts. But it hurts.
"Come on, get in the pool, Fish." Sam, one of his friends said to him, as she tugged at Frankie's arm to get in the pool during a party.
"I don't know, Sam-" Frankie said before she just pulled him, making him lose balance and fall in the pool. When he rose up he just laughed, splashing water at her as Cynna picked up the cap she had given him for his birthday from the water.
~~~~~~
Sam wraps herself around Frankie, her chest wrapped in a tiny bikini, pressed against him, her arms around his neck, her mouth close to his ear. "Hi Handsome, funny to see you here."
Frankie rolls his eyes playfully as she presses herself against him, knowing exactly what she was doing. He couldn't help but smile slightly when she spoke, her voice right against his ear.
"Hey, Sam." He chuckled, putting his hands around her waist, trying to put some distance between them. "What, surprised to see me here?"
Frankie could feel her body pressed against his and he couldn't help but notice how little the bikini she was wearing covered, his eyes drifting over her body for a moment before looking back up at her. The beer he had let him feel relaxed.
"You're looking... nice." He eventually said, his hands moving to her hips.
"You feel as sexy as ever, Fish," Sam whispered against his ear. "I love how hard you feel beneath me."
Frankie let out a low groan when she whispered in his ear, his hands gripping her hips slightly tighter. He could feel the effects of her closeness getting to him, his mind wandering.
"Sam... stop." He said, his voice coming out more strained than he would've liked, but there was no denying that he was enjoying the way she was pressed against him.
“Are you fucking the whore or just auditioning her?” Cynna asked. “What did I warn you about last night regarding her actions and yours?”
The words cut through the humid air, sharper than the chlorine smell. They landed, and for a second, the entire party seemed to mute. The thumping bass from the patio speakers faded into a dull throb.
Frankie’s head snapped toward the voice. His hands, which had been resting on Sam’s hips, went still. Not recoiling. Just… pausing. His expression was that infuriating blend of caught-off-guard and defensive amusement. “Cyn. Hey. It’s not what it looks like.”
Sam didn’t unwind herself. She just turned her head, a slow, viper-like pivot, and rested her cheek against Frankie’s shoulder. Her smile was all victory. “Looks like someone’s jealous.”
Cynna didn’t move from the pool’s edge. The water lapped at her ankles, cold. She focused on the phone in her hand, the screen still lit, the recording timer silently ticking onward. Five seconds. Ten. She raised it slightly, ensuring the frame captured Sam’s possessive cling, Frankie’s frozen compliance. The video was a cold, hard fact in a world of soft, gaslighting excuses.
“It looks exactly like what it is,” Cynna said, her voice eerily calm. It was her mission voice. The one she used when assessing a hostile zone. “I warned you. I said if she draped herself on you again, and you just stood there and took it, we were done. That was the line. One line.”
Frankie finally pushed at Sam’s arms. It wasn’t a shove. It was a feeble, half-hearted attempt to create an inch of space. “Babe, come on. She just jumped on me. It’s a pool party. It’s Sam. She’s just like this.”
“And you’re just like that,” Cynna shot back. “You allow it. You laugh. You put your hands on her. You don’t say ‘get off.’ You say ‘hey, Sam.’” She mimicked his relaxed tone perfectly, and he flinched.
Sam laughed, the sound bright and fake. “God, you’re so dramatic. We’re just messing around. We have history. You can’t just erase that.”
“I’m not trying to erase your history,” Cynna said, her gaze locking on Frankie. “I’m asking him to respect our present. He can’t. Or won’t. So the present is now past tense.”
She stopped the recording. The final file was saved, time-stamped, undeniable. She held up the sodden baseball cap in her other hand, the one she’d given him ten months ago after he’d mentioned his favorite team. The fabric was heavy with pool water, darkened, ruined.
“You left this in the water,” she said.
Frankie finally disentangled himself from Sam, wading toward the edge. His face was hardening from guilt to anger. The audience was getting to him. “So what, you’re just going to make a scene? You’re filming us now? That’s psycho shit, Cynna.”
“It’s evidentiary,” she corrected, her tone flat. “You lie to me. You tell me I’m imagining the tension. You tell me I’m overreacting. This proves I’m not. This proves you see it, you know it’s wrong, and you choose it anyway. Over me.”
She tossed the cap onto the deck at his feet. It landed with a wet, impotent slap.
“Happy birthday.”
She turned to leave. The party was utterly silent now, all pretence of fun gone, every guest a witness.
“Cynna, wait.” His voice was closer. He’d hauled himself out of the pool. Water dripped from him, pooling on the concrete. He reached for her arm.
His fingers, still cool from the water, closed around her bicep. The touch was a brand. It was the same hand that had been on Sam’s hip thirty seconds ago. A hot, violent revulsion shot through her, pure and instinctual. Every cell in her body screamed to break his wrist. Her training mapped the move instantly: trap the hand, rotate, apply pressure until the joint gives.
She didn’t.
She just looked down at his hand, then up at his face. Her expression wasn’t one of hurt anymore. It was of final, glacial assessment. She saw the plea in his eyes, the panic that he’d finally pushed too far. She saw Sam smirking behind him, a shark in a neon bikini. She saw the Colonel’s own future, clear and uncluttered, stretching out without the constant, draining work of policing someone else’s disrespect.
“Let go of me, Frankie.”
He held on, his grip tightening. “Just talk to me. Don’t walk away like this.”
For a long moment, they were statues. The only sound was water dripping from his body onto the hot deck. Then, the fight seemed to drain out of him. The defiance leaked away, replaced by a dawning, horrifying comprehension. He was losing. He had already lost.
““Boys will be boys” you hate that phrase.. what is the female version of it? *points* “Sam is just Sam” “Sam is just affectionate”. If you never tolerate that regarding others— you don’t get to tolerate her predation.”
“Because you do NOT stop her. You laugh at it. You say bullshit stuff like "it's just Sam" or "Sam is just very very affectionate". Tell me- would you let a man get away with that behaviour? or any other woman?” I ground out.
His hand fell from her arm as if her skin had burned him. The silence around them was no longer just awkward; it was forensic. Every person on that patio was holding their breath, watching the dissection.
Frankie opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes darted from Cynna’s frozen face to Sam’s defiant smirk, then to the gathered, uncomfortable faces of their friends. He was trapped in a spotlight of his own making.
“You don’t get it,” he finally managed, his voice low, meant only for her, but it carried in the quiet. “It’s complicated. With Sam, it’s just… it’s how we are.”
“No.” Cynna’s voice was a shard of glass. Clean, sharp, and final. “It’s how you are. You are a participant. You are an active, willing participant in every single one of these ‘complicated’ moments. You stand there and you let her rewrite history in real-time, right in front of me, and you give her your body to use as a prop.”
She took a step closer to him. The space between them crackled.
“Stop playing the fool, Frankie. You are not a confused bystander. You are a man making a choice. Over and over and over again. You choose the easy ego stroke. You choose the person who demands nothing of you but your compliance. You choose the path of least resistance, even when you know it leads right through me.”
She gestured toward Sam with her phone, still clutched in her hand. “She is not a force of nature. She’s a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s doing it because you let her. You enable her. So cut the act. The befuddled, ‘oh, that’s just Sam’ act is insulting. To me, and to your own intelligence.”
Frankie’s jaw tightened. The anger was back, hot and defensive. “You want me to be an asshole to her? To a friend? To just publicly humiliate her because you’re insecure?”
“I want you to have a fucking spine!” The words exploded from her, louder than she intended. A few people by the snack table jumped. “I want you to see a line and respect it! I want you to value what we have enough to say, ‘Hey, Sam, that’s not cool with me. Back off.’ It’s not about humiliating her. It’s about defining your own boundaries. But you don’t have any. Not with her. You have a doorway where a boundary should be, and you’ve hung a welcome sign just for her.”
She sucked in a breath, the air tasting of charcoal and betrayal. “So here it is. The choice. The one you’ve been avoiding for ten months. You walk over to her right now, you tell her that the touching, the whispering, the clinging—it ends. Permanently. That your loyalty is here, with me, and it’s not up for debate or group discussion. You make it unequivocally clear, in front of everyone, so there’s no more ‘misunderstandings’.”
She paused, letting the weight of it settle on his shoulders.
“Or,” she continued, her voice dropping to something dangerously quiet, “you do nothing. You stand there. You keep playing the fool. You keep enjoying the chaos. And I walk out that gate, and you never see me again. There is no third option. There is no ‘we’ll talk about it later’. There is this moment. You, me, her. You choose.”
Frankie stared at her, his face pale under the string of patio lights. His gaze flicked over her shoulder, past her, to where Sam stood, one hand on her hip, a challenge in her lifted chin. He saw the expectation there. The history. The easy, uncomplicated approval.
He looked back at Cynna. At the fierce, uncompromising clarity in her eyes. At the love that had demanded he be better, and the pain that had etched new lines beside her mouth tonight.
He was caught in the vise. The party, the friends, the past, all pressed in on him. His mouth worked, but no sound emerged. He was a man paralyzed by the terrifying prospect of finally having to choose.
Cynna watched the struggle play out across his face. She saw the moment his eyes shuttered, the moment he looked away from her and down at the wet concrete. Her heart, which had been a frantic, wounded bird in her chest, simply stopped beating. It didn't break. It turned to stone.
He made his choice.
He said nothing.
A profound calm settled over her. The fight was done. The evidence was gathered. The verdict was in.
She didn’t say another word. She turned, the movement precise and military, and walked across the deck. Her bare feet made no sound. She did not look back at the pool, at the cap lying in a wet heap, at the man drowning in his own indecision.
She pushed open the heavy gate. The metallic clang of it shutting behind her was the period at the end of the sentence.
“Frankie, I WILL take recompense on your whore for ten months of her actions. You WILL do nothing. You attempt to protect her— she’s dead.”
GATE SLAMS SHUT.The final metallic clang severed the night. It echoed, a physical period marking the end of the sentence of them.Inside the fence, the silence remained, thick and suffocating. The pulsing music from the patio speakers suddenly cut off, as if someone had finally noticed the main event was over. All that was left was the drip-drip of water from Frankie’s body onto the deck and the low murmur of the filter in the pristine, now-tainted pool.
Frankie stood, frozen, staring at the gate. The shape of her, the exact straight line of her spine as she walked away, was burned into his vision. His skin, still cool from the pool water, went ice-cold.A visceral understanding, primal and terrifying, slithered into his gut. He had miscalculated. He had believed, in some deep, stupid part of himself, that her love was a fixed point, a permanent landscape he could always return to no matter how far he wandered.He had confused her strength for permanence.He was wrong.
Sam’s laugh cut through the static in his head.It was a bright, brittle sound, already fraying at the edges. “Well. That was dramatic.” She waded closer to the pool’s edge, hoisting herself up to sit beside his feet. Water streamed from her, but she didn’t seem to notice.She looked up at him, her head tilted. “You okay, Fish?”
He didn’t look at her.He couldn’t.His eyes were fixed on the gate. “You should go home, Sam.”
The dismissal was flat, toneless. It carried none of the heated exchange from moments before.It was just a fact.Sam’s smirk faltered. She reached out, placed a wet hand on his calf.“Hey. Don’t let her get in your head like that.She was being a psycho, filming us. That’s, like, next-level.”
Frankie finally moved. He stepped away from her touch as if from a live wire.The movement was sharp, decisive. He looked down at her then, and what she saw in his face made the last traces of her triumph evaporate. It wasn’t anger directed at Cynna. It was a hollow, widening horror directed squarely at himself—and, by proxy, at her.“She wasn’t being a psycho,” he said, his voice low and rough. “She was collecting intel.That’s what she does.She gathers facts. And I just handed her everything she needed.” He ran a hand over his face, the reality settling in like a weight. “I just… I just let her walk away.”
“‘Let her?’” Sam scoffed, scrambling to her feet.“She’s a grown woman, Frankie. She chose to be a bitch and storm off.That’s on her. Not you.”
“You don’t get it.” He laughed, a short, ugly sound.“The video. It’s not about proving it to me.It’s for her. It’s so she never has to wonder if she imagined it, if she was crazy.She has proof. Cold, hard proof that I stood here and let you…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely at the space between them, at the ghost of her body against his.“She gave me a line.One simple, clear line. And I fucking danced on it.”
He bent down and picked up the soaked baseball cap. He squeezed it in his fist, water trickling through his fingers.The birthday gift. The thing he’d cared so little for he’d let it float away.A symbol of so much he’d taken for granted.
Sam crossed her arms, a defensive gesture. The tiny bikini felt suddenly cheap, a costume for a play that had just ended disastrously.“So what, you’re blaming me now? I was just having fun. We were just joking around.”
“Were we?” Frankie asked, finally meeting her eyes.“Were we joking, Sam? Or were you performing for an audience of one?And was I just the willing prop?”
The question hung there, blunt and undeniable. All the plausible deniability, the “just messing around” shields, melted away under the halogen glare of what had just happened.They both knew the answer.
Sam’s chin lifted, defiance warring with a new, creeping shame. “I didn’t make you do anything.”
“No,” he agreed, his voice dead.“You didn’t. That’s the point.” He turned away from her, from the pool, from the watching eyes of their mute friends. He looked at the gate again. “I did it all by myself.”
He started walking, not toward the house, but toward the gate.The crowd parted for him silently.
“Where are you going?” Sam called after him, her voice losing its confident pitch.He didn’t answer. He reached the heavy iron gate, placed his hand on the cool metal where hers had been last.He pulled it open. The empty driveway stared back at him. Her car was already gone, the taillights swallowed by the suburban night.He stood there on the threshold, the party at his back, the void ahead. The two worlds couldn’t touch. A choice had been made, not with a shout, but with a devastating silence.The gate had slammed shut. And for the first time, Frankie “Catfish” Morales understood he was locked on the wrong side.
The realization didn’t arrive with a bang, but with a slow, sinking cold that started in his chest and spread outward, chilling the pool water still evaporating from his skin.The wrong side.The final side.The side without her.
He turned back to the party.Faces watched him, a mix of pity and awkward curiosity. Sam was still there, wrapping a towel around her waist, her expression shifting from defiance to something searching, almost worried.
“Frankie,” she started, taking a step toward him.He didn’t hear the rest. The noise of the party—the music someone had foolishly started again, the chatter trying to revive itself—muffled into a distant hum. All he could hear was the echo of the gate and the stark, silent command in Cynna’s eyes before she turned. The cap was a dead weight in his hand.He dropped it.It hit the deck with the same wet thud.
Then he was moving.Not thinking, just moving. He pushed past a guy holding a plate of burgers, sidestepped a cluster of laughing women, his bare feet slapping against the concrete. The world narrowed to a tunnel leading to that gate.
“Fish, man, where you going?” someone called.He didn’t answer. He yanked the gate open, the iron heavy and unyielding, and stepped through into the damp, darkening evening.The suburban street was quiet. Porch lights glowed against the deep blue twilight.No sign of her car.Which way? His Jeep was parked on the curb, a familiar hulk of metal.Her apartment was twenty minutes east. His place was ten minutes north.The base was another direction entirely.
He stood for a second, the cool asphalt under his feet, the humid air sticking his shirt to his back.He had to know. He had to see. He couldn't let that be the last image—him struck dumb, her walking away.He couldn't let her sit alone with that video, cementing it as their end.
He fumbled his keys from his pocket, the action clumsy, his fingers cold. The Jeep door groaned open.He started the engine, the roar loud in the quiet street. He didn’t buckle up. He just pulled away from the curb, tires squealing slightly as he took the turn out of the neighborhood too fast.He followed her.Not knowing if he was going the right way. Not having a plan.Just a need, sharp as a knife, to intercept the ending. To say something, anything, that could unsay his silence.
He drove towards her apartment, his mind racing faster than the speed limit.What could he even say? I’m sorry was a pathetic crack in a dam that had already burst. I’ll change was what he’d whispered before, the promise evaporating under the next heat of Sam’s attention. The truth was, he didn’t have the words. He just had this momentum, this desperate, forward thrust to get to her before the distance became permanent.
Streetlights strobed overhead, painting the interior of the Jeep in fleeting oranges and whites.His phone buzzed angrily in the cup holder—Sam, probably. Then someone else from the party.He ignored it, his knuckles white on the wheel.
He was five minutes from her place when he saw it—the familiar, no-nonsense silhouette of her sedan, sitting under a flickering light outside Mike’s Deli.She wasn’t home. She’d stopped.His heart hammered against his ribs.A chance.
He pulled into the lot, cutting his lights, parking a few spaces away. She was just sitting there, behind the wheel, her head tilted back against the headrest.Not crying, as far as he could see. Just… still.The phone was in her hand, screen dark.He watched her. This was the woman who could disassemble and reassemble a rifle in total darkness. Who could read a topographic map like a novel. Who had chosen him, for ten months, with a fierce, bewildering loyalty he had just rendered worthless.He opened his door. The interior light felt like a betrayal, illuminating him.He saw her head turn, just slightly, seeing the light, seeing his Jeep. She didn’t start her car.She didn’t look at him.She just waited.
He walked toward her driver’s side window, his steps slow on the asphalt. He had never felt so exposed.He raised his hand, unsure whether to knock on the glass or just stand there.
She solved it for him.She pressed the button, the window sliding down with a quiet electric hum. She didn’t look up.
“Cyn,” he said, and his voice broke on the single syllable.She turned her head then. Her eyes were dry, clear, and utterly vacant of the fire from the pool.That was worse.The fire was hers. This cold void was what was left for him.“You followed me.” It wasn’t a question. It was a flat observation.
“I had to.”
“Why?”
He opened his mouth.Closed it. The reasons collided, feeble and selfish.I couldn’t let that be it. I need another chance.I’m sorry. They all sounded hollow, eaten through by the acid of his inaction.“You were right,” he finally managed, the words raw.“About everything. About me.About the line.”
She stared at him, her gaze so focused it felt physical. “And?”
“And… I’m on the wrong side of it. I want to get back.Please.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.It held no warmth. “It’s not a line you cross, Frankie. It’s a line you respect from the beginning. You don’t ‘get back’ to it after you’ve spent ten months dancing on it. You just… aren’t on it anymore.”
“So that’s it?” The panic rose, sharp in his throat. “You film it, you state your case, and you drive away?No discussion? No fight?”
“The discussion was every time I told you how I felt,” she said, her voice low and even. “The fight was me, alone, trying to get you to see what you were doing.Tonight wasn’t the fight, Frankie. That was the surrender.You win.Or she does. Either way, I’m done.”
She reached for the window button.
“Wait!” He pressed his palm against the glass, stopping it.“Just… tell me what to do.Right now. Tell me what to do to fix this.”
For a long moment, she was silent. She looked at his hand pressed against the window, a barrier between them. Then her eyes met his, and in them he saw the Colonel, the strategist, assessing a failed mission.
“There is nothing to fix,” she said, each word measured and final.“The objective is compromised.The asset is lost.You go home. You live with the choice you made in front of all our friends. You enjoy the company you so clearly valued.”
She hit the button. The window rose, pushing against his hand until he had to pull it away or be trapped.The motor whirred, sealing her inside. She didn’t look at him again.She put the car in drive.
He stood there, frozen in the deli parking lot, as her taillights receded, turning red at the intersection before disappearing into the night. The silence they left behind was absolute, ringing in his ears, heavier than any sound.
He was still following her. But now, there was nowhere left to go.