Chapter 5

Kaleena’s POV

The ride back to the penthouse was silent. I sat in the passenger seat with my arms wrapped around myself, the little frog charm digging into my wrist. Raiden didn't look at me. Not once. His jaw was locked tight, his grey eyes fixed on the road like it personally offended him. Whatever had almost happened on that bench by the lake—whatever truth had nearly slipped through the cracks in his armor—he'd buried it deep again. Maybe for good.

I didn't have the energy to pry it out of him. Not tonight.

The elevator ride up to the penthouse was just as quiet. I leaned against the mirrored wall, my reflection a ghost of the girl who'd left this building hours ago. Mud still streaked my dress. My eyes were swollen from crying. But somewhere under the exhaustion, a strange new feeling was taking root. I didn't know what to call it yet. I just knew it had something to do with the boy standing three feet away from me, radiating tension like a storm about to break.

The doors slid open. Raiden gestured for me to go first, then followed me into the dark apartment. He flicked on a lamp, and the living room bloomed in soft gold light. I sank onto the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest. Raiden disappeared into the kitchen. I heard water running, the clink of a glass, then nothing.

I stared at the ceiling. My phone buzzed.

At first I ignored it. Another buzz. Then another. A notification piling up like a car crash in slow motion. I sighed and pulled the phone from my pocket.

Unknown number. I opened the message, and my blood turned to ice.

It was a photo. Clear as day. Me and Raiden at the amusement park—his arms wrapped around me on that bench by the lake, my face buried in his chest. It looked intimate. It looked like we were lovers. It looked nothing like a broken girl crying into the shirt of her bully-turned-protector.

Below the photo, a message:

'He's using you to ruin Elijah's career. Drop the Ice King, or the whole campus finds out you slept your way into his bed the night you got kicked out.'

My hands started shaking. Hard. The phone nearly slipped from my grip. My heart slammed against my ribs so violently I thought I might pass out.

'Slept your way into his bed.' The words burned. They didn't just threaten me—they threatened to rewrite the entire narrative of my life. The quiet art student who got kicked out and immediately shacked up with the rival hockey captain. People would eat that up. They wouldn't care about the truth. They never did.

And Raiden—God, Raiden could get banned from the championship. Manipulation of a student. That's what they'd call it. His whole season, his whole career, gone because of one photo taken while he was trying to comfort me on the worst night of my life.

Panic roared through me. It wasn't rational. It was primal. My mind seized on the only thing that made sense in that moment: 'Raiden set this up. He took me to the park. He orchestrated the whole thing. He's been playing me from the start.'

I was on my feet before I knew I was moving. I stormed across the penthouse and shoved open his bedroom door without knocking.

He was standing by the window, back to me, a glass of water in his hand. He turned when I burst in, eyebrows drawing together.

"What the hell, Donovan—"

I shoved the phone in his face. "Explain this."

He took the phone from me, his fingers brushing mine. I yanked my hand back like he'd burned me. His grey eyes scanned the screen, and I watched his expression change. Surprise first. Then something colder. Sharper.

"Where did you get this?"

"An unknown number just sent it to me, along with a lovely threat to tell the whole campus I'm sleeping with you to get back at Elijah." My voice was shaking with rage. "Was this part of your plan too, Raiden? Take me to the park, get someone to snap a photo, then use it as leverage? Is that why you were so goddamn nice to me tonight?"

He stared at me. For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then he set the glass down on the counter with a quiet click. "You think I did this."

"I don't know what to think anymore. You've been lying to me since the moment I walked through your door. You said I was a chess piece. You said this was all strategy. So yeah—I think this is exactly the kind of thing you'd do."

Something flickered in his eyes. Hurt, maybe. Or anger. I couldn't tell which. "I didn't take this photo. And I didn't send it to you." He turned the phone toward me, zooming in on the image. "Look at the angle. It's from outside the park perimeter. Someone was following us. Someone with a long lens."

I blinked. "What?"

"Hayley." He said her name like it was a curse. "Her father's a private investigator. He has access to tracking software, surveillance equipment, the works. She probably had us followed the second we left your old apartment."

The pieces clicked together in my head, and the rage I'd aimed at Raiden swerved violently toward Hayley. That blonde, smirking, manipulative—"She's trying to blackmail us."

"Us," Raiden repeated. He handed the phone back, his jaw tight. "If this photo goes public, you get labeled a scheming groupie. I get investigated for manipulating a student. I could be banned from the championship. My team loses their captain. Everyone loses—except Hayley, who gets exactly what she wants."

I sank onto the edge of his bed, my legs suddenly too weak to hold me. "What does she want?"

"Elijah. And for you to disappear." He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. "She's been trying to push you out since she found out about your connection to him. This photo gives her the ammunition to do it publicly."

I pressed my palms against my thighs, trying to stop them from shaking. "So what do we do?"

Raiden was quiet for a moment. Then he pushed off the counter and started pacing. "We flip the narrative. If everyone on campus already thinks we're together, the photo means nothing. It's not a scandal—it's just a picture of a boyfriend comforting his girlfriend."

My head snapped up. "You want us to pretend to date? Publicly?"

"It's the only play that neutralizes the threat. Hayley can't expose a secret relationship if there's no secret to expose."

"Nobody's going to believe that," I said, my voice rising. "We've been enemies for two years, Raiden. Two. Years. Everyone on campus has seen you mock me. They've heard you call me Donovan like it's an insult. And now suddenly we're dating? They'll see right through it."

"Then we make it convincing." He stopped pacing and turned to face me. His grey eyes were intense, unblinking. "We need a dress rehearsal. Something that looks real."

"What are you—"

Before I could finish the sentence, he was in front of me. His hand tangled in my hair, tilting my head back. His other hand gripped my waist, pulling me off the bed and against him. And then his mouth was on mine.

The kiss was not gentle. It was not fake. It was forceful and desperate and full of so much heat that I forgot how to breathe. His lips moved against mine like he'd been starving for this—like he'd been holding himself back for years and his control had finally snapped. I felt it everywhere. The press of his fingers digging into my hip. The rough sound he made low in his throat. The way his body crowded mine, backing me against the edge of the bed.

I should have pushed him away. I should have been furious. But my hands were already fisting the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, and I was kissing him back with everything I had. My mind went blank. There was no Hayley, no blackmail, no Elijah. Just Raiden. Just his mouth and his hands and the way he tasted like rain and something dark and addictive.

A sound escaped me—a small, desperate noise I didn't recognize—and that's when he ripped himself away.

He stumbled backward, his chest heaving, his eyes wild and panicked. He looked like a man who'd just woken from a nightmare. His hand hit the counter, and I heard the sharp crack of glass. The water glass he'd set down earlier. It shattered against the edge, and I saw blood bloom across his palm.

"That was acting," he said, his voice harsh and uneven. "That's what you wanted, right? A convincing rehearsal."

His words were cold, but his hands were shaking. And his eyes—God, his eyes were screaming something completely different.

"Raiden, your hand—"

"It's nothing." He stared at the blood dripping from his palm onto the floor, then at me. His expression was a mess of confusion and pain. Like he couldn't decide whether to run toward me or away from me.

He chose away.

He crossed the room in three strides, stepped into the hallway, and slammed his bedroom door behind him. The lock clicked into place.

I stood there in the sudden silence, my lips still tingling, my heart still racing, my mind spinning in circles. I lifted my fingers to my mouth. They came away trembling.

"Acting," I whispered. "That was acting."

But it wasn't. We both knew it wasn't.

My phone buzzed again. I looked down, half-expecting another threat from Hayley. And I was right.

'You have until tomorrow morning, Kaleena. Walk away from Raiden, or everyone sees the photo. Including the dean.'

My thumb hovered over the keyboard. The old me—the girl who spent years feeling invisible, who let Elijah push her around, who never fought back—would have crumbled. Would have run. Would have done exactly what Hayley wanted.

But that girl died tonight. She died in the mud outside her old apartment. She died on a park bench, crying into the chest of the boy who was supposed to be her enemy.