The Boy Who Chose Her

Harper couldn't answer. The question just hung there while Noah stood with one hand still half raised from grabbing her, and Sasha's smug expression finally slipped off her face entirely.

A few minutes earlier, Harper would have begged everyone to just stop. Now she only felt empty.

Luca stepped further into the room. "Take your hand off her."

Noah scoffed. "Or what?"

"Or I stop asking."

"Seriously?" Sasha said, arms crossed. "You're picking a fight over her?"

He didn't even look at her. "Wasn't talking to you."

"You've got girls throwing themselves at you every day, Hayes," Noah said. "Why play Captain Save-the-Day now?"

"Because she's crying."

Harper wiped fast at her cheeks. "I'm not."

"You are." She hated that he'd noticed. He always noticed.

"You don't even know what happened," Noah said.

"I know enough. I saw enough." Luca's eyes moved to the crumpled letter on the floor, then to the tear marks on her face, then back to Noah. "You made her cry."

"Girls cry."

"Not because of me."

"Maybe they should."

Luca's jaw went tight, and Harper recognised the look from years back, from a hallway in middle school where an older kid had shoved a freshman down a flight of stairs. Luca had gotten detention that day. Not for starting it. For finishing it.

"What are you going to do?" Noah asked.

Luca glanced around the room, spotted a bucket of baseballs sitting beside the batting cage, and walked over without any hurry at all. He picked one up, tossed it once, and caught it again.

Harper's eyes went wide. "Luca."

He looked at her. "Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Trust me."

Before she could say anything else, he threw it.

The crack of it echoed through the whole room. Noah stumbled backward with both hands over his face, blood already running through his fingers.

"You psycho!"

The ball rolled off across the floor. Sasha screamed.

Luca looked completely unbothered. "I missed."

"...Missed?"

"I was aiming lower."

Noah cursed, blood dripping onto his collar. "You broke my nose!"

"You'll live."

"You animal!"

"You grabbed a girl after she told you to let go."

"You hit me over the arse, nerd?"

Luca took one slow step toward him. "I hit you because you hurt her."

Silence dropped over the room like a blanket. Harper stared at him. Nobody had ever done that for her before, not like this, not without first asking what she'd done to deserve it.

Noah pointed a shaking finger. "You've lost your mind."

"I've heard that before," Luca said, almost smiling.

Sasha grabbed his arm. "We're going to the nurse." She dragged him toward the door while he shouted something about regret, and he looked back at Harper one last time. "You'll come crawling back."

She laughed, bitter and short. "I'd rather date a cactus."

The door slammed shut behind them, and the room went quiet. Luca bent down and picked the baseball back up.

"Nice one," Harper said.

"You actually threw that at his face."

"He had it coming."

"You could get suspended."

"Worth it."

A small laugh got out of her before she could stop it, and he caught it instantly. "There she is."

"What?"

"You laugh weird. You snort a little."

"I absolutely don't."

"You did just now."

"I was choking."

"Sure."

The quiet came back, softer this time. She looked down at the floor. "I feel stupid. I ignored every warning there was. I actually thought he liked me."

"He liked what you did for him."

"I know." Her voice cracked on it. "I wrote him that stupid letter. I actually believed we'd." She couldn't get the rest of it out.

Luca leaned against the wall next to her. "When we were ten, remember when you cut my hair?"

Her eyes went wide despite everything. "You deserved that."

"You tied it into five tiny ponytails while I was asleep."

"You'd hidden my science project the week before."

"I was eight."

"You still deserved it," she said, and he laughed.

"You marched straight into my house afterward and told me real rivals never attack from behind. Made me promise we'd always fight face-to-face."

She smiled through what was left of the tears. "I remember."

"That's why this bothers me. He didn't fight fair."

Harper swallowed hard. "He made me doubt myself. Maybe he was right. Maybe I really am just ordinary."

Luca actually looked offended by that. "Who told you that?"

"Nobody. Everybody." She laughed without any humour behind it. "You heard what Sasha said."

"Forget Sasha. Look at me. No, I mean actually look."

He held her eyes for several long seconds, long enough that it made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn't name.

"You have no idea what people notice about you," he said. "You answer questions nobody else can. You remember every single birthday. You volunteer when nobody even asks you to. You make teachers laugh in the middle of class. You beat me on every chemistry exam we've ever taken."

"I hate losing," she said.

"I know you do. You never once pretend to be someone else." His voice dropped. "You've always been the bravest girl I know."

Harper just stared at him. Nobody had ever described her like that, not once in her life, and her throat tightened around the words she wanted to say back.

"No guy would actually choose me," she whispered.

Luca looked at her for a long moment, then reached out and took her hand. Not as a joke, not to tease her, just held it like it mattered.

"I've been choosing you for years."

Her breath caught somewhere in her chest. "What?"

Before he could say anything else, a voice cut through the hallway outside.

"Luca! I know you're in there!"

Fiona Reed.

He muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like a curse.