PUCKED BY THE HOCKEY CAPTAIN I'M SUPPOSED TO TAME

THE DEAL

REYNA'S POV

"Reyna … did you get lost? Looking for me?"

Marcus's voice filled the corridor like he'd been expecting this exact moment. My brows shot up before I could stop them.

Beside me, Aden shifted back. Not much, just enough.

"She's with you?" One of the guys at the door looked between me and Marcus.

"Yeah." Marcus shrugged, easy as breathing. "Invited her to watch the game. Come on." He tilted his head toward the exit like none of this was remarkable.

I nodded and moved. Fell into step beside Marcus and let the tension in my chest quietly unknot itself.

I turned my head once. Just once.

Aden hadn't moved. He stood where I'd left him, hands at his sides, eyes still tracking me with that particular quality, not curious, not warm. Like someone reading a language they hadn't decided was worth learning yet.

I looked away first.

Marcus held the door. I stepped through.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

He smiled sideways. "Don't mention it."

Behind us, I felt Cassidy's eyes on my back like a blade looking for a gap.

I didn't turn around.

***********

Social Arts. Third floor, east wing. Lecture hall that smelled like old wood and expensive cologne.

I found my seat early, back left, close to the door, far enough from the front to stay unremarkable. I opened my notebook and uncapped my pen and looked like someone with nothing on her mind.

Then Cassidy walked in.

Then Marcus.

Then Aden, who dropped into a seat two rows ahead, opened his notebook, and became immediately unreachable to the rest of the room.

Same major. All of us. Exactly as I'd planned.

The lecturer was halfway through his opening when I felt it, a folded piece of paper landing on my desk from the row beside me. I didn't reach for it immediately. Waited two beats, then opened it under the desk.

‘Scholarship b***h. Wrong seat. Wrong school. Wrong life.’

I folded it back up. Slid it into my bag. Kept writing.

I felt eyes on me, waiting for a reaction. I gave them nothing.

Cassidy leaned over to the girl beside her and whispered something. The girl's lips pressed together to hold in the laugh and failed. The sound was small and deliberate, directed at me.

My pen kept moving.

Two rows ahead, Aden's head didn't turn.

***********

Second day. I was crossing the front of the lecture hall to my seat when Cassidy's foot slid into the aisle.

My eyes clocked it on time but let it happen.

The coffee went first, lid popping clean off as the cup hit the floor, the sound sharp and sudden in the pre-lecture quiet. Hot liquid across the tile, across my notes, soaking into the side of my bag before I could pull it clear. I crouched to pick it up, mopping uselessly at wet pages with my sleeve, and the silence around me had that particular texture, ten people watching and deciding simultaneously that they hadn't seen anything.

"Careful," Cassidy said, not looking up from her phone.

I gathered my things and sat down. Spread the wet notes open to dry and wrote the day's lecture on a fresh page like nothing had happened.

My jaw ached from how long I'd been holding it.

Two rows ahead Aden's pen moved steadily across his page. He hadn't turned around once.

Filing it, I told myself. All of it.

********

Third day. The corridor outside the lecture hall, students filtering out after class.

I didn't see which one of them did it. I just felt my foot catch on something solid and then the floor came up fast, my hands hit first, then my knee, a bright sting opening up immediately where the skin scraped tile. My books went in three different directions.

I stayed down for a moment.

Around me feet moved past. Someone stepped over my scattered notes without breaking stride. One girl looked, made brief eye contact with me, and then looked away with the speed of someone who had learned that seeing things at Blackwell had consequences.

I gathered my books slowly. Let my hands tremble slightly as I stacked them. Stood up and kept my weight off the bad knee as naturally as I could manage while I walked.

Behind me I heard Cassidy's heels. Unhurried. Satisfied.

******

Two days of the same. Different forms, same message. A shoulder check in the dining hall that sent my tray sideways. My bag moved from my seat to the floor while I was in the bathroom. A chair pulled out just enough, not enough to be obvious, just enough to matter.

I absorbed all of it quietly and became smaller with each passing day. Spoke less. Moved through corridors close to walls. Stopped making eye contact with anyone who wasn't Davina. I wore the character so consistently that some mornings I had to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and remind myself..quietly, firmly, who was actually standing there.

Reyna Cole. Twenty-five. Detective. Three months.

Don't forget.

**********

The fifth day, they caught me between the dining hall and the east stairwell.

Cassidy and both her companions, positioned with the casual precision of people who had done this before. I saw it coming two seconds out and couldn't reroute without making it obvious.

One of them had a cup.

I registered it. Didn't move fast enough. Or rather, didn't let myself.

It hit my face cold and sticky, whatever it was, some drink, sweet-smelling, running down my jaw and soaking into my collar. The three of them didn't even laugh loudly. Just that quiet, satisfied sound, the kind that meant they knew they didn't need an audience.

"Scholarship looks good on you," Cassidy said.

I turned and walked. Eyes down, arms wrapped around myself, moving fast without running. Rounded the corner. Kept moving until the stairwell emptied into the side corridor and I found the nearest door and pushed through it.

Cold tap. Basin. I bent over it and turned the water on full and pressed my face into it, washing the sticky residue off in long deliberate strokes. Methodical. Controlled.

The mirror above the basin showed me a face I barely recognised anymore. Not because of what they'd put on it, because of what five days of being Reyna Brook had quietly done to the expression underneath.

I turned the tap harder.

Enough.

The plan that had been sitting at the back of my mind for four days, the one I'd been circling without looking at directly,clicked into place with the finality of a key turning.

I already knew which bathroom this was. I'd memorized this building on day one. I knew the layout of every floor, every corridor junction, every room that connected to every other room. I knew that Aden Voss used the boys bathroom at the end of this corridor three times a week after the midday practice session.

I checked the time.

Two minutes.

I straightened. Pushed my glasses up. Looked at my reflection one last time.

You know what you're doing. Do it.

The door opened behind me.

“Ahhhh..pervert”

I screamed small, sharp, genuinely startled-sounding because I'd timed it and he was forty seconds early and my nervous system apparently didn't get the memo.

I spun around, gripping the basin edge, eyes going wide behind the cracked lens of my glasses.

He stood in the doorway. Jacket on, bag over one shoulder, eyes moving from my face to the wet sink to my ruined hoodie and back again with quiet efficiency.

"What are you doing in here?" Flat. Unbothered.

"I — I didn't see the sign, I just needed…" I looked around like I was registering the urinals for the first time. Let my face crumple slightly. "I'm sorry, I'll go—"

I pushed off the sink and moved toward the door.

My hand found the back of his shirt before the decision had fully formed.

The fabric was soft. He went still beneath my grip, not tense, just immediately, completely still. The way a room goes quiet when something shifts in it.

"Help me." My voice came out uneven. Some of it was performance. Not all of it. "Protect me from them. From Cassidy. From all of them…I can't.." I let my breath catch. "I can't keep doing this."

He said nothing.

Didn't move.

I loosened my grip but didn't release. "Please." Quieter. "Please."

He turned slowly.

And everything about the distance between us changed. He moved, unhurried, deliberate and I stepped back once, twice, until the cold edge of the basin counter pressed into my lower back and the wall was behind that and there was nowhere left to go.

He stopped close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him. His eyes moved over my face with that reading quality, unhurried, looking for something specific.

Then they dropped.

To my mouth.

Back up.

"What can you give back," he said quietly, "to be under my wing, Reyna Brook?"

I held his gaze. Said nothing. My throat had made a unilateral decision to stop working and I couldn't override it fast enough.

The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. Something slower and colder than that.

"I'll make it simple." He tilted his head. "Let me f**k you. Whenever I want — you're mine for the duration." A pause. "Do that, and no one at Blackwell touches you again."

He smirked.