A bold move

ARIA POV

"Make it ten seconds, Captain. And I'm not telling you my name. You're just going to have to guess."

I hit send before my brain could stop my trembling fingers. My chest rose and fell in fast, shallow breaths as I stared down at the blue bubble resting on the screen.

A heavy, suffocating silence filled my bedroom. Five seconds passed. Then ten. Then a full, agonizing minute.

My pulse hammered in my ears as I sat frozen on the edge of the mattress. I gripped the phone so tightly the sharp metal edges dug into my palms. I waited for the three little dots to appear, for a typing bubble, for anything to tell me that Crestwood’s star hockey captain was reading my response.

Nothing came.

A cold wave of anxiety started to creep up my spine. My confidence, which had flared up so quickly just moments ago, began to crumble like dry mud.

[Secret Girl]: Look, I know this seems crazy. But I’m not a stalker. I’ve just watched you play all semester.

I took a deep breath, letting the floodgates open as months of secret longing and quiet heartbreak spilled out onto the glass screen.

[Secret Girl]: I’ve sat in the top row of the stands at every home game. When you’re on the ice, you play like nothing else matters. You look completely free. I’ve spent my whole life feeling invisible, like I’m constantly taking up too much space or not measuring up to what people expect. Seeing you play was the only thing that made this miserable campus tolerable for me.

I stared at the long block of text. My heart felt heavy, raw, and completely exposed. I had just laid my soul on the line for a boy who didn't even know I existed.

[Secret Girl]: I wrote those letters because I wanted you to know that someone actually sees you. Not just as the famous #88, but as a person. I was too scared to say it to your face because I knew a guy like you would never look twice at a girl like me. But I wanted you to know anyway.

I hit send.

The messages stacked up. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath, praying for a reply. A sentence, a word, even a single punctuation mark to show me that my raw confession hadn't just fallen into a black hole.

Two minutes passed. Five minutes. Ten minutes.

The screen stayed completely dark.

A bitter, burning humiliation rushed through my veins. The silence felt worse than a direct rejection. It felt like a cold, heavy door slamming shut in my face. He hadn't blocked me, but he hadn't replied either. He had simply looked at my most vulnerable thoughts, laughed, and moved on with his night.

"You idiot," I whispered to the empty, quiet room, my voice shaking. "You absolute idiot."

I slammed the phone face-down on my nightstand, pulled the thick blanket over my head, and squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to let the hot tears burning behind my eyelids fall.

The next afternoon, the Crestwood University dining hall was loud, packed, and stifling. The smell of fried food and cheap coffee hung heavy in the warm air as hundreds of students gossiped at long wooden tables.

I sat alone at a small, round table near the edge of the room, staring down at my half-eaten salad. My dark green sweater felt too heavy, and the dark circles under my eyes were a constant reminder of the three hours of sleep I had managed to get.

I pulled out my phone, opening the text thread for the hundredth time that day. Still nothing. Blake hadn't texted back. My heart sank deeper into my stomach.

"Look who made it out of her cave," a sharp, smooth voice drawled above me.

I froze, instantly shutting off my phone screen and sliding it into my lap. I looked up to see Jaxon standing beside my table, holding a black tray. He wore a crisp white polo shirt that showed off his broad shoulders, his messy dark hair pushed back, and his sharp gray eyes glittering with pure, unadulterated malice.

Behind him stood his usual inner circle: Chloe Mercer, looking immaculate in a designer pink sweater with her blonde hair falling in perfect waves, and Blake Reed.

My throat went bone-dry.

Blake was wearing his blue Crestwood hockey jacket. He looked effortlessly handsome, his golden-brown hair catching the bright fluorescent lights of the cafeteria. He wasn't even looking at me; he was casually unwrapping a protein bar, completely relaxed.

"Can you leave me alone, Jaxon?" I asked, keeping my voice low and steady, though my hands were shaking under the table.

"Leave you alone?" Jaxon scoffed, a dark, arrogant smile spreading across his sculpted face. He turned to the crowded tables around us, raising his voice just enough to draw the attention of nearby students. "Now why would I do that, step-sister? I'm just checking on you. You barely touched your breakfast at the estate this morning, and now you're just sitting here picking at lettuce."

Chloe let out a high-pitched, musical laugh, leaning her head onto Jaxon’s shoulder. "Oh, Jax, don't be mean. Maybe she's trying a new diet. You know how hard it is to fit into high-fashion clothes when you're... built like a line-backer."

A few students at the neighboring tables turned around, giggling quietly.

Heat rushed to my face, hot and agonizing. My knuckles turned white around my plastic fork. "I didn't ask for your opinion, Chloe."

"Careful, Aria," Jaxon warned smoothly, his tone dropping an octave, becoming colder, sharper. He leaned down, placing both hands on the edge of my table, trapping me in my seat. His gray eyes swept over my body with deliberate, brutal disgust. "You shouldn't talk to our guests like that. We're just worried about the furniture at home. Those antique chairs in the dining room weren't designed to support extra weight, you know."

A loud burst of laughter erupted from a group of freshman guys sitting nearby.

My breath caught in my throat. The humiliation felt like a physical blow to my chest, stealing the air right out of my lungs. I looked past Jaxon's broad shoulder, directly at Blake.

Please, I thought desperately. Please be the guy I wrote those notes to. Say something. Stop him.

Blake finally looked up from his protein bar. His bright eyes met mine for a brief, fleeting second. But there was no kindness in his expression. No recognition. No warmth. He simply took a bite of his food, looked away, and leaned against a pillar, completely indifferent to the execution taking place right in front of him. He didn't care. He was just as hollow as the rest of them.

"See?" Jaxon whispered, leaning closer so only I could hear his bitter tone. "Nobody cares about you here, Aria. You're just a loud, oversized nuisance pretending to belong."

I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the linoleum floor, tipping over backwards with a loud thud. The entire section of the cafeteria went dead silent.

I didn't pick up my bag. I didn't look at Jaxon, Chloe, or Blake. I shoved past them, my head held low to the ground, and walked out of the double doors before the tears burning my eyes could spill over.

By midnight, the Hayes estate was silent once again.

I sat on the floor of my massive, cold bathroom, my back pressed against the white marble wall. The full-length mirror across from me reflected a girl who looked broken, bruised, and tired of being treated like garbage.

Jaxon's cruel jokes echoed in my mind. Chloe's high-pitched laugh. Blake's icy indifference. They thought I was nothing. They thought my body was a punchline, a flaw that gave them the right to walk all over me.

A sudden, hot rush of pure, unfiltered rage flared up in the middle of my chest.

No.

I wasn't going to spend another night crying in the dark. If they wanted a ghost, if Blake wanted to ignore my words, then I would give him something he couldn't ignore. I would take control of the narrative.

I stood up, gripping the edge of the marble sink. I reached up and pulled my baggy green sweater over my head, tossing it onto the floor. I stood there in my simple lace bra and low-waist black shorts. My heart was pounding like a war drum in my chest as adrenaline flooded my system.

I grabbed my phone off the counter, unlocking it with shaking hands.

I stepped into the dim light of the bedroom, standing near the edge of the plush rug. I positioned the camera, making sure my face was completely cut out of the frame. The lens focused only on the smooth, soft curve of my pale waist, the full shape of my hips, and the fair skin of my thighs extending down into the shadows.

I took a deep breath, my thumb tapping the screen.

Click.

The flash lit up the dark room for a fraction of a second. I looked at the image. It was bold, tantalizing, and breathtakingly confident. It didn't look like an outcast hiding in oversized clothes. It looked like a woman who owned every single inch of her skin.

I opened my chat with Blake, to see the long, unread confession from last night sitting right above the blank box.

I attached the pictures. Below it, my fingers typed out two simple words:

[Secret Girl]: You like?

My thumb hovered over the send button for one second. Then, with a wicked, dangerous surge of defiance, I tapped it.

Sent.