All Chapters of The Girl He Never Knew : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

ELENA'S POVFor the record, I never agreed to this. Okay, technically I did. But I'd like it noted that I agreed under duress, which is what happens when Noah Hale looks at you like you're something mildly irritating he found on the bottom of his shoe and says "prove it" and your mouth says "fine" before your brain can intervene. That's not agreement. That's a trauma response.So here I am. In the basketball court at nine o'clock on a Tuesday night holding a basketball like it personally wronged me, while the most infuriating human being on the planet stands six feet away with his arms crossed and his face doing that completely unbothered thing that makes me want to either throw the ball at him or walk into the ocean."You're still dropping your shoulder," Noah pointed with a frown."You're still talking," I said."Shoot!"I shot. The ball hit the backboard at an angle that suggested it had somewhere better to be, bounced twice, and rolled to a stop directly at Noah's feet. He looked

ELENA'S POV There are exactly three things I regret about dating Lucas Kane. One: I did it at all. Two: I did it for six months, which is approximately five months and three weeks longer than I should have. Three: I did it while telling myself it was moving on, which it wasn't, which I knew the entire time, which is the part I don't like to examine too closely in the daylight.We ended badly. Just a quiet, mutual acknowledgment that I was somewhere else entirely every time he reached for my hand, and he was tired of pretending not to notice. He'd looked at me across a coffee shop table eight months ago and said "you're not really here, are you?" and I'd opened my mouth to argue and found I had nothing. That was the last time I saw him until tonight.I had a deadline, and a document open on my screen with a title, and exactly one sentence I didn't hate. The cursor had been blinking at me for forty minutes."More grit, Voss." Dr. Reyes had said it this morning. I'd spent the rest of th

ELENA'S POV"You're in the way, Voss."That was the first thing he said to me the morning after I fell asleep on his shoulder for an hour and forty minutes on a bus. Not good morning or even the standard issue cold stare I'd learned to translate as his version of an acknowledgment. I was standing at the hotel breakfast station and there was an entire empty counter to his left.The hotel was nice, the kind of place designed to be completely forgettable. I'd gotten my room key last night, gone upstairs, and spent twenty minutes sitting on the edge of the bed staring at nothing while my brain replayed the bus ride in excruciating detail.The specific horror of waking up and realizing what I'd done.He'd given me an out just enough that I could pretend it was accidental, that I'd just drifted in the wrong direction and the bus had done the rest. I'd taken that out with both hands because the alternative was acknowledging it, and acknowledging it meant having a conversation I wasn't equipp

ELENA'S POVOkay so in my defense, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.I need that on record before anything else because knowing Noah he has already constructed a version of this story where I wandered into the middle of a live drill waving my camera around like I had a death wish, and I refuse to let that narrative exist unchallenged.I was behind the tape so part of my body was past that orange line. I was doing my job, minding my business, being a completely responsible member of the media team and the ball found me anyway, because that is the kind of week I am having.It was the second morning at the arena. Everyone running harder than the play required, making choices that were more spectacular than necessary, performing the version of themselves that looked best from the upper rows where the clipboards were.Good material, actually Ethan had this way of moving on the court and I'd gotten three frames I was genuinely proud of. Dr. Reyes was going to have nothing to complai

ELENA'S POV"You left this."Noah was leaning against the wall outside the media room when I walked out, holding my lens cap between two fingers. I hadn't even noticed it was gone. I'd been shooting for six hours straight and apparently my equipment had been quietly falling apart the whole time without consulting me, lol.I took it. "Thanks."He nodded and stayed exactly where he was.I waited for him to do the natural thing — nod again, leave, go be cold and unavailable somewhere else. But Noah had always been surprising. He didn't, he just stood there with his hands back in his pockets, looking somewhere down the hallway, like he'd arrived here with a purpose and hadn't quite finished deciding what it was.The corridor was empty so it was just us and the flickering light that facilities management had been promising to fix since the first week of semester. Story for another day. Outside I could hear the distant sounds of campus winding down for the night."How's your head?" he asked