Pax doesn't pay.
The next morning my lawyer gets a cease-and-desist. Defamation. Tortious interference. Strapline reputational damages.
Lila opens an IG Live and cries for ninety minutes.
She's a young woman in her industry. She's been bullied by an older athlete. Pax was being a protector and I twisted it into something ugly.
She lifts her chin to the front camera.
"I just don't understand why women hurt women."
The comments lose their minds.
wren is so toxic spice tolerance for clout. embarrassing. lila is literally crying poor girl
I don't post.
At eight I open my stream from inside a Cessna Caravan over Perris.
Wind through the door. Helmet cam wide. Comments flood.
she's STILL streaming another pax stunt incoming i swear if she does the witch shit again
I tighten my goggles. I smile at the lens once.
"Tonight — night HALO from twelve thousand."
At the same moment, Pax is at the Hollywood Roosevelt rooftop. Strava Live Heroes Awards. Founder of the Year. Lila is at his table with red eyes.
The MC calls his name.
I jump.
The drop takes me.
[STRAPLINE • extreme stimulus channel live]
In the rooftop livestream, Pax is reaching for the trophy when his knee buckles. He pitches forward. The trophy hits the floor. He grabs the lectern, white-faced, lips trembling.
The MC says into the mic, "Pax — Pax, are you — "
His pupils blow. His breath shortens.
He goes down on the stage in front of two hundred founders and a press pool.
Lila runs up to him.
The second her hand touches his shoulder, I roll into a controlled barrel.
Pax leans over a planter and throws up.
Their stream goes silent for a beat.
Then it explodes.
WAS THAT REAL TIME WITH HER STREAM?? someone stitched them split-screen i can't science is over but vibes are immaculate
I pull the cord. Black sky. Long quiet glide.
I land clean.
I take off my helmet.
The number-one trend has changed.
Pax breaks.
Thirty-seven calls. None answered.
The thirty-eighth is Marin.
I pick up. She's already crying.
"Wren. Sweetie. I know I was harsh before. But Pax can't take another incident. Sweetie, his body — "
I say, "Then keep him off camera."
Her voice flips, wire-tight.
"You are cruel. He loved you for five years. Whatever else, he loved you for five years."
I say, level: "He loved my money longer."
The line goes still.
Then Pax is on it.
"Wren. Meet me. One conversation."
"No."
"You don't come, I drive to Cedars."
My finger hovers over the screen.
My dad has been a long-term inpatient at Cedars for two years. He hates being disturbed. Pax knows this because he made me share Find My with him on our second anniversary and I never revoked it.
He always knows where to press.
I meet him under the parking structure on Beverly. He's lost weight. Half-moons under his eyes.
I'm barely out of the car when he comes at me to hug me.
The bracketed voice fires.
[STRAPLINE • bonded device acute distress • pain-sharing alert]
I shove him off.
"Don't."
His eyes go wet.
"Baby girl. I was wrong."
I look at him.
I've waited for that line.
I waited the night I caught him on a 2 a.m. duet with a stripper-influencer he claimed he didn't know.
I waited when I saw him buy Lila the same Catbird necklace he'd bought me for our third.
I waited at the Edition with his hand on Lila's back.
Now it's here. It just makes me sick.
Pax says, hoarse: "I ended it with Lila. Wren — let's start over."
He pulls a Catbird box.
Inside is the 1.8-carat oval moissanite I had saved on Instagram three years ago.
I haven't opened my mouth when Lila screams behind me.
"PAX! YOU SAID YOU WOULD MARRY ME!"
She's running across the lot. Hands on a small belly under her shirt.
The valet stops working. The valet's phone comes up.
I look at Pax's stiff face.
Lila is pregnant.
She's clawing Pax's sleeve. She's sobbing in long ragged gulps.
"You said Wren was a stepping stone! You said her money would end up yours!"
People around the structure are filming.
Pax's face goes gray. "Shut up."
She loses it harder.
"Why should I shut up. You bought my apartment. You sent me to the launch. You said her money is going to be ours soon."
Every line is a knife into the crowd.
Someone close to me says, "Wait — that's the strap-system guy from the trends."
"His girlfriend's standing right there."
"And he got the side piece pregnant?"
Pax breaks. He shoves Lila.
She stumbles back two steps and goes down on purpose. Hand to her belly.
"*The baby — *"
Pax goes white. He drops to her.
I don't move.
The bracketed voice fires.
[STRAPLINE • bonded device acute fear • empathy channel surging]
For one second I feel exactly what's running through Pax.
It's not fear about Lila.
It's fear about the cap-table. The press cycle. The valuation. The next round drying up. Getting nailed in Forbes as the founder with the public mistress meltdown.
The ambulance gets there fast.
They're loading her onto the gurney when she pins her eyes on me.
"Wren. Are you happy."
I lean down to her stretcher. I keep my voice low.
"I didn't push your baby."
Her pupils tighten.
I lean closer.
"You should also make sure that baby is his."
The blood goes out of her face like a faucet shut off.
Pax's head whips around to her.
Lila's sob hitches half a second.
Enough.
The miscarriage is on TMZ by morning.
Lila's PR drops a lifestyle exclusive in People. The headline is clean.
Pregnant Wellness Creator Loses Baby After Confrontation With Founder's Ex.
The internet flips again.
I'm a murderer.
Pax doesn't correct it. He posts a single line on X.
Please respect everyone involved. There are real people getting hurt here.
The real people don't include me.
By noon there's a pap line outside the visitor entrance at Cedars-Sinai. Somebody leaked the floor.
The day nurse calls me. Her voice is shaking.
"Ms. Halloran. They're trying to get a quote from your father. They're saying they'll come back."
I'm at the entrance in twenty minutes. The hallway is jammed. Lenses are in my face.
"Wren — did you cause Lila Yoon's miscarriage?"
"Wren — is the empathy device illegal? Are you using it as a weapon?"
"Wren — does your father know what you've become?"
I push the lens away.
Pax is waiting at the elevator like he booked the scene.
He says, sounding tired in a rehearsed way, "Wren. A public apology. They walk away. Just give me that."
I look at him.
He thinks I'm still the girl who'd swallow anything for one of his baby girls.
I dial Quinn.
"Run it."
Five minutes later, a security clip from the parking structure goes up on Pax's own subreddit. Time-stamped. Multi-angle, two cameras.
Lila is the one running. Pax raises an arm to fend her off. Her step back is steady. Her drop to the pavement is staged. She glances at the pap-line bushes a half-second before she falls.
Right after the clip, an L&D intake screenshot. Estimated gestational age: nine weeks.
Pax was in Singapore for a Strapline distributor week nine weeks ago. The whole tech press has been re-running those shots all year.
The internet goes silent.
Pax-got-cuckolded eats every other story for two days.
Lila's ex gets identified by Reddit inside an hour. A West Hollywood DJ named Cass Errin. He goes live the next morning, nursing a beer.
"I have no idea if it's mine. All I know is she was at my place the night before her positive test."
Lila's account gets archived overnight.
Pax doesn't fare better. He drops a statement at midnight saying Lila deceived him and he was a victim too.
The internet is not in a victim mood.
so the embezzlement and the cheating are both real. built a company off his girlfriend's rescue payout. iconic. scammer gets scammed. universe healing.
Strapline limits down on the secondary. Two distributor partners pull. The Glow SKU gets quietly delisted from REI's site.
Marin calls again.
This call she's not yelling.
This call she begs.
"Wren. Sweetie. I am on my knees. He hasn't slept in three days. He won't close his eyes. Please."
I'm in the hangar with the stock tank.
Thirty-two degrees. Bag of party ice on top, kitchen timer balanced on the rim.
"Marin. Whether he sleeps isn't my problem."
She breaks.
I hang up. I open the stream.
"Tonight — cold-water tolerance, ten-minute stand."
The comments have already flipped.
don't push it tonight please lol but also pax has a shareholder call right now press send. front row tickets.
I climb in.
The cold goes up my ankles. My shins. My thighs.
The bracketed voice fires.
[STRAPLINE • low-temperature channel live]
At the same minute, on the Strapline shareholder Zoom from the Langham in Pasadena, Pax is mid-apology.
He's saying something about founder accountability when his teeth start chattering.
The thermostat in the ballroom reads seventy-eight.
His lips go blue. His fingers lock. He starts shaking like he was dropped in a glacier lake.
Someone in the gallery says into a hot mic: "Pax — are you having a withdrawal episode?"
The chat is in fits.
I close my eyes. Timer ticks past ten minutes.
The platform calls a sit-down.
It's at Vault.live HQ in Culver City. A glass conference room. The Senior Director of Creator Trust & Safety is named Janelle Park. Mid-thirties, blow-out, all-business.
"Ms. Halloran. None of your streams are technically TOS-violating. But the broader social impact has been substantial."
I say, "And."
She slides a paper across.
"A thirty-day pause. We'll throttle your discovery during the window. We get past the news cycle together."
Before I read it the door opens.
Pax walks in. Hospital gown half-tucked into his joggers, North Face shell over the top, color of bone.
Janelle stands.
"Pax."
I get it.
This isn't a sit-down.
It's an ambush.
Pax sits across from me.
"Wren. The device thing — we can solve this together."
I look at him.
"You can't."
He pulls something silver out of his shell pocket.
I clock it.
Engraved Whoop 5.0 strap. The matching one. He gave them to us at our anniversary dinner. Mine has been on my left wrist for seven months.
"His and hers."
Pax holds it like a relic.
"I had a guy look at the firmware. Something is wrong with it. If you put yours back on we can re-pair them and reset the bond from clean."
I laugh.
"Reset."
He stops performing.
"In the original spec it was supposed to be one-way. Just so I could feel what you were feeling."
Cold goes through my chest.
He keeps going.
"I wanted to know if you actually loved me. I wasn't expecting it to feed back."
Five years of suffocating coincidences click into place at once.
Every time I trained with a male jumpmaster, he showed up at the DZ within an hour.
Every time I considered a Patagonia overseas expedition, he had a mysterious GI flare that needed me home.
Every conversation I started with Quinn that ran past twenty minutes.
I thought he had a sixth sense for me.
Turns out it wasn't intuition.