The Hockey Alpha Who Became Obsessed With Me

The thing about public humiliation is that it happens faster than your brain can stop it. One second Riven Wolfe was holding my notebook. The next he was reading from it out loud, and every single person in that hallway had their phone up. “I hate that I ever liked him. I used to wait for him to walk into class like my day would somehow get better. I hate that the same face I used to think about is the one I want to slap every time he opens his mouth.” He paused. “A wolfless scholarship girl obsessed with me?” He laughed once under his breath like the idea genuinely annoyed him. Then he looked at me properly. “You seriously don’t know your place, do you?” His jaw ticked slightly, like even this conversation was wasting his time. “Listen carefully,” “I don’t do flings. I don’t do charity. And I definitely don’t do…” his eyes flicked over me once, “…this.” My stomach tightened and my heart started racing fast, close to tears. He leaned in just slightly, enough that it felt personal. “You’re not even in the category of girls I would entertain for fun,” he added. “So whatever fantasy you built in your head? That’s on you.” A faint exhale through his nose, almost a scoff. “A hockey king doesn’t ‘stoop’ to anything,” he continued, like the word itself tasted bad. “And especially not to someone who doesn’t even understand what level she’s standing below.” His eyes held mine a second longer. Then, almost casually, like finishing a thought he didn’t care about. “It’s not embarrassing enough that she liked me but that a poor wretched girl actually thought she was ever an option for a hockey king.” Arabella shifted towards him, a smirk sitting pretty on her lips before she placed it on Riven. Stirring a jealous bitter feeling inside of me, she kissed him shortly. “Oh, babe,” “I think you almost made her cry.” Riven didn’t react immediately until that familiar look of irritation crossed his face again. “I’ll give her something to cry about.” Then he flipped to the back, found my scholarship essay, three weeks of work, the only real shot someone like me had at staying at this school and read the header out loud too. “Personal Statement. Nina Vasquez. Hollowmere Renewal Scholarship.” He looked up. “The wolfless girl wants to stay.” The hallway didn’t just go quiet. It went cruel. Arabella laughed first. Then everyone else did, in that effect that means a moment has officially become a story people will tell. Her hand found Riven’s arm. She tilted her head at me the way you’d look at something you found stuck to the bottom of your shoe. “You can’t even shift,” she scoffed. “And you thought you had a chance with him?” Someone behind me said that’s so sad and meant it as a joke. A phone flash went off. Then another. Riven held the essay pages out over the floor and let them go, one at a time, like he had all morning. I watched three weeks of work drift to the ground and thought, very clearly, I will never forgive him for this. *** Twenty minutes earlier, my biggest problem was a scholarship essay and a girl I was trying to avoid. I knew my morning was already dead the second I spotted Arabella Voss standing by the stone fountain. Arabella never just looked at people. She sized them up. Ranked them. Decided in half a second whether they were useful, forgettable, or worth humiliating for fun. At Hollowmere, she was royalty in a short skirt and perfect lip gloss. Queen bee. Future Luna material. Teachers smiled at her, boys drooled over her, and weaker girls trailed after her like unpaid staff. She had beauty, bloodline, money, and the kind of cruelty that made all three feel like weapons. I adjusted my bag and kept walking. My plan was simple: move fast, keep my head down, survive until lunch. My scholarship application essay was in my notebook, the final draft I had spent three weeks on, and I was turning it in during free period. Nothing was getting in the way of that. “Nina.” I stopped a few feet from her. Pretending I hadn’t heard would only make her say it louder. “What?” “Give me my assignments.” Not hello or please. Just audacity before first period. I had done Arabella’s homework before. Enough times to hate myself for it. Apparently today was the day I stopped. “I did not do them.” Her brows lifted. “Why?” “Because they are yours.” A few people nearby slowed down. Wonderful. Nothing like an audience for the exact moment I made my life worse. Arabella stepped closer. “Have you forgotten who you are at this school?” “Have you forgotten how homework works?” I asked. Her eyes flashed. “Watch your mouth.” “You never use yours for anything worth hearing anyway.” The second it left my mouth, everything around us went still in that way it does right before a mess. Arabella’s face hardened. Her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. “You pathetic little stray. I give you one chance to be useful and this is how you act?” “Let go of my wrist.” “Apologize first.” “For what, exactly?” “For disrespecting me.” I looked at her hand on my arm, then back at her face, and honestly tried to figure out what version of reality she was living in where this conversation made sense. Then, because apparently my day had not suffered enough, Riven came from the athletic wing with two teammates behind him, hockey bag over one shoulder, tie loosened, dark hair doing that annoying thing where it looked messy in a way that clearly took effort. Riven Wolfe. Hollowmere’s hockey king. Every girl’s problem. He was broad, tall, and annoyingly put-together even at this hour, with that closed, controlled expression that made him look calm even when he wasn’t. The humiliating truth was that he was extremely attractive, and I was painfully aware of it every time I saw him. I hated that awareness with my entire soul. Arabella dropped my wrist the second she saw him. Her whole body language changed. Shoulders back. Voice softer. “Baby, this t**t is being difficult.” His dark eyes moved to me. “What happened?” he asked Arabella, even though he was still looking at me. “She refused the assignments I gave her. And then she insulted me.” “I declined to do someone else’s homework as unpaid labor,” I defended. “That is not the same thing.” Riven finally looked at Arabella, then back at me. “Apologize now,” I stared at him in disbelief. “No.” “Apologize for disrespecting her.” “Someone should probably apologize to me first.” He stepped closer. Riven was tall enough that when he did that, you felt it in your spine before your brain caught up. I made myself stay where I was because stepping back would feel like losing. “Hand over your bag.” “Absolutely not.” He took it anyway, pulling it off my shoulder before I could stop him, unzipping it with the calm ease of someone who had never once been told no and had it stick. I watched him go through it and told myself to breathe. Then he pulled out my notebook and my stomach dropped. The one I wrote in when my head got too crowded. And at the back was my scholarship essay. “Give that back,” I said, moving toward him. I moved toward Riven with every intention of getting that notebook back by force if I had to. He caught my wrist before I got there, like stopping me was effortless. Arabella tilted her head, looking me over slowly. “You could stand here for the rest of your life and you still would not be what he wants.” That hit exactly where she meant it to. Because she was right about one thing. When I first came to Hollowmere, before I understood what kind of person Riven Wolfe actually was, I had liked him. It had been brief and stupid and embarrassingly ordinary. Because he made it very clear what he thought of people like me, and whatever I had folded fast. Apparently I had not hidden it as well as I thought. And the rest of it happened the way you already know. “Next time,” he said, quiet enough that only I could hear the first part, “don’t build your future on stupid little fantasies you can’t afford.” Then louder, for the hallway, he held up the pages. “And maybe back up your work.” He let them go. The pages fell. I reached for them, but Arabella got there first. She snatched them up, glanced at them, and ripped them cleanly in two. “Oops.” A flash of light caught my eye. A phone screen. Someone filming. My stomach turned. Arabella smiled like she had just won something. “And some standards while you are at it.” I looked straight at Riven. I wanted to say something that would cost him something. Find the one crack in that calm, unbothered face and split it open. All that came out was, “I hope someone checks you so hard at your next game your teeth end up in the penalty box.” A few people choked on laughs they were trying to hide. Riven stepped close enough that only I could hear him. “You are already more embarrassing than usual,” he stated. “Do not push it.” I pushed past him before he could see anything on my face. I left the torn pages on the floor because bending to pick them up in front of everyone would have felt worse.