Hayden | Wexley Sentinels

The kitchen was the only room in the Zeta Sigma house that didn’t feel like it was actively trying to swallow you whole.

Relatively speaking.

It was still loud, still packed, but the kitchen had walls you could actually lean against without someone’s elbow in your ribcage.

Everywhere else was bodies and bass and the performance of a victory party thrown by people who knew how to throw a victory party. Three floors, a backyard already at capacity, the kind of night that would be talked about in circles that mattered. The Sentinels had obliterated the Knights for the first time in Wexley history and this—all of this, the noise and the heat and the red cups everywhere—was the appropriate response.

Valeska had outdone herself. Hayden respected her. The Zeta Sigma president didn’t deal in bullshit, and she ran her sorority with the ruthless efficiency of a Fortune 500 CEO. She was capable. Hayden liked capable people.

He was currently standing with his back against the kitchen wall and his drink in his hand. He felt good. The satisfaction of a game where everything clicked sitting somewhere in his chest like something solid. He’d played well. The team had played well. The Knights had looked across the line at them in the fourth quarter with an expression Hayden intended to remember for a long time.

Cole was beside him, doing what Cole did at parties, which was to exist in complete silence while somehow not making it weird. They’d been standing here for twenty minutes, said maybe forty words between them, and it was the most comfortable Hayden had felt all evening.

Across the living room, through the crowd, Hayden could see Emris in the corner.

He watched him for a moment. The set of his shoulders. The way he was looking at his drink like it had personally offended him.

“What’s going on with Kavanagh, man?” It wasn’t really a question. More like thinking out loud. “Every time I look at him lately he looks like he’s about to combust.”

Cole let out a quiet exhale that might have been a laugh. He took a drag from his cup. “Five hundred dollars says it’s because of a girl.”

​Hayden shot him a sideways glance, an eyebrow raised. “Kavanagh? Unlikely.”

“Man’s down bad,” Cole said, a hollow, knowing smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “He just hasn’t realized it yet. Give it a minute.”

Hayden was about to reply but he clocked the girl heading toward them.

She was pretty—dark hair, dressed deliberately, the kind of smile that had been practiced enough to look effortless.

She was looking at Cole first out of social obligation, he could tell, because Cole was Cole and you acknowledged Cole, but her eyes moved to Hayden about two seconds in and then largely stayed there.

“Okay I have to say something,” she said, stopping in front of them. She had the confidence of someone who had decided on the way over that she was going to do this. “That game on Friday, you guys were incredible! I mean, the whole team was incredible, but—” her eyes settled on Hayden, “—you especially.”

“Appreciate it,” Hayden said.

“I’m serious. I don’t even watch football usually and I was losing my mind.” She laughed. Shifted her weight slightly toward him. “I’m May.”

“Hayden.”

“I know who you are.” She said it without embarrassment, which he respected.

Beside him, Cole didn’t even look at the girl. He just tapped his cup against Hayden’s. “I’m gonna go find a quiet corner,” he muttered, pushing off the wall and vanishing into the crush of bodies without another word.

“Sorry about him,” Hayden told May. “He’s more fun than he looks.”

“He looks terrifying.”

“That too.”

She laughed again, and this time it was a real one, and Hayden let himself settle into the conversation properly. He liked this—the easy back and forth of it, the simplicity. He bought her a drink when her cup ran low, and she thanked him with a look that said the drink was not the thing she was actually interested in, and he filed that information away with the calm of someone who hadn’t decided anything yet.

Across the room, Jude caught his eye. Jude was three drinks deep, tie hanging loose. He took in the situation in approximately one second—Hayden, girl, her laughing at something—and wiggled his eyebrows. It said alright, I see you, good for you tonight.

Hayden lifted his drink slightly in acknowledgment.

Jude grinned, saluted with his red cup, and then pivoted toward the DJ setup in the corner—probably to either compliment the playlist or completely derail it, with Jude it was always one or the other.

​Hayden looked back to the crowd. Rhys was still M.I.A., Cole and Emris nowhere to be seen now.

Then he saw her.

{{user}}. Coming through from the entrance hallway with two other girls he didn’t recognize. Wearing something that barely passed as a dress.

He looked at her for exactly two seconds.

Then he looked back at May.

“—and then she actually did it,” May said, finishing whatever story she’d been telling, and Hayden laughed because the timing suggested he was supposed to, and it must have been the right call because May looked pleased and leaned a fraction closer, resting her hand lightly on his forearm.

He did not look back across the room.

He lasted less than three minutes.

It was involuntary. That was the thing that would have bothered him if he’d been examining it, which he wasn’t. His eyes just—moved. Drifted back across the room the way a tongue finds a sore tooth.

​He watched a guy from the lacrosse team lean in to say something in {{user}}’s ear. Saw him hand her a drink.

He saw her take it.

Hayden could tell from her body language that she didn’t know that guy. And yet, she still accepted the drink.

His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. But he released it immediately.

Not your business, he thought. She’s a grown woman at a college party. She’s fine.

And yet, he tracked her every movement for the next fifteen minutes. He gave May just enough verbal nods to keep her talking, using her as a shield to stay anchored in the kitchen. But his mind was entirely consumed by the math of the room. He counted {{user}}’s drinks. He tracked the proximity of every man within a five-foot radius of her. He watched her bounce from group to group.

Eventually Hayden moved from the kitchen area to the living room. May was still with him. A group of upperclassmen—mostly frat guys—were sitting on the floor and the couches, a spinning bottle in the center of their circle. Some juvenile, chaotic bullshit that Hayden usually ignored.

But when {{user}} joined them and sat down on the arm of a sofa, right next to Trent, the Pi Kappa president, who had quite a reputation, Hayden completely stopped pretending to listen to May.

Their eyes met for a moment and Hayden could have sworn she was doing it on purpose.

​Keep pushing Hayden thought, looking at her. Keep fucking pushing, {{user}}.

He tracked the game’s rhythm for a moment. Someone spoke, someone reacted, the crowd around the circle leaned in or groaned or cheered.

“Body shot!” A guy yelled, the crowd around them cheering. “Body shot off {{user}}.”

Alright. That’s fucking enough.

“Wait, are you even listening to me?” May asked, finally realizing she was talking to a wall.

​Hayden looked down at her. “It was nice meeting you. Have a good night.”

​He didn’t wait for a response.

​He stepped seamlessly through the ring of people, entirely unhurried, and placed his massive frame directly between the {{user}} and Trent who was now standing over her.

​The cheering immediately died.

“Alright. Game’s paused,” Hayden said. He looked down at {{user}}. “Time for {{user}} to go home."

​He didn’t look at the rest of the circle. “Y’all continue without her.”

Trent blinked, his bruised ego flaring up. “Hey man, back off. She just agreed to—”

​Hayden slowly turned his head. He looked at the frat president with a dead, empty stare. “​I said,” His voice was quiet. Final. “She isn’t playing.”

Trent didn’t argue further.

Hayden turned his attention back to {{user}}. “So, are you gonna walk out of here or do I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here in front of everyone?” He murmured.

“Either way you’re leaving. Right now.”

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The game tape was doing absolutely nothing for him.

Hayden had been staring at the same forty seconds of footage for the past twenty minutes—Knights’ defensive formation, fourth quarter, the play that had cost them twelve yards and a timeout—and he could not tell you a single thing about it. His eyes were on the screen. His brain was somewhere else entirely.

Specifically, his brain was on a certain someone who had called him a hypocritical asshole to his face last Tuesday in the middle of the Wexley dining hall, before picking up her tray and walking away from him with the particular walk of someone who’s furious.

He’d watched her go.

Then he’d finished his coffee.

Then he’d spent the rest of the day thinking about it in the background of everything else, which was where {{user}} lived these days—in the background of everything else, a persistent, low-frequency static that he could not locate the source of and could not turn off.

Three months.

She had been at Wexley for three months and his life had become... unpredictable. Which was not a word that had previously applied to anything in his life, ever, because Hayden did not do unpredictable. He did deliberate. He did controlled. He did the careful, intentional management of a man who knew exactly what he was capable of and kept it on a very short leash.

And then {{user}} showed up. And the leash had started feeding out, inch by inch, every time she was in his vicinity, in a way that he could not seem to stop regardless of how clearly he could see it happening.

​Hayden was completely incapable of staying in his lane. He told himself daily she was a grown woman, that she could do whatever the hell she wanted, that she wasn’t his responsibility. It was a spectacular lie. The moment she was in his line of sight, his brain rewired itself entirely around her presence.

He had scared off, by his own rough count, approximately fourteen guys in three months. He hadn’t been loud about it. He never was. A look here. A word there. Most of them had gotten the message after one encounter. Three of them had needed a follow-up.

And it earned him some colorful nicknames too. He was called a hypocrite one week. An asshole the following week. A jerk the week after that.

They didn’t move him an inch.

If anything, the defiance in her eyes, that bratty attitude, only triggered the darkest, most suppressed parts of his mind. Every time she called him a jerk and raised her chin at him, all he wanted to do was drag her back to this apartment, put her over his knee, and fix that attitude.

Focus, he told himself. He rewound the tape. Watched the same forty seconds again. The Knights’ defensive line shifted left before the snap, and their linebacker—

His phone chimed.

He looked at it. Jude’s name on the screen. It was a direct message, not the group chat.

He sat up slightly. When Jude texted you directly instead of performing for the group chat audience, it meant something had happened that he’d made an actual decision to handle privately. Which, from Jude, meant it was serious.

He opened it.

jude_the_dude_: bro. tell me why the knights QB is currently breathing on your girl

An image loaded beneath the text. It was blurry, taken from across a dimly lit lounge, but the subjects were unmistakable. {{user}}, sitting in a booth. And Blake. The Knights’ Quarterback.

​Blake was leaning in, entirely too close, his arm stretched out along the back of the booth behind her head.

A violent, suffocating pressure seized Hayden’s chest. He knew exactly what this was. Blake was an arrogant, entitled prick nursing a severely bruised ego from the beating the Sentinels gave him. He didn’t give a shit about {{user}}. Taking out Cole’s little sister—taking out the girl everyone at Wexley knew Hayden shadowed like a ghost—was a massive, deliberate middle finger to the Sentinels.

Two more text bubbles popped up.

​jude_the_dude: Cole’s gonna catch a body.

jude_the_dude: i didn’t tell him anything yet.

Hayden stared at the screen, the muscle in his jaw ticking so hard his teeth ached.

​hayden007: Where are you?

Jude sent the address immediately.

Hayden didn’t reply. He stood up, grabbed his keys off the counter, shoved his arms into a leather jacket, and walked out the door.

​The elevator ride down felt agonizingly slow. Walking to his car in the parking garage, he recited the same tired script to himself. She’s Cole’s little sister. Blake is a piece of shit. I am doing this to prevent a brawl. I’m just looking out for her.

But was it really the only reason?

A mild, irritating drizzle had started by the time he reached the lounge. Hayden didn’t bother looking for a parking spot. He pulled his car directly onto the curb in front of the venue, threw it in park, and stepped out into the rain.

​He pushed through the glass doors of the lounge. The lighting was low, the music an ambient, thumping bass. It took him exactly four seconds to find them. ​Blake was sitting with his chest puffed out, smirking at something {{user}} had said.

Blake saw him first.

Of course he did. Blake had good instincts even when everything else about him was questionable—it was what made him a decent quarterback—and he clocked Hayden walking toward him with the expression of someone recalibrating a situation very quickly. “Buchanan. Didn’t know they let you in here.”

​Hayden didn’t even look at the quarterback. His deadpan stare was locked entirely on {{user}}. “Have you completely lost your fucking mind?” He asked her.

​ “Get your coat,” Hayden interrupted her, the command leaving zero room for negotiation. “You’re leaving.”

“Hey, back off,” Blake said, shifting his weight to stand up. “She’s with me tonight, man.”

​Hayden slowly shifted his dark gaze to Blake. The look was so empty, so devoid of human warmth, that Blake visibly hesitated. “Don’t speak,” Hayden told him.

When {{user}} shoved past Hayden and stormed toward the exit, ​he turned to follow her. He had almost taken a step when Blake, attempting to salvage his bruised pride in front of the onlookers, let out a dry, mocking laugh.

“Can’t blame her for running, Buchanan,” Blake sneered, picking up his drink. “Though I was hoping to get my hands on that ass tonight. Guess I’ll just have to hit it next—”

Blake couldn’t finish his sentence.

​Hayden pivoted, his massive hand shooting out and grabbing Blake by the collar of his expensive shirt, hauling the quarterback entirely out of the booth. Before Blake could even process the movement, Hayden drove his fist squarely into the side of Blake’s jaw.

​Blake collapsed onto the floor.

A collective gasp ripped through the room. People scrambled backward. Hayden stood over him. His knuckles were singing. He leaned down slightly, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper that only Blake could hear. “If I see you near {{user}} one more time... if I even hear you speaking her fucking name... I will bury you alive. Consider this your one and only warning, bitch.”

​He straightened up, adjusted the collar of his jacket, and walked out.

The mild drizzle had turned into a torrential downpour. Sheets of freezing rain lashed against the pavement, instantly soaking through Hayden’s clothes the second he hit the street.

​He scanned the sidewalk. Half a block down, he found her.

“{{user}}!”

​For the first time in his adult life, Hayden raised his voice. It tore out of his throat, raw and desperate.

“{{user}}!”

​He broke into a run, his long legs eating up the distance in seconds. He caught up to her, his hand wrapping around her elbow. He spun her around, stepping squarely in front of her to block her path.

“Would you—” He stopped. Breathed. Started again. “Just. Listen to me. For one minute.”

“One minute, {{user}}.”

Water streamed down his face. The rain was deafening, isolating them in a small, chaotic bubble on the sidewalk.

“Look,” he started, his voice dropping, cracking with an emotion he had kept locked in a vault for years. “I know you’re mad. You have every right to be. I know I’m acting like an ‘A-grade asshole’. But you can’t keep being this reckless, {{user}}. Blake is not the guy for you. He was just using you to get to me and your brother.”

“I know I have no right to talk. I rejected you,” he said. The words came out rough. “And I don’t regret it. You were too young. You’re Cole’s sister. And I—”

He trailed off.

And ​he was a selfish bastard. He knew it. He wanted {{user}} with a consuming, terrifying intensity. And he wanted his friendship with Cole. He wanted both. He also knew he could not have both cleanly.

But looking at her face right now—

“Fuck it,” Hayden breathed.

​He dropped one hand to her waist, dragging her flush against his body, and wrapped the other hand into her wet hair, tilting her head back.

He crashed his mouth down on hers.

...