Page 78 of Best I Never Had

I nod, my gaze narrowed in on a familiar silver BMW parked a couple of rows over.

“Is everything okay?” Jenny asks.

Idon’t turn to face her. Instead, I silently nod again, reaching for my backpack in the back seat before exiting the car. I don’t check to see if Jenny’s following. Instead, I stalk toward the car I’ve been eyeing, checking to see if the driver is still anywhere nearby.

When I round a row of cars, I see Alex Spencer. He’s leaned up against the hood of his car, a small group of people gathered around him, all smiles with the low rumble of chitter chatter before the first bell.

Prom should have been remembered as a benchmark for every memorable moment of our senior year, right alongside graduation and the last day of school. It should have been something that I, along with everyone who attended, remembered and reminisced about. But I can’t. Not anymore. Knowing how it ended for Natalia, knowing that she was all alone with AlexfuckingSpencer to grope her, made me so fucking angry. I’ve become a ball of fury ever since Natalia told me what happened. Whenever I close my eyes, all I can think of is beating the shit out of Alex. And that extremely fine line that borders between me being a friend for Natalia, one that she turned to when the pain from that night became too much to bear, and me acting on every simmer of hate that I have toward Alex, begins to blur.

“Hey, Spencer!” I call. I don’t even bother trying to hide the anger seeping through my voice. My blood feels like it’s actually boiling, bubbling up inside me, making my entire body shake with rage.

When he hears his name, he looks up to face me, a stupid grin plastered on his face as if he didn’t even give what he did to Natalia a second thought. I drop my bag on the asphalt before taking my final step, stopping a few feet from his face with my hand gripped into a tight fist.

“Hey, Marshall,” he answers, tilting his chin toward me.

And before I know it, my fist hits him square in the face. The impact makes him stumble, bracing his palms against his own car before staggering to the floor. I know it’s a low blow, sucker punching him when he least expects it, but I don’t even care. Every time I think about Natalia with her head ducked low and flinchingwhen I moved a little too close to her, it makes me furious. I want to pound his face into the ground until he can’t smile that smug-ass grin, until he knows that I know what he did.

Everyone starts to gather around us. Alex sits on the ground, wiping the trickle of blood oozing from his nose.

“What the fuck, Hayden!” he shrieks.

“I swear to God, if you touch Natalia again…if you even look at her, I will come after you,” I growl, my fist still clenched and wound so tight that my nails dig into my palms.

Just as the words leave my mouth, I feel someone jerk my arm. I turn to see Jenny looking up at me, confused and angry.

“Hayden!” she shouts.

I don’t say anything to her. I don’t fucking care anymore. So she walks away. I watch as she does, not even bothering to go after her.

“Okay, people! That’s enough!”

We’re interrupted as Mr. Walton stands between me and Alex, instructing the crowd to disperse. He turns to face me.

“You,” he says, pointing at me. “In my office. Now.”

I take one last look at Alex, his dumbfounded face not even bothering to fight me back. Instead, he keeps his gaze on the ground, wiping his nose again as the blood continues to trickle.

I pick up my backpack and follow Mr. Walton to hisoffice.

present

I know being alone with Natalia is starting to become reckless. The more time we spend just the two of us, I feel this pull toward her. This current that seems to thicken when she wraps her hand around my arm or when she smiles up at me, her eyes twinkling as her nose crinkles in the most adorable way.

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to be near her. To bathe in the presence of her, drinking in her infectious laugh. It’s what keeps me going. To call her when I’m feeling lonely. Or when she’s the only one that makes me feel like I’mnotlonely. Regardless, I’m looking for ways to be around her while maintaining that length that extends from my shoulders to the tips of my fingers, knowing it probably isn’t the smartest thing to be doing.

“So,” I say as casually as possible through my phone, “I was wondering if you were planning on feeling lonely this Friday.”

I called Natalia, finding any excuse to talk to her or see her. Dexter snagged an invitation to a Halloween party at some hot club that was exclusively guest list only, and it felt like the perfect excuse to call Natalia. Any excuse to see her without having to be all alone with her, feeling like the room is closing in on us.

“Service!” Stephan, my new sous chef who was promoted from his position as the chef de partie, calls from the service line, naturally ushering me out of the busy kitchen into the quieter walk-in refrigerator.

“Are you at work?” she asks through the phone.

“Yeah,” I answer, talking over the low hum of the motor fan while hunching forward to stay warm. “But it’s dying down out there. I had a minute to myself.”

“Perks of being the boss?”

I chuckle. “Something like that.”

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