At night, he'd stare at his ceiling replaying it. Why did she make him feel so small without even saying much? Why did her silence bother him more than any insult? The next week, his father found out he'd been benched for one game after skipping practice. "Pathetic."
Gregory hissed. "If you can't control your team, you're not a leader. You're a disappointment." Logan said nothing. He just went to his room, slammed the door, and punched his pillow until his knuckles hurt.
That's when the anger started building. The kind that didn't go away. And when he saw Nia again, sitting in the cafeteria quietly, that anger finally found a target. He convinced himself it was harmless, just a joke, a little push to remind her who she was dealing with. But the truth was, Logan wasn't just trying to humiliate her.
He was trying to silence something inside himself. That deep gnawing voice telling him he wasn't as powerful as he thought. And that was the beginning of the end. Because when someone like Logan feels powerless, they look for someone else to hurt. And this time, he picked the wrong person.
But before the cafeteria moment came, the tension between them had already started to boil. Quiet stares, cutting words, and small acts that pushed both of them closer to that breaking point. By the second week of November, everyone at Westbrook High could feel it. That quiet tension between Nia and Logan. It was the kind of thing you couldn't name, but felt in the air.
Every lunch period, every hallway glance, it grew a little heavier. At first, it started small. Logan would whisper something when she walked by. Little jabs that seemed harmless on the surface, but cut deep all the same. "Careful, she might hex you."
He joked once, earning laughs from his table. Nia just kept walking, holding her tray tight, pretending not to hear. Hannah noticed. "Why don't you tell someone?" she asked one afternoon as they walked out of English class. Nia shook her head.
"And say what?" "That he doesn't like me?" "They'll just tell me to ignore him." Hannah frowned. "Yeah, but this isn't normal."
"He's obsessed with you, Nia. You should see the way he stares." Nia didn't respond. She didn't like giving people like Logan power by talking about them. But deep down, she felt it, too.
That sense that he wasn't done with her yet. In the cafeteria, the pattern repeated every day. Logan sat at his usual table with his crew, Tyler, Evan, and Mitch, the loudest boys in school. They'd point, laugh, and whisper just loud enough for her to catch pieces. "Thinks she's too good for us?"
"Probably thinks we're just small-town idiots. Bet she's scared." She wasn't scared. She was tired. Still, one part of her couldn't help wondering why.
Why her? Why this constant need to push? Then one Friday, things started to shift. During gym class, the coach paired them for a team drill. The second their names were called, half the class let out a low "Woo!" waiting for a show.