Infinite Rebate: I Get Richer Every Time I Spend

Lucas stared at the phone for another second, then made the decision.

He was going.

Gracie still had not texted, but sitting still and waiting all day would not change that. And there was another debt left unpaid. Dexter. That bastard still walked around with too much pride for someone who had already been exposed once. Lucas had not humiliated him enough yet. Today was the finals. A bigger stage. A harder lesson.

He stood up, took his car key from the table, and headed for the door.

Just as he reached the front, Mia and Debbie came down the stairs. Both of them still looked half-asleep, hair loose, faces soft from the long night. The moment they saw him near the entrance, their expressions changed.

"You’re leaving?" Mia asked.

Debbie frowned. "You didn’t wake us."

"I didn’t want to," Lucas said. "You needed the rest. I’m going out for a while."

Neither of them looked fully satisfied by the answer, but they still stepped in close. Mia kissed him first, slow and reluctant. Debbie followed, holding his shirt for a second longer before letting go. Daisy was still upstairs, and neither of them seemed ready to make a scene about it yet.

"Come back early," Mia muttered.

Lucas gave a short nod, then walked out to the car.

The drive to Northlake University was steady and focused. He did not rush like a man late to a normal school game. He drove like someone already locked onto a target. Outside the window, the city thinned into the university roads, and the closer he got, the more obvious it became that today was not going to be quiet.

By the time he reached the arena area, the crowd was already thick.

Players from both sides were moving through the entrance lanes when Lucas arrived. He joined them late, last to appear, still calm while everything around him already felt overheated. The second some of the students caught sight of him, the noise changed.

"Ahhhhhh!"

"Lucassss!"

"He’s here!"

The shouting hit in a wave. Some girls near the front had his name painted across their shirts and cheeks. Homemade signs bobbed above the crowd. Phones shot up from every direction. Compared to the last game, the court area looked nearly three times fuller, packed so tightly that the usual gaps between student sections had almost disappeared.

Lucas stepped inside, and the sound got worse.

His name bounced off the walls from every side. Coaches turned. Teammates moved toward him at once. Hands grabbed his shoulders, clapped his back, shook him with the kind of desperate excitement that only came before a final. The noise was so constant it left a buzz in his ears.

Then he noticed the stranger part.

The arena that used to belong mostly to Northlake was no longer theirs.

Ashford students had flooded the stands. What used to be a clear home-majority crowd now looked flipped, maybe even dominated by the visiting side. Blue-and-gold still existed, but it was being drowned out by Ashford colors and Ashford voices. More surprising than that was the reaction from some of the local fans themselves. A few Northlake students were also shouting his name, already more interested in spectacle than school loyalty.

Lucas swept the court once with his eyes, expression unreadable.

Across the court, Dexter saw him the moment the noise changed.

Lucas.

He walked in late, calm as ever, like the arena already belonged to him. The crowd proved it a second later. Names flew from every direction. Phones shot up. Ashford fans screamed themselves hoarse. Even some Northlake students joined in, too entertained by the spectacle to protect their own side’s pride.

Dexter felt the heat climb straight into his skull.

That face had lived in his head for days. Not as a rival. As a reminder. Every hallway conversation that died when he passed. Every muted laugh behind his back. Every clipped video of the last game that people still sent around like comedy. Teachers, students, teammates — it did not matter. Since the day Lucas cooked him in public, the respect Dexter used to carry had been peeled off him one layer at a time.

And then there was her.

His girl.

That humiliation cut deeper than the crowd.

After the last match, she stopped looking at him like a man worth holding onto. At first she grew quiet. Then restless. Then obvious. She started asking about Lucas. Watching his highlights with too much interest. Laughing too easily at the same plays that had destroyed Dexter’s name. She wore shorter smiles for Dexter and longer attention for the man who had embarrassed him.

She became desperate in a way that made his stomach turn.

Showing up already dressed like she expected to be seen. Touching Dexter absently while her eyes stayed somewhere else. Performing closeness without meaning it. Using him like a temporary placeholder while her focus kept drifting toward Lucas. The more she reached for attention, the clearer it became that Dexter was no longer the prize. He was only what she still had.

When she finally broke up with him, she did it like she was bored.

No trembling. No long speech. No respect. Just a casual, almost lazy ending, spoken with the same energy someone might use to cancel plans they never cared about. She left him standing there with the full understanding that she had already moved on in her head long before she said the words out loud.

That was the moment the violence settled in for good.

Since then, Dexter had not been training for basketball. He had been waiting for contact. In his mind, the finals were not about points or trophies. They were about one clean chance to put Lucas on the floor. Not a technical foul. Not a soft shove. A straight knockout. Something loud enough and ugly enough to silence every laugh that had followed him since the last game.

Coach Carter had seen the state of him and tried to stop it.

The old man did not want him on the floor in the finals. He called it risk. Dexter shut that down the hard way. In the locker room he made the consequences clear. Anyone who took his spot would not walk away clean from it. The rest of the team understood him well enough not to test it.

That was the only reason Coach Carter let him dress for the game. Not because he trusted him. Because nobody else dared take the minutes.

Now Lucas was here again.

Standing in the middle of all that noise. Accepting the chants without effort. Looking untouched by the pressure already crushing Dexter’s chest.

Dexter’s hands flexed open and closed at his sides. His jaw ached from how hard he was clenching it. Around him the arena kept roaring, but the sound came through thick and distant. All he could see was the man he wanted to drop in front of everybody.

If I get near him today, he told himself, I’m knocking him the fuck out.

The horn cut across the court.

Players moved into position. Officials stepped forward. The finals were about to begin.

Dexter dragged himself into place with one thought left burning clean through every other.

This time Lucas was not leaving the floor on his feet.

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