Trash Belongs in the Bin

"Blair, my biggest regret in this miserable life was settling for you." The heart monitor beside the sterile hospital bed shrieked its final countdown.

Chase, my husband of ten years, dug his frail fingers into my skin and spat those words through rattling breaths.

His clouded eyes dripped with a sickening, desperate devotion. "It was always Melody.

I've always loved Melody." Our entire life together, our socalled epic childhood romance—it was all a pathetic smokescreen. Just a stepping stone to stay close to my best friend.

He never had the spine to actually claim her.

He just stood on the sidelines, watching her make out with other guys, then turned his fake, practiced smile on me. "Wanna be together?" I was nothing but his backup plan.

The recycling bin for his bruised ego. I yanked my hand away like I’d just touched a rotting bag of trash.

I stood tall, staring down at his pathetic form as the monitor flatlined into one long, piercing scream. A cold, victorious smirk stretched across my face. Fine.

If he wanted her so badly, he could have her. In the next life, I'll hand him over to her myself.

Chapter 1 When I snapped my eyes open, the sterile stench of hospital bleach still clung to the back of my throat. But the scenery had shifted.

I wasn't waiting for a doctor to sign a death certificate. I was slumped over a desk, jolted awake from a dead sleep. A heavy hand slapped my left shoulder.

I flinched, my head snapping around instinctively, only to collide with the smiling eyes of my childhood best friend, Chase. "Zoning out?

Class is starting!" he said. "Didn't sleep well last night?

I grabbed you a coffee!" Thwack, he slammed the plastic bottle onto my desk a little too loud and a little too calculated, like he was making sure someone else noticed.

I stared into his eyes. They were clear, bright, overflowing with fake adoration like I was the only girl in the room.

In my past life, that exact gaze had scammed me out of everything I had.

The memory of his dying breath echoed in my ears, and disgust coated my tongue like ash. "I don't drink coffee." Looking back, the red flags were waving right in my face.

Melody was the one obsessed with coffee. Never me. Chase blinked, his rehearsed smile faltering. He wasn't used to me shooting him down.

He offered a strained, almost pathetic grin. "What do you want, then? I'll grab it after class." My deskmate and supposedly my best friend Melody shot me a sideways glance.

She flashed Chase a saccharine, pictureperfect smile. "It's fine, I love coffee. Blair, you can give it to me." As if on cue, Chase snapped out of his daze.

He shoved a second bottle he’d been whiteknuckling toward her. "This one… is for you." A sickening, unnatural flush crept up his neck.

I shoved the cheap plastic bottle across the desk toward Melody. "Since you love picking up other people's garbage, this one's all yours." Melody's sweet smile froze, shattering instantly.

The color drained from her face as her fingers dug into her palms. Later that afternoon, I was washing my hands in the bathroom.

Through the flimsy stall door, Melody's venomous voice echoed off the tiles. "Why is she acting so high and mighty?

Chase is just using her as a stepping stone to get to me, like a pathetic, boring nerd like her could ever compete with me for a guy?" I needed out of this twisted, toxic triangle.

I marched straight to our homeroom teacher, Marian, who was already scowling at my latest grades. "Blair, I know you're a good kid, but you can't just focus on socializing," she said. "You've dropped twenty ranks this semester, and you used to be top five.

If you keep this up, how are you going to get into the Ivy League?" "That's exactly why I'm here, Marian," I said evenly. "I want to change seats." I stepped out of Marian's office and practically collided with Chase, who was waiting by the door.

Since high school started, he'd shot up, towering over me with that effortless goldenboy aesthetic. I had to tilt my head back just to meet his gaze.

Chase pressed his lips together, shifting his weight awkwardly. Then, he bumped something warm against my arm. I glanced down to see a carton of skim milk.

A dry laugh escaped my lips. So he did know what I liked. He just never cared enough to give it to me before. I took it.

Chapter 2 Seeing me smile, the tension visibly drained from his face.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it. "I had Marian move you next to Melody," I said. "I know you're into her.

Shoot your shot." The rehearsed joy vanished from Chase's expression. He froze, rooted to the spot. I gave him one last blank look, then brushed past him without another word.

Marian worked fast. By the time AP Physics ended, the seating chart was rearranged.

I definitely didn't expect to be placed next to Lachlan, the undisputed academic god of our grade. He was notoriously quiet.

Unless he was dismantling a complex equation on the whiteboard, the guy didn't exist.

When he heard someone was taking the perpetually empty seat next to him, the pen flying across his scratch paper paused. He just lifted his gaze.

Behind his glasses, his pitchblack eyes were dead, devoid of a single ripple of emotion. For the rest of the day, I finally focused on my classes.

With those two toxic leeches out of my orbit, the air actually felt breathable. Night study hall had just wrapped up.

I was buried in my workbook, furiously scribbling notes, when a shadow fell across my desk. It was Chase.

He called my name with the same suffocating, intimate familiarity he always used. "Blair, let's head home together." There was a sickeningly sweet lilt to his voice.

He must be absolutely thrilled sitting next to his dream girl, I thought. I didn't even bother looking up. "Pass.

Go ahead without me, I'm staying late." Acting oblivious to the ice in my tone, Chase didn't budge.

He leaned in, his hands planted firmly on my desk, blocking out the overhead light.

He kept up that annoying, overly familiar warmth. "Cramming for another hour isn't going to magically fix your GPA, so it's safer to head back early.

If I leave now, who's going to walk you home?" He bent down, invading my personal space. The heat radiating off his body felt suffocating.

I looked up, meeting his infuriatingly smug, smiling eyes.

His backpack slung over one shoulder, he wore that same effortless, cocky look, like he was absolutely certain I would just roll over and blindly follow him like I always did.

Over his shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Melody standing a few feet away.

Her lips pressed into a thin, white line as she glared daggers at me, her posture stiffening the moment my eyes flicked to hers.

She desperately forced her features back into a strained, plastic smile. A nasty smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth. "Not your problem.

Aren't you obsessed with Melody?" "Walk her home. Now move, you're blocking my light." The color instantly drained from Chase's face.

His knuckles turned stark white where he gripped the edge of my desk. His breathing hitched, his eyelashes trembling rapidly.

Like a rat backed into a corner, he went on the defensive. His voice spiked an octave. "Blair, are you seriously still throwing a tantrum over that coffee?

You don't have to spread rumors! Who said I like Melody?" The surrounding classmates stopped packing up.

Their hungry, gossipstarved stares locked onto Chase like a spotlight, making him physically squirm. In that suffocating silence, Lachlan slammed his pen onto the desk.

His voice was dangerously low, dripping with absolute authority. "Shut up. Stop making a clown of yourself and get back to your seat." The air in the classroom froze.

Someone in the back snorted a laugh. Instantly, the room erupted into a barrage of frantic, whispered gossip.

Hearing the brutal speculation flying around, Chase finally snapped back to reality. He awkwardly reached out to steady a visibly shaking Melody.

Before he turned away, he shot me one last, intensely dark look. Then, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her out of the room, right in front of half the senior class.

After that, our little golden trio was officially dead. Chapter 3 Chase was exclusively delivering breakfast, coffee, and snacks to Melody now.

They arrived at school together and left together. Without me acting as the useless third wheel, their relationship escalated fast, blurring into sickening intimacy.

To avoid them, I became a ghost. I woke up before dawn and stayed up late, maximizing every single second to study.

By the final exams of my junior year, I clawed my way back to top five in the class and top twenty in the entire grade.

Staring at the hard copy of my transcript, a profound sense of control washed over me. I finally had my hands back on the steering wheel of my own life.

My eyes tracked up the ranking list, stopping dead at the very first line. Lachlan. The untouchable academic god. His name sat there like an immovable mountain.

Perfect scores across the board, not a single point dropped on objective questions. He was a precisionengineered machine with zero emotion and zero mistakes.

I glared at my pathetic AP Physics score and swallowed my pride. I turned my head to ask for help, but caught him staring blankly out the window.

I followed his line of sight, catching the vibrant orange sunset bleeding through the clouds.

Sensing my stare, his dark eyes flicked toward me with icy indifference. "What." It was phrased as a question, but delivered flat, like a command. "Can you walk me through some of these physics problems?" His gaze dropped to the crumpled test on my desk. "You missed the giveaway questions.

Is there even a point in me teaching you?" There was no sneer, no mockery in his voice; he was just diagnosing a terminal illness. Yet, he still reached out and slid my paper over.

He picked up a pencil and started breaking down the formulas right on the page. His explanations were brutal but razorsharp.

His steady, monotone voice matched the fading sunset outside, giving off this bizarre, grounding illusion of safety. He finished the last equation and handed the paper back.

As I reached for it, his dark, bottomless eyes suddenly locked onto mine.

His fingertips casually brushed the back of my hand, sending a sharp, terrifying jolt of electricity straight up my arm. I froze.

Behind those lenses, his deep eyes practically swallowed me whole, suppressing this dark, dangerous intensity that pinned me to my chair.

The air in the empty classroom instantly grew heavy and suffocatingly hot. "You've made significant progress," he murmured, his voice dropping a fraction. "Now that you've clawed your way back up, don't let yourself fall again." My breath hitched for a second before I gave a firm nod.

In this life, I was done being collateral damage in their twisted little romance. And I was absolutely never stepping backward again.

That night, despite the clear sky earlier, the heavens suddenly ripped open, pouring freezing rain over the campus. Lachlan didn't have an umbrella. I did.

I offered to walk him to the bus stop. He stared at me for a long, unreadable moment. "My ride is already here.

I'll drop you off." His tone was sterile, projecting that same milesaway ice he always wore. But honestly, he wasn't nearly as impossible to deal with as the rumors claimed.

He towered over me, making it a complete struggle to hold the umbrella high enough.

Catching my strained arm, his long fingers wrapped around the handle, right over mine. "I've got it." The umbrella was too small for both of us.

We walked shouldertoshoulder through the downpour in complete silence.

Yet, I could clearly feel the canopy tilted heavily to my side, shielding me from the storm. "Blair!" Through the deafening roar of the rain, someone screamed my name.

It was the voice that should have been the most familiar sound in the world to me, a voice I had been chained to for decades in my past life.

But now, it just sounded like pathetic noise. I had absolutely zero desire to deal with Chase's toxic drama, so I didn't even break my stride and just kept walking.

Lachlan cast a sideways glance at me. "I thought you two used to be inseparable." I blinked, genuinely caught off guard. "I didn't realize the guy who lives inside AP textbooks actually paid attention to high school gossip." The corner of his mouth twitched, the most animated expression I had ever seen on his face. "I study.

I'm not deaf or blind," he deadpanned. "The guy screams everything he says.

It's impossible not to hear him." Right as the words left his mouth, a shadow lunged in front of us, blocking the path. Chase. He didn't have an umbrella. He was soaked to the bone.

He had to practically squint against the downpour, his eye sockets rimmed with a manic, bloodshot red. He just stood there like a drowned rat, his gaze locked obsessively onto me.

Chapter 4 "I don't have an umbrella either.

Why does he get to walk with you?" Chase demanded. "We've known each other for years, does that mean nothing compared to sitting next to this guy for a few months?" The sheer audacity.

For months, he’d been obsessed with grinding on Melody, getting sickeningly close to her. I was more than happy to let them rot together.

Every time he passed me in the halls, he looked right through me like I was invisible, so what gave him the right to interrogate me now?

I let out a cold laugh and stepped right into his personal space, my eyes dripping with mockery. "Drop the heartbroken act, Chase.

Did you really think I didn't know you were just using me as a stepping stone to get into Melody's pants?

Your hypocritical, cakeandeatittoo routine makes me physically sick." His eyes blew wide open. All the blood instantly drained from his face, leaving him looking like a ghost.

I didn't spare that piece of trash another second of my time, simply linking my arm securely through Lachlan's and walking right past him.

Yeah, I should have realized it in my past life.

His sudden, suffocating attention had nothing to do with our parents being family friends; it was all because I was tight with the new transfer student, Melody.

She played the sweet, innocent angel perfectly, but she knew exactly what she was doing.

On her second day, she zeroed in on me, batting those big, watery doe eyes that drowned people in fake sincerity.

Just like that, we were besties, eating lunch together and pairing up in gym class. Right on cue, Chase started hovering around me.

Before her, we barely exchanged a nod in the hallway, but once Melody showed up, suddenly we were thick as thieves.

The girl I thought was my friend was playing a calculated game, and the boy I thought actually cared about me was just running a cheap hustle to get closer to her.

The downpour intensified. A pitchblack, extended RollsRoyce Phantom glided up to the school gates, coming to a halt as silently as a ghost.

Lachlan casually pulled open the heavy armored door with one hand.

He tilted his chin up, the heavy silence around him commanding the entire space to bow down, and motioned for me to get in. I didn't bother pretending to be polite.

I slid into the plush leather seat and dropped my address. In less than ten minutes, the luxury car idled in front of my house.

Just as my hand hit the door handle, Lachlan's voice cut through the silence.

His dark eyes absorbed all the light in the cabin. "I won't be returning next semester," he stated. "Keep your grades up.

If you let yourself slip back into the gutter, no one is going to respect you." His deep voice drowned out the low purr of the engine.

The rain hammered relentlessly against the tinted windows. It didn't hit me until much later that you never actually realize when you're looking at someone for the very last time.

Every now and then, my phone would light up with a text from Chase. I'd already blocked his number and nuked him from all my socials.

But he actually went out and bought burner phones just to reach me. It was pathetic, and I couldn't figure out why he was acting so obsessed since he didn't even like me.

Then it clicked. Chase was completely obsessed with Melody, but he was addicted to the pathetic, desperate validation I used to feed him.

He wanted the untouchable goddess on his arm, but he needed his little backup cheerleader fawning over him in the background. The ultimate cakeandeatittoo scumbag.

I smashed the block button on his new number and flagged it as harassment, letting the rest of the summer break pass in absolute peace.

Senior year kicked off, and we got shoved into a new homeroom. The desk next to mine sat empty.

Just like Lachlan said, he never showed up; with his insane oldmoney background, he probably transferred to some elite private academy or flew overseas.

Marian didn't let the seat stay cold for long. She assigned me a new deskmate—the girl ranked second in our class, Tessa. She was sharp and quiet.

She dominated AP Physics, but her English Lit scores were a disaster. We were the perfect academic match, spending every passing period tearing apart homework packets.

Slowly, a real friendship clicked into place.

Under her brutal tutoring sessions, my science grades skyrocketed, and thanks to my drills, she bumped her English scores up a full letter grade.

Chapter 5 On the first mock exam, she took first place, and I took second. The scores were razorthin, a mere fivepoint difference.

She nudged me, joking, "Good thing Lachlan transferred out.

Otherwise, who could ever beat that guy?" The memory of his sharp, focused profile flashed in my mind, followed by his parting warning to keep my grades up.

A surge of adrenaline hit my veins. I silently swore to become the new academic god and crush his old records.

While I buried myself in textbooks, rumors about Melody occasionally drifted to my desk.

Without me spoonfeeding her the study guides, her grades had freefallen right back to the bottom of the barrel.

While the rest of us were fighting tooth and nail for college acceptances, she was pouring all her energy into clinging to Chase. One hundred days before the exams, early morning.

Out in the empty hallway, she finally confessed her undying love to him. It was before homeroom, and the classroom was practically deserted.

I sat near the open door, and her sickeningly sweet voice drifted in, thick with fake shyness and expectation.

It wasn't loud, but it carried straight to my ears. "Chase… I really like you," she said. "I know you care more about Blair, but I just had to fight for myself.

Could you… be my boyfriend?" Silence fell over the hallway. I was halfway through a brutal calculus problem, my pencil flying across the scratch paper.

Chase’s voice hesitated. "The exams are right around the corner. We should focus on studying.

We can talk about this after we get into colleges in the same city…" Melody cut him right off. "Chase, there's a guy in the next class trying to ask me out.

It's totally fine if you reject me, I can just go out with him instead." The air turned painfully tense. Then, Chase dropped his voice to a low, desperate whisper. "Fine.

I'll be your boyfriend." I slashed down the final equation and flipped to the answer key. A perfect match. Tessa leaned over, her eyes wide. "Whoa.

You crushed that in, what, ten minutes?" "Whoever takes first place this time buys dinner. Deal?" Before I could answer, someone snatched my test paper right off my desk.

Melody shoved her hand into my face, her fingers securely laced with Chase's. She held their intertwined hands up high, practically begging the whole room to stare.

Her sickly sweet voice dripped with blatant, venomous gloating. "Thanks so much for letting me have the trash nobody else wanted.

We are just the most perfect couple now." Tessa's jaw practically hit the floor. She stared at them like they had lost their minds.

Flaunting a relationship right in the middle of senior year crunch time? Did this girl not understand the difference between a high school fling and her actual future?

Melody and Chase just stood there, burning holes into me with their stares. They were salivating, waiting for me to shatter, waiting for me to lose my mind in front of everyone.

I didn't even blink. I tilted my head, flashing them a brilliantly empty smile. "Wow, really? That is so incredibly fitting.

I always knew you two deserved each other." Chase’s face hardened.

His smug grin snapped straight off. "Blair, Melody was nice enough to share the good news with you, what the hell is that attitude?" He leaned in, his eyes darting across my face, desperately searching for a crack in my armor. "We are literally just classmates," I stated evenly. "What kind of reaction did you want?" I rolled my eyes like I was looking at two absolute morons.

A cold scoff slipped through my teeth. "Breed with whoever you want.

Just don't go into heat in front of my desk while I'm trying to study." The warning bell shrieked, and the rest of the class started flooding through the door.

Their faces burning red, the two of them awkwardly slunk back to their seats. My deskmate Tessa leaned in, dropping her voice to a whisper. "What is actually wrong with them?

Why did they just try to flex on you?" I shrugged, picking my pencil back up. "Who knows." Chapter 6 By the next mock exam, I finally overtook Tessa, snagging first place in our homeroom and third in the entire school.

I was still trailing behind Lachlan’s legendary untouchable scores. But I knew in my gut, I was going to crush his record.

On the final mock exam, I claimed the absolute number one spot in the entire school. I essentially became the new Lachlan.

Marian looked genuinely proud. "Keep riding this momentum straight into the final exams. When Lachlan left, he even said you could do it." My eyes widened slightly. "Lachlan?

He actually talked to you about me?" "Of course, he explicitly pointed out that you and Tessa balanced each other's weak subjects perfectly, and said putting you two together would guarantee a massive jump in both your grades," Marian let out a heavy sigh of regret. "If he hadn't transferred overseas, he probably would have been first in the state." A bizarre warmth spread through my chest.

It was immediately followed by an unexplainable, hollow pang. If Lachlan hadn't left… we would have made incredible rivals.

With the finals breathing down our necks, I pushed myself even harder. But right in the middle of our absolute crunch time, a nuclear bomb dropped on the school.

Melody was pregnant. The scandal instantly became the ultimate entertainment for a deeply exhausted student body, ripping through the campus like wildfire.

It all started when Melody’s parents stormed right into our homeroom, vibrating with pure rage.

Her mother marched straight up to the podium, her voice rattling the windows. "Which one of you is Chase?" The classroom erupted into frantic whispers.

Our physics teacher just stood there, jaw slack and chalk frozen in midair.

Melody’s seat was conspicuously empty, and every single pair of eyes in the room instantly locked onto the desk next to it. Chase.

He swallowed hard as he forced himself to stand. "I am." His eyes darted around the room like a rat caught in a trap. Melody’s father tore through the aisles like a rabid animal.

Without a single word, he launched a devastating right hook straight into Chase’s jaw. A sickening crunch of bone echoed through the deadsilent classroom.

Chase was launched backward like a broken ragdoll, crashing heavily onto the linoleum floor as blood instantly sprayed from his nose, splattering across his pristine white sneakers.

Before Chase could even process the hit, Melody’s father slammed a crumpled medical lab report onto the desk.

He pointed a trembling, furious finger down at the boy bleeding on the floor. "You absolute piece of trash!

You ruined her entire life!" he roared, spit flying from his lips. "She's just a kid!

How could you manipulate her into doing something like that?!" The lab report sat faceup on the desk.

The HCG levels were circled in bright red ink, clearly indicating a fourweek pregnancy.

Chase stared at the numbers, his pupils dilating. "Hhow is that possible?" he stammered, his voice cracking. "I didn't… I never even slept with