Chapter 4

Kaleena’s POV

I didn't ask where we were going. I didn't have the energy. The rain had stopped at some point, but I was still soaked through, sitting in Raiden's passenger seat with mud caked under my fingernails and my mother's ruined locket clutched in my fist. My mind kept replaying the same loop: Elijah's cold voice, Hayley's smirk, the jewelry hitting the mud. The way Elijah had looked at me like I was nothing.

Raiden drove in silence, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift. The streetlights streaked past, painting his face in flashes of gold and shadow. The scar through his eyebrow looked sharper in this light. He hadn't said a word since he pulled me off the ground and buckled me into his car like I was a child.

I should have been scared. I was in a car with my bully—the guy who'd spent two years mocking my clothes, my art, the way I always slipped on the ice outside the rink. But tonight he'd forced Elijah onto his knees in the mud. Tonight he'd made Elijah pick up every piece of my mother's jewelry with his bare hands. Tonight he'd looked at me with something that wasn't cruelty.

I didn't know what to do with that.

The car slowed. I lifted my head from the window and blinked.

Lights. A ferris wheel spinning slowly against the black sky, its neon spokes reflecting in puddles on the ground. A carousel with painted horses frozen mid-gallop. Arcade booths glowing red and blue. An entire amusement park, lit up like a fever dream, completely empty.

No crowds. No lines. Just the hum of generators and the faint, tinny sound of carnival music drifting from hidden speakers.

I turned to Raiden. "The park is closed."

He pulled into the empty parking lot and cut the engine. "It's closed to the public."

My brain struggled to catch up. "You... you rented the entire park?"

He didn't look at me. "You said it was your birthday."

I had said that. Back in his penthouse, when I was pounding my fists against his chest and screaming that I'd lost everything. I'd screamed that it was my twenty-first birthday and my best friend had thrown me out like garbage. And Raiden Blackwood—the guy who called me "Donovan" like it was an insult—had heard that and decided to rent an entire amusement park.

"Why?" My voice came out small and cracked.

He got out of the car. A second later my door opened, and he was standing there, hand extended. Rain droplets clung to his messy black hair. "Get out, Donovan. You're wasting my money."

I took his hand. His fingers closed around mine, rough and warm, and he pulled me to my feet. I swayed a little, exhaustion hitting me, and his grip tightened. Steadying me.

We walked through the entrance gates. The park stretched out before us—empty, glowing, surreal. It was the kind of thing you saw in movies and rolled your eyes at because it was too perfect, too romantic. But this wasn't a movie. This was my life. And the boy walking beside me wasn't a prince. He was the hockey captain who'd made me feel invisible for two years.

So why did my chest ache every time he looked at me?

We passed a ring-toss booth, a cotton candy cart shuttered for the night, a roller coaster frozen at the peak of its highest drop. The whole world was silent except for our footsteps and that distant carnival music. It felt like walking through someone else's dream.

Raiden stopped in front of an arcade. Basketball hoops lined the back wall, glowing under blacklights. He grabbed a ball from the rack, tossed it in the air, and caught it with one hand.

"You ever play?"

I shrugged. "Not really."

He smirked. "Figures. Your shot's probably as bad as your taste in men."

Something sparked in my chest. It wasn't the hollow ache of grief or the sharp sting of betrayal. It was something fiercer. Something that remembered I wasn't just a girl who got thrown out on her birthday. I was also a girl who could win.

"Excuse me?"

He gestured at the hoops. "Prove me wrong, Donovan. Unless you're scared."

I grabbed a ball. "You're going to regret that."

The game started, and for the first time in hours, I forgot. Forgot the mud and the rain and the look on Elijah's face. Forgot the shattered jewelry and the diary pages and the years of feeling invisible. All I focused on was the ball in my hands and the hoop in front of me and the infuriating sound of Raiden's low laugh every time I missed.

"You call that a shot?" He stole the ball from me, elbowing me aside.

"That's a foul!" I snatched it back.

"There are no fouls in street ball."

"This isn't street ball, this is an arcade—"

"Excuses."

I sank a basket and spun around. "Twelve-ten, Blackwood. Keep up."

His eyebrows shot up. "You're counting? I didn't know you could count."

"Shut up and shoot."

We played like that, stealing and shoving and laughing, and somewhere in the middle of it I realized I was smiling. Actually smiling. My cheeks hurt from it. Raiden trash-talked me with every shot—"That form is tragic, Donovan," "Did you learn to aim from a blindfolded toddler?"—but his eyes were different now. Warm. Teasing. Nothing like the cold bully I'd always known.

I sank the final basket as an imaginary buzzer sounded in my head. "Fifty-four to fifty-two! I win!"

I jumped up and down, arms in the air, cheering like I'd just won the Olympics. The sound of my own laughter startled me. It felt foreign after the night I'd had. After everything I'd lost.

I spun around to gloat, and the words died in my throat.

Raiden wasn't smirking anymore. He wasn't trash-talking. He was just staring at me. His grey eyes were soft and wide open, stripped of every wall he usually kept up. He looked at me like I was the only light in the park. Like I was the reason he'd rented the whole place. Like I was the most precious thing he'd ever seen.

My joy faltered. My heart stuttered. The ball slipped from my hands and bounced away into the dark.

"What?" I asked, suddenly self-conscious. "Do I have something on my face?"

He blinked, and the moment shattered. His expression flickered—something vulnerable, something terrified—before he looked away. "No. Let's keep moving."

But I'd seen it. Whatever it was, I'd seen it.

We kept walking, but the silence was heavier now. The carnival music kept playing. The ferris wheel kept spinning. And all the pain I'd been holding back came rushing in like a wave.

Elijah's voice: Just take your stuff, Kaleena. It's over.

Hayley's smirk: You're out. I'm in.

My mother's locket, sinking into the mud.

Fifteen years of friendship, traded for ice time. My secret diary, projected on a locker-room screen for strangers to laugh at. I had spent my whole life feeling invisible, and tonight had proven I was worse than invisible. I was disposable.

The tears came fast and brutal. I didn't even try to stop them. I just stumbled toward a bench by the lake and collapsed onto it, burying my face in my hands. My shoulders shook. My throat burned. I sobbed so hard I couldn't breathe.

Footsteps. The bench creaked. Then arms wrapped around me—strong, steady, unhesitating—and pulled me against a solid chest. Raiden didn't speak. He didn't try to fix it. He just held me, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other pressed flat against my spine.

"I've got you," he murmured into my hair. His voice was rough, low, barely more than a vibration. "I've got you."

I don't know how long we stayed like that. Minutes. Maybe longer. The tears eventually stopped, leaving me hollow and exhausted. I became aware of things in pieces: the steady thump of his heartbeat under my cheek. The slow circles his thumb was tracing on my back. The scent of cedar and rain and something else—something clean and sharp, like pine.

I lifted my head. Our faces were very close. I could see the flecks of silver in his grey eyes. I could count his eyelashes. I could feel his breath against my lips, warm and slightly unsteady.

"Why are you really doing this?" I whispered. "The park. Protecting me. Making Elijah pick up my mother's things. Caring about whether I'm okay. It can't just be about hockey. It can't."

Something shifted in his expression. For one heartbeat, he looked utterly exposed—like I'd peeled back his skin and seen something raw and terrified underneath. His lips parted. His throat moved as he swallowed.

This was it. He was going to tell me the truth.

Then the walls slammed back down. His jaw tightened. His eyes went cold. He pulled away so fast I nearly fell off the bench, and when he stood up, he was already turning his back to me.

"It's all part of the plan," he said, his voice flat and hard. "I told you. Make you happy, destroy Elijah's ego, and win the championship. You're a winning move, Donovan. Nothing more."

But his voice cracked on the last word. And I saw his hands—trembling at his sides, the same hand that had cradled my head so gently just seconds ago. He shoved them into his pockets and walked away, his long strides eating up the path toward the exit. He was practically running from me.