Chapter 04: Over My Dead Body, Graham Hartway.

EVA.

I arranged my hair in the mirror and kept my eyes to myself, which was not difficult given that Graham was doing the same thing from his side of the room.

Except his version of keeping his eyes to himself meant keeping them everywhere except on me, like I had already ceased to exist the moment everything was over.

I straightened my top and cleared my throat softly. "Thank you for granting my request."

He nodded once without looking up. "You should leave. The results commence now and your team will be called out soon."

I held onto those words longer than I should have, because at least they were words, and at least they were directed at me, which was more than he had offered in the last several minutes.

I picked up my glasses from the side table and slid them back on.

"What about your team?" I asked, turning toward him. "You are the captain. You should be there to witness the fun."

He did not answer, did not look up, did not acknowledge that I had spoken at all.

I stood there for a moment longer than was dignified, then swallowed the embarrassment whole and walked out.

The hallway hit me with noise and light and the smell of spilled drinks, and I rejoined the party feeling like someone who had just returned from a completely different dimension.

The host had already started opening the floor, gathering everyone toward the centre of the room, and I slipped quickly into the space where the girls' team was clustered together.

Every single one of them looked at me the moment I arrived.

Maddie's eyes moved over me slowly, from my hair down to my boots, and her mouth curved.

"Have you been sleeping?" she said, and the girls around her laughed in that coordinated, practised way they had.

I said nothing and looked straight ahead.

"Welcome to the stage, Eva Wallsman. The game victim for the girls' team" The host's voice cut across the room before I could fully process that my name had just been called.

My hands started shaking immediately.

I pressed them together, waved with what I hoped looked like composure, and walked up toward the front while my heart conducted itself like it had somewhere urgent to be.

The host looked at me with a wide smile, then turned and nodded toward one of the masked figures near the wall, who walked over to where Graham had just appeared at the edge of the room and whispered something to him.

Graham's face gave away absolutely nothing as the masked figure returned.

"The horse's mouth has confirmed a positive result," the host announced, turning back to the room with his arms spread wide. "Congratulations, Eva Wallsman, for completing your dare and earning yourself a very well-deserved reward, which we will leave you to share in your own time."

The room erupted.

My eyes found Maddie through the chaos immediately, the way your eyes always find the thing that matters most in a crowd.

And what I saw on her face was something I wanted to keep in my memory for a very long time.

The shock sitting wide and unguarded across her features, and beneath it, something that looked very much like fear.

Not the performance of it, but the real thing, quiet and involuntary, moving through her eyes before she could get control of it.

I smiled at her.

Just once.

Then I walked back and let the noise swallow everything.

"Next we move to the boys' team," the host said, adjusting his collar with the energy of someone preparing to deliver significant news. "And we will now call the victim to the stage."

He paused, and the room settled into a curious quiet as he cleared his throat. "It has come to our attention that the victim is no other person than the one and only Hockey Alpha himself. Graham Hartway."

The room absolutely lost its mind.

I stood completely still in the middle of the chaos, the cheering and the stomping and the names being shouted from every corner, and felt something cold and quiet move through my chest as everything began rearranging itself into a shape I recognised.

He had agreed too easily.

He had helped me too willingly.

A man like Graham Hartway did not do anything without a return on his investment, and I had walked into that room like the answer to a question he had already been sitting with before I even kissed him downstairs.

I had been part of his dare.

I swallowed that realisation slowly and carefully, turning it over, examining it from every angle, and told myself that it was fine because he had helped me and I would stand for him if they needed proof, and we were even, and that was that.

"He has completed his dare," the host continued, pulling the room back to attention, "and will submit a video as proof."

"Is it a sex tape?!" someone yelled from somewhere near the back.

The room detonated.

'Share it! share it! we don't mind paying, share it!'

The chanting built from every direction at once and my blood ran cold before I fully understood why.

Then every phone in the room began buzzing simultaneously.

Notification after notification, screen after screen lighting up, and then the sounds started, sounds I recognised.

Sounds that belonged to a room I had been in less than thirty minutes ago, sounds attached to a face and a body that were very much mine.

I pressed both hands over my ears and stood completely frozen while the world carried on around me in the worst possible way.

"Wow." Maddie's voice carried clearly over the noise, her eyes fixed on her screen, her mouth pulled into a slow, satisfied smile. "She rides surprisingly well for a girl in glasses."

"Purple hair!" A guy somewhere to my left cupped his hands around his mouth. "I want a ride tonight, babe!"

The laughter that followed was enormous and immediate, and it moved through the room like a wave.

I stood inside it with my hands still pressed to my ears and felt something hot and sharp building behind my eyes before the first tear arrived without my permission, rolling down my face in a way I could not stop and could not hide and did not have the energy to be ashamed of.

I had been recorded.

He had recorded me, and he had sent it out, and my face was on every phone in that room, and he had made absolutely certain that his own face appeared nowhere in it.

"Alright Brentford, let's move to the final dare," the host said, attempting to restore some order to the room.

Graham stood up from where he had positioned himself near the wall, completely unhurried, and raised one hand toward the host. "My bad. I forgot to complete my dare. I'll go do that right now."

The room laughed warmly, because of course they would give him such privilege, because he was Graham Hartway and power was its own permission slip, nobody in that building was going to tell him no.

He walked toward the IT Girls without glancing in my direction once.

Not even a flicker.

He moved through the crowd with that same unbothered ease he carried everywhere, stopped in front of Maddie, took her face in his hands, and kissed her.

It was deep and deliberate, the kind of kiss that was designed to be watched.

When Maddie reached up to wrap her arms around him, he pulled her hands off cleanly and stepped back.

The room howled with laughter while Maddie stood there with the expression of someone who had just been handed something beautiful and had it removed before they could close their fingers around it.

Graham straightened his collar, turned to the host, and said simply, "Carry on. I'm done," before walking away.

His scent reached me as he passed, and I hated that I recognised it, hated that something in my chest pulled toward it even now.

Even after everything, even with tears still drying on my face and my voice on every phone in the room.

He had fooled me completely.

He had used me, recorded me, humiliated me in front of the entire school, and had walked through the evening without a single thing attached to his name except applause.

"Captain of the IT Girls," the host said, turning toward the group, "did he successfully complete a kiss? Can you confirm?"

Every head turned toward Maddie as she lifted her chin and nodded once, slowly.

"Perfect. So that means...."

"Wait." Cece stepped forward with her hands up. "He kissed Maddie. Not the IT Girls captain."

The host blinked. "I'm sorry.... Maddie is the captain, am I correct?"

"Was," Cece said simply. "She has been replaced. She is no longer our captain."

The host looked genuinely lost. "Then who is? Because the dare specifically states the captain, and I need to confirm whether it was completed correctly."

The silence that followed lasted exactly three seconds.

Then I heard my own voice come out of my mouth, clear and steady and full of something that had no business being there given that I was still blinking tears off my lashes. "I AM."

The room shifted.

I felt it physically, the weight of every eye adjusting direction.

Immediately, Graham stopped walking.

He turned around slowly and looked at me across the full length of the room.

For the first time all evening, his expression cracked open into something readable...surprise, clean and genuine, sitting unguarded on his face for one unguarded moment.

"You?" he said.

I walked toward him.

I did not rush, and I did not look away.

When I stopped in front of him I was close enough to see his jaw shift.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "Surprised?"

Something moved behind his eyes.

He swallowed once, and then his expression settled back into that familiar arrogance, smooth and immediate, like a reflex. "Cut this bullshit and kiss me. Now."

I reached out, grabbed the front of his shirt the same way I had hours ago downstairs, and pulled him just close enough that my words landed directly against his ear. "Over my dead body, Graham Hartway."

His whole body stilled. "What did you just say to me???"

I let go of his shirt, stepped back, and looked up at him with every single thing I had left.

"I said," I repeated, loud enough for the room to hear every syllable, "Over my dead body, Hockey Alpha!"