Page 8 of The Sweetest Revenge

I scanned the room, heart still hammering against my ribs, expecting to see him lurking in some corner. Nothing. Empty tables. Empty chairs.

A wave of relief crashed through me, so intense my knees nearly buckled. He was gone. The air rushed from my lungs in a single exhale, as if I'd been holding my breath since the moment the darkness fell.

But beneath the relief, something else stirred, something I didn't want to acknowledge. A hollow ache. An echo. The same feeling I'd had as a child when the roller coaster ended: terror so acute it circled back around to exhilaration.

I rolled my eyes at my own conflicted emotions, my breath escaping in a shudder. My fingers trembled as I pushed my hair back from my face, the ghost of his touch still burning against my skin.

If Zaiden Knight thought his little intimidation act would drive me out of town, he had seriously underestimated me.

This—whatever game he was playing—was one more thing to endure, to overcome. To win.

The trembling in my hands stilled as determination replaced fear.

Straightening my shoulders, I strode back to my table, ready to pack up and put this whole night behind me. I stopped cold.

"No." The word barely passed my lips as I frantically scanned the empty surface. "No, please, no."

My laptop was gone. With it, hours of work had vanished, the project that had kept me here late, that I'd just finished minutes ago. The project I'd only managed to save to the laptop's desktop.

"Fuck." The word echoed in the empty library, carrying more weight than all of Zaiden's threats combined.

CHAPTER5

ZAIDEN

Metal scraped against metal as I yanked open my locker. The bang echoed through the room. I slung my bag over my shoulder before throwing it closed again.

Sterling slammed his locker shut at the same time. The sound rang like a gunshot.

Silent, we moved toward the exit, our footsteps matching the rhythm of my pulse. Too fast. Too hard.

"I haven't seen Ariella today. Did last night work?"

Rolling my eyes, I shouldered through the swinging locker room door into Sports Alley—the central tunnel connecting all the coed locker rooms at Westbrook.

Unlike other schools, Westbrook prioritized athletics above everything else. You could tell from the moment you stepped inside, with an entire massive building dedicated solely to their sports programs. Each team had its own dedicated space, though they all shared a unique arrangement. While the locker rooms were technically coed, they were designed with girls' lockers on one side and boys' on the other, with shared amenities like showers in between. Football players shared with cheerleaders and the dance team. Hockey players with figure skaters. Basketball players had their own dance team and cheerleading squad.

"No." The word came out rough. "Her car was in student parking this morning."

"So you're letting this go?" Sterling asked.

A laugh escaped me. Cold. Empty.

"No." I met his eyes. The plan had been forming all night, each detail clicking into place like the blade of a knife. "I have something better in mind."

"Looks like she already belongs to the football team," Sterling said, and I lifted my gaze, following his line of sight.

The football team's coed locker room was diagonal to the hockey team's locker room.

"Is she on the dance team?" Sterling adjusted his Westbrook Predator's ball cap, and I nodded. "Ah, come on, man, you're not only going to try to start a feud with her. You're going to put the whole hockey team against the football team this year." Sterling warned, his voice dropping. "You know the rules."

I knew them all too well. The invisible boundaries that kept the peace. Hockey claimed the figure skaters. Basketball, the hip-hop dancers. And football? They guarded their half-time dancers and cheerleaders like crown jewels.

I just didn't care.

My gaze followed Ariella in her tight black leggings and white Predator dance team tank top as she walked down the hall next to Elijah, also known as EJ Anderson, the quarterback of the Westbrook Predators, with most of the team surrounding them.

Ariella's hair was pulled up loosely in a ponytail that swayed back and forth as she walked, and my cock stiffened. Apparently, it did not understand the assignment.

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