Still Yours to Hate

Nate

Coffee from Mrs. Maze’s diner was still hot when I pulled into Naven High’s back lot.

That was the only good thing about being awake before the sun had fully committed to the day.

Beside me, Tessa Ruiz sat with her practice bag wedged between her knees and half a powdered doughnut crammed into her mouth. Blue shorts disappeared beneath an oversized Panthers sweatshirt, and her hair was twisted into something that had probably started as a bun.

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

She pulled the doughnut from her mouth. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You laughed.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.” Her fingers flew to her face. “Oh my God. Do I have something on me?”

She flipped down the visor and opened the mirror.

White powder dusted the corner of her mouth and the tip of her nose.

Her eyes widened.

That finished me.

She shoved my arm. “That’s not funny.”

She scrubbed at her nose, then glanced down at herself.

“Oh my God. It’s on my shirt too.”

I pulled into a parking space.

“You look fine.” I took another drink of coffee. “Even if it looks like you lost a fight with a snow monster.”

Her head snapped toward me. “I look like what?”

I winced.

Note to self: choose words more carefully.

“Oh my God, I can’t go in there like this. Jason Rath is already here.”

“Who?”

She stared at me like I’d failed a basic intelligence test. “The hottest guy in school.”

“According to?”

“Literally everyone with eyes.”

I chuckled.

“Tessa, relax. Go wash it off in the bathroom. He’ll never notice.”

“That is not the point.”

“Pretty sure that’s exactly the point.”

She dragged the sleeve of her sweatshirt across the powder on her chest and somehow spread it farther.

I reached over and brushed a streak from her shoulder.

“Stop. You’re making it worse.”

She looked down.

Her face fell.

I pressed my lips together.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“I was going to tell you that you look very dignified.”

“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.”

“You’re threatening a school security officer?”

“I’m protecting my reputation.”

“What reputation?”

She punched me in the arm.

Fifteen years old, five feet of attitude, and apparently willing to commit assault over a doughnut.

Maribel Ruiz had lived three houses down most of my life, and I’d known Tessa since she was small enough to fall asleep on me during cartoons. So when Maribel’s battery died after her husband left for work, she called me. Tessa had already lost most of the summer to a sprained ankle and couldn’t miss another practice—which explained the five-forty-two phone call and why, at six twenty-five, I had a fifteen-year-old inhaling powdered sugar in my passenger seat.

I’d already been awake.

That was what I told myself when I turned around halfway to Mrs. Maze’s and drove across town to get her.

Not that Tessa had sounded close to tears in the background.

Not that I knew what it felt like to work your ass off for something and watch it slip away because of circumstances you couldn’t control.

Tessa reached for the door handle.

“Hold up.”

Her hand stopped.

I scanned the strip of pavement behind the band hall.

Coach Harren’s truck sat near the fieldhouse. Ms. Delgado’s little red hatchback occupied the space closest to the band entrance. Exterior lights burned above both sets of doors, throwing pale circles across the concrete.

No unfamiliar vehicles.

No one lingering near the dumpsters.

The maintenance gate remained chained.

Quiet.

“You know,” Tessa said, “I can’t clean up in the bathroom if I’m trapped in here. And practice starts in five minutes.”

“You have five minutes. Hush.”

She sank against the seat with a sigh dramatic enough to qualify for theater.

I checked the mirrors once more, then unlocked the doors.

“Now.”

Tessa grabbed her practice bag and climbed out.

“Tessa.”

She turned.

“Text your mother that you made it.”

Her expression softened for half a second before the attitude returned.

“Yes, Dad.”

“Call me that again and you’re walking home.”

“You’d never make me walk home.”

I gave her a challenging grin. “Want to find out?”

She rolled her eyes, circled to the back of my truck, and pulled her flag from the bed.

Then she jogged toward the building.

Ms. Delgado opened the side door before Tessa reached it. Music spilled through the gap—a sharp burst of brass followed by the uneven thud of drums warming up somewhere inside.

Tessa waved before disappearing through the door.

I waited until the door shut behind her.

I wasn’t on duty for another forty-five minutes.

Didn’t matter.

Once I was on school property, some part of me switched on and refused to shut back off.

The morning air hadn’t warmed yet, but the promise of another miserable August day already hung in it. I carried my coffee around to the front of the truck and leaned against the hood.

Mrs. Maze made it the same way every morning. Black, two sugars, no room for anything pretending to improve it. She’d started pouring before I reached the counter, then slid a powdered doughnut into a bag after spotting Tessa in the passenger seat.

For your passenger, she’d said.

Nothing in Naven stayed unnoticed for long.

The sky above the football field had begun to pale, turning the low clouds gray-blue. Beyond the band hall, flags snapped open one by one.

Baby blue.White.Navy.

I let my eyes travel.

Band doors. Equipment shed. Fence. Tree line. Lot.

Nothing.

Headlights swept across the far end of the lot.

A dented silver sedan rolled through the entrance at six fifty-eight—seventeen minutes before the morning rush and early enough to make three unsupervised teenagers suspicious on principle.

Three boys climbed out wearing practice jerseys and carrying enough breakfast sandwiches to feed an offensive line. Dawson went straight to the trunk. Malik crowded in beside him while Owen hung back, checking the lot over his shoulder.

I raised a brow over the rim of my coffee.

It wasn’t the paper bag Dawson lifted from the trunk that caught my attention.

It was the lookout.

I pushed off the hood and started across the lot.

Owen spotted me first. His grin vanished. By the time I reached them, all three stood straight with their hands visible.

Too straight.

Too visible.

“Morning, gentlemen.”

“Morning, Mr. Jacobs,” they answered together.

Too polite.

Dawson held a crumpled Five Below bag behind his leg.

I held out my hand. “Bag.”

His shoulders dropped. “Come on, Mr. Jacobs. It’s harmless.”

“People usually say that right before showing me something stupid.”

Dawson slowly surrendered it.

I opened the top.

At least fifty miniature rubber ducks stared back at me. Some wore football helmets. One had sunglasses. Another appeared to be dressed as a pirate.

I pulled out a duck with a badly painted navy-blue mohawk.

“Explain.”

“It’s senior sunrise,” Dawson said.

“You’re juniors.”

“We’re planning ahead.”

Malik nodded. “We’re motivated.”

I looked into the bag. “Where were you putting them?”

No one answered.

“Fire alarms?”

“No.”

“Bathrooms?”

Dawson’s face did something suspicious.

I pointed the mohawk duck at him. “Absolutely not.”

“We weren’t going to flush them.”

“That answer did not help.”

Malik glanced at Dawson. “I told you the bathrooms were too far.”

“You suggested the cafeteria freezer.”

I stared at him.

Malik reconsidered. “Okay. Bad idea.”

“Look at that. Growth before seven in the morning.”

I tucked the mohawk duck into my shirt pocket, its stupid little head sticking out beside my radio.

Dawson stared at it. “That’s the best one.”

“Mine now.”

I handed the bag back. “Nothing that damages property, blocks an exit, contaminates food, or creates paperwork. You place them, you collect them.”

“All of them?”

“Every last duck.”

“What if somebody takes one?”

“Then tomorrow you’ll learn the devastating consequences of poor inventory management.”

Dawson accepted the bag. “Yes, sir.”

“And fix your parking.”

He glanced toward the sedan. “One tire is inside the lines.”

“That does not count.”

The three of them headed toward the main building, already whispering about locations.

By the time I retrieved my coffee, Dawson had placed a helmeted duck between the concrete panther’s paws while Malik tried balancing another on its head.

It fell immediately.

All three looked at me.

I should’ve kept walking.

Instead, I held out my hand. “Bag.”

I chose one wearing dark sunglasses and wedged it between the panther’s ears.

“Better weight distribution.”

Dawson grinned. “You just participated in an unauthorized prank.”

“I corrected a safety hazard.”

“That duck is three inches tall.”

“Danger comes in all sizes.”

Owen reached for his phone.

I pointed at him. “Post that before first bell, and I’ll deny everything.”

He lowered it.

“Go inside.”

They scattered, laughing as they ran toward the doors.

“Walk.”

Their pace slowed for exactly four steps.

Then they took off again.

Headlights streamed through the gate behind them.

Seven fifteen.

Car doors opened across the lot. Backpacks appeared. Voices spread over the pavement as the morning rush poured toward the building.

My shift had officially started.

I shook my head and joined the flow toward the doors, coffee warming one hand. Behind me, a rubber duck wearing sunglasses sat between the stone panther’s ears.

The one with the navy mohawk stayed with me.

By the time the first bell rang, the parking lot had emptied and the hallways had swallowed the last of the stragglers.

I spent the next few hours in the security office watching camera feeds, answering radio calls, and pretending the rubber duck beside my keyboard wasn’t mine.

By late morning, the building had settled into its usual rhythm.

Teachers teaching. Students finding increasingly creative reasons to be anywhere except class. The occasional door opening where it shouldn’t.

I drained the last of my coffee, tucked the mohawk duck back into my pocket, and headed outside for another perimeter check.

Gravel crunched beneath my boots as I followed the fence line beside the black gate, my eyes moving through the same practiced sweep they had made every morning for the past three weeks.

Lot. Fence. Main entrance. Flagpole.

Empty concrete stretched beyond the entrance. The front doors remained secured beneath the awning, and the flag snapped lazily against its pole, the fabric barely stirring in the thick August air.

The rest of the noise stayed where it belonged.

Distant voices drifted from the portables. Coach Harren’s whistle cut across the field. Somebody’s bass rattled from the student lot hard enough to make the nearest car windows tremble.

Nobody behind the annex.

Nobody testing the side entrance.

Nobody stupid enough to make me chase them down before lunch.

Three clean weeks.

In Naven, that was almost suspicious.

A dark blue truck pulled into the apartment lot across the street, its tailgate facing me as it rolled away from the road.

Old body style. Faded paint. Boxes crowded the bed, with plastic bins stacked high enough to block most of the rear window.

Someone moving into the gray apartments across from Naven High.

Late-August heat pressed down on the old brick school behind me, heavy enough to glue my security shirt between my shoulder blades. Sunlight flashed across the sliver of rear glass still visible above the boxes, and the pavement shimmered beneath the truck in wavering sheets.

Close enough to notice, not close enough to matter.

I continued my sweep.

Lot. Fence. Main entrance. Flagpole—

Metal creaked across the street.

Movement shifted at the edge of my vision.

I glanced back.

The truck had backed into a space with its tailgate toward the sidewalk, the driver’s side facing the school. Its door swung wider as a woman stepped down from the cab.

Ginger braids.

My attention locked on her.

Too fast.

Black shirt. Bare legs. Boots.

One hand stayed braced against the open door as she leaned back into the cab.

Everything inside me went still.

No.

You have got to be kidding me.

Kaia Masters.

My gaze cut back to the truck.

For a second, I saw it the way it had been years ago—paint darker, body cleaner, Jonathan behind the wheel with one arm resting through the open window.

Jonathan’s truck.

Seven years of sun and hard miles had changed it. The paint had dulled. The truck looked rougher than I remembered, with everything she owned stacked into the bed.

But it was his.

And now it was hers.

My left hand closed around the thick metal bars.

She pushed the door shut with one hand and swept her braids over her shoulder with the other. Sunlight caught along the copper strands before they settled down her back.

Even from across the street, I knew the shape of her.

The deliberate set of her shoulders. The lift of her chin. The way she moved like nobody had permission to stand in her way.

My grip tightened until my knuckles went white.

Kaia walked to the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. Metal groaned beneath her hands. She reached for one of the boxes, sliding it toward her until the cardboard scraped across the ridged bed.

I told myself I was assessing activity near school property.

Watching for a possible problem.

Bullshit.

She hooked both arms around the box and settled it against one hip. The weight pulled the hem of her shirt higher along one side, but she barely adjusted before heading toward the apartment entrance.

Like the air hadn’t shifted the second she stepped out of that truck.

Like ten years hadn’t collapsed between one breath and the next.

At the glass door, she curled her fingers around the handle and pulled, angling her body sideways so she could wedge it open with her shoulder.

Just like her to do everything herself.

Once, I would’ve crossed the street before she managed the first box. Taken the heaviest one out of her arms while she complained she had it and carried it anyway.

I hated that I remembered that.

Hated that ten years hadn’t managed to scrape stupid details like that out of my head.

A laugh cut through my memory before I could stop it.

Kaia at the eighth-grade dance, arms looped around my neck, cheek against my chest. Cheap lights turning her hair red and gold beneath paper stars.

I crushed the memory before it could finish.

That girl didn’t exist anymore.

The walkie-talkie at my shoulder crackled.

“Hey, Nate. We’ve got a disturbance by the portables. Can you check it out?”

Olivia’s voice came through thin and calm beneath a wash of static.

I should have answered immediately.

One second, I told myself.

It was never one second with her.

Kaia came back through the apartment doors empty-handed. The sunlight found her again as she crossed the sidewalk, one braid slipping forward over her chest.

She reached into the truck for another box.

I pressed the button on my radio.

“Yeah. On my way.”

My voice came out steady.

Nothing else in me did.

I shoved away from the gate and headed toward the south lot, gravel grinding beneath my boots. With every step, the radio bumped lightly against my shoulder and sweat gathered beneath the collar of my shirt.

My thoughts stayed across the street with the girl I had buried so deep I had started believing the grave would hold.

It hadn’t.

By the time I rounded the corner, Julian Sanchez had another kid pinned against the tan metal siding. One fist was cocked beside his head, his face twisted with the kind of rage boys mistook for heartbreak.

Casey Day wasn’t exactly surrendering.

One hand was knotted in the front of Julian’s shirt while the other shoved hard against his shoulder, trying to wrench enough space between them to swing. A bruise was already darkening beneath Casey’s eye, and blood shone wet at the corner of his mouth.

Julian’s split lip told me Casey had gotten a few shots in too.

“Drop the fist, Sanchez.”

Julian turned toward me.

His mouth curled, but his arm lowered.

Good.

At least one of us still knew how to listen.

I stepped between them, forcing Julian back with my shoulder. Casey immediately surged forward with him.

I planted a hand against Casey’s chest and shoved him back toward the wall.

“You too, Day.”

His jaw clenched, but he stayed put.

“What the hell are we doing?”

Casey wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand and stared at the blood smeared across his skin.

Julian kept glaring past me like I wasn’t there.

“He knew,” he said.

I looked at him. “Knew what?”

“That Sandra was mine.”

Something in my chest went silent.

Not calm.

Never calm.

The kind of quiet that came right before the past ripped through everything.

For one second, the portables disappeared.

The sun vanished. The metal siding faded beneath my hand. Even the faces watching through the classroom windows blurred into nothing.

Colton stood in front of me instead.

Fury carved through his face, turning him into someone I barely recognized.

My knuckles split open. His blood soaked into my shirt.

Kaia was somewhere behind us—or beside us—a flash of ginger hair and white fabric caught beneath flickering lights.

A broken sound.

My name in her mouth.

Wrong enough that I still heard it ten years later.

Julian shifted his weight.

The present slammed back into place.

I caught the front of his shirt in one fist and shoved him a step away from Casey.

Not hard enough to hurt him.

Hard enough to make him look at me.

“She isn’t yours.”

Julian’s eyes widened.

My voice had come out too low.

Too rough.

Too personal.

I released his shirt and forced my fingers open. Pain crawled through my right hand, winding through the two fingers that had never closed properly after that night.

Julian swallowed.

“Mr. Jacobs—”

“No.” I pressed the button on my radio. “Olivia, Sanchez and Day are headed inside. Both need the nurse, then the office. Keep them separated.”

Static crackled.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

The boys stood there breathing hard, pride and embarrassment draining out of them in equal measure. Julian’s fists remained clenched at his sides. Casey kept touching the swelling beneath his eye like he hadn’t decided whether it hurt yet.

I knew that look.

Hated that look.

Boys always thought a fight ended when someone pulled them apart.

It didn’t.

That was the part nobody told you.

A bad swing kept going.

Years, if it landed right.

I pointed at Casey. “You first.”

He pushed away from the wall. “He started it.”

“And you stayed for it.”

His mouth snapped shut.

“Nurse. Then the office.”

Casey started toward the main building, one hand still pressed beneath his eye. I waited until he disappeared around the corner before looking at Julian.

“Move.”

Julian’s jaw tightened.

“Give him space. Olivia’s waiting.”

That earned me a glare, but he stalked toward the main building, his shoulders stiff beneath his T-shirt.

I watched until he disappeared around the corner.

Heat gathered at the back of my neck, but it had nothing to do with the sun.

The words I had wanted to give them sat rotting behind my teeth.

Don’t be stupid enough to let a girl cost you everything.

Too late.

I’d learned that lesson ten years ago.

And apparently, Julian was determined to learn it the hard way.

On the walk back toward my office, my brain supplied the soft sweetness of honey and pear.

Her perfume.

My chest seized so sharply I nearly stopped.

When I passed the gate, my head turned before I could stop it.

Across the street, Jonathan’s truck sat with the tailgate still lowered. One plastic bin had shifted sideways, its lid flashing white beneath the sun.

Kaia wasn’t there.

That should have been a relief.

It wasn’t.

The empty space she left behind crawled beneath my skin worse than the sight of her had.

The lunch bell tore through the air and saved me from myself.

Students spilled onto the sidewalks in noisy clusters, backpacks bouncing against their shoulders and voices rising over one another. I moved through them toward the front doors, past a Panthers-versus-Wolves banner stretched crookedly above the entrance.

Cool air struck my damp shirt as I stepped inside.

The hallway smelled like floor polish, hot cafeteria food, and too many bodies packed into one building. Shoes squeaked against the tile. Lockers slammed. Laughter bounced off the old brick walls.

I passed the trophy case without slowing.

Faded ribbons curled behind the glass. Silver cups had gone dull with age. Near the bottom corner, half-hidden behind a row of newer plaques, sat the old boxing photograph.

I kept my eyes ahead.

One reminder too many.

The security office door slammed harder than I meant it to, rattling the glass in its frame.

The room immediately felt too small for everything trapped inside me.

I dropped into the chair and dragged both hands through my hair, my fingers catching against the damp strands. The desk sat beneath my elbows, scarred from years of keys, coffee cups, and people who had needed somewhere to put their anger.

I stared at the wood grain until the lines began to blur.

Blood came first.

The taste of it.

The heat.

The bright, stupid crack of bone meeting bone.

Then the hospital walls.

“Damn her.”

My right fist struck the desk.

Pain ripped through my hand, sharp enough to bleach the room white.

A pencil skittered across the surface and dropped onto the tile with a hollow clatter.

The navy mohawk’d duck fell out of my pocket onto the desk.

I sucked air through my teeth and stared at my knuckles until the worst of the pain passed. The fingers trembled when I opened them, stiff along the joints where the bones had healed wrong.

On the worst night of my life, doctors had stood beside my hospital bed and used careful voices to tell me what my hand would probably never do again.

I became Naven’s favorite almost.

Almost champion.

Almost gone.

And Colton—

What happened between us stayed broken.

He stayed gone.

But Kaia was back.

Back in the same town that had spent years chewing on her name.

Ten years since everything broke.

Seven since she left.

Not that I counted.

Now she was close enough to turn an ordinary day into a warning.

The office door swung open.

Hallway noise poured through the gap—shoes squeaking, lockers banging, somebody laughing too loudly near the vending machines.

Olivia Callahan stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind her.

Olivia was one of the few people in Naven who knew the history and still spoke to me like a man instead of a cautionary tale.

Her blue-black hair was twisted into a neat bun, with silver threading through the strands near her temples. A ring of keys swung against her hip as she crossed the room and placed a bento box on my desk.

“Thought you might be hungry.”

Her sharp brown eyes moved over me, catching too much before one hand settled on her hip.

“Why do you look like somebody walked over your grave?”

I ignored the question and lifted the lid from the container.

Warm air curled upward, carrying the rich smell of soy sauce, garlic, and oyster sauce. Chicken and broccoli filled one side of the box, rice packed neatly into the other.

“Thanks for this.”

I pulled my chopsticks from the desk drawer.

A piece of chicken made it halfway to my mouth before Olivia plucked the entire box out from under it.

“I’m waiting, Nathaniel Killian Jacobs.”

Everything climbing my throat had to be forced back down.

“You really going to make me drag this out of you?” she asked.

I held out my hand for the food.

She lifted the box higher.

“This about Kaia?”

My head snapped toward her. “You saw her?”

Olivia’s expression softened, but only slightly.

“I saw you at the gate, honey. You were staring across that street like you’d seen a ghost.”

The chopsticks flexed between my fingers. A dull ache sparked through my knuckles, and heat crept beneath the collar of my shirt.

“Yeah, well, that ghost wrecked enough the first time.”

Olivia let out a slow breath and returned the container to my desk. Her mouth tightened as she studied me.

The teasing left her eyes.

“Nate,” she said carefully, “don’t go losing your head now that she’s back.”

A laugh tore out of me, dry and ugly.

“I want nothing to do with her.”

I snatched up the chopsticks and switched them to my left hand.

Olivia’s gaze dropped to the rubber duck sitting beside my keyboard. Navy mohawk. Stupid painted grin.

She picked it up and turned it over once in her hands.

“Where’d this come from?”

“Confiscated.”

One eyebrow rose.

“Don’t ask.”

She set the duck back beside my keyboard, facing me.

Then her eyes lifted to mine.

“Remember what you just said about wanting nothing to do with her.”

I frowned.

Olivia rubbed the back of her neck. The corner of her mouth twitched, like part of her already felt guilty for whatever she was about to say.

“Because I’ve got news for you.”

I lifted a piece of chicken toward my mouth, determined to get one bite before she changed her mind and stole the whole damn box again.

“She starts here Monday.”

My chair shrieked across the tile as I folded forward, coughing.

The chicken lodged in my throat.

One hand braced against the desk while the other pressed against my neck, as though I could force air through with my palm.

“Easy.” Olivia twisted open a bottle of water and shoved it at me.

I coughed until my eyes watered, until the food finally tore loose and breath scraped painfully back into my lungs. Then I swallowed half the bottle too fast and nearly choked all over again.

When the coughing finally released me, I looked at Olivia through blurred eyes.

“She’s what?”

“Mr. Jordan hired her as the communications and media temp. Fall sports, school events, website photos, yearbook help.” She paused, watching my face. “They wanted someone in before the fall schedule got any further underway, so she starts Monday.”

Olivia folded her arms.

“She’ll be here all semester.”

I stared at her.

She said nothing else.

Her eyes did.

There was no way out.

No.

Across town, I could survive her.

Across the street, maybe.

But not here.

Not inside these halls. Not at the games. Not with a camera hanging against her hip and that face turned loose on the same place I had spent ten years trying to outlive her.

My bad hand curled against my thigh until the bones screamed.

Monday.

Kaia Masters would be here.

In the hallways where we used to pass folded notes between classes.

Inside a town still stained by the same night.

She belonged in the past.

That was where I knew what to do with her.

Monday would drag her into every doorway, every hallway, every breath of my day.

And I already hated her for it.