Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The Pattern
The first one surprises me. The next four do not.
After headband girl melts down my spine like she regrets her entire socioeconomic position, I pretend life returns to normal. I skate. I study. I keep breathing even though some days it feels like violence. And then another girl shows up.
This time it is the redhead from my biology class. Perfect posture. Perfect eyeliner. Perfect way of never letting her gaze land on me for more than half a second, like eye contact might stain her.
It is three days after the first girl. The snow is heavier now, thick enough to mute sound around the rink.
Practice ran late. The building is nearly empty.
I step outside and she is standing by the lamppost, pretending to check her phone.
She looks up. Blushes instantly. Walks toward me with the kind of forced confidence girls get when they have never actually been told no.
“Kilovac.” Her voice trembles a little. “Can I… talk to you?”
This again.
I nod once, because apparently this is my life now.
She takes a breath. Her hand fiddles with the strap of her designer schoolbag. “I saw you hit Volkov,” she says, cheeks flushing deeper like the memory embarrasses her physically.
Everyone saw. Half the school acts like it were a televised event.
She steps closer. “I liked it.”
I blink. “What?”
“You were…” She searches for a word her vocabulary apparently was not built for. “…strong.”
Her breath puffs white in the cold. Her eyes flick between my mouth and the ground. She is terrified someone will see this. See her.
She leans in and kisses me so fast it feels like a confession. Her lips taste like strawberry lip gloss. Her hands shake when they touch my jacket. She whispers, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
There it is again. The ritual. The plea. The fear.
Something cracks inside me—not an emotional crack, not softness, not anything pathetic.
A realization. This is not about me. It is about what I represent to them.
Their rebellion. Their weakness for something real.
Their hiding place. I do not meet her the next day behind the gym.
I let her kiss me behind the chemistry lab instead. It is over before it becomes anything.
The third one comes a week later. This one is loud normally, always surrounded by people, always laughing. She corners me in the equipment hallway, out of breath like she ran here.
“They said you were here.” She reaches up without asking and drags her fingers through my hair. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is watching you walk around like you’re untouchable?”
I stare at her. “Untouchable?”
“Yes,” she snaps. “Like nothing affects you. Like you do not want anything.”
I almost laugh. If she knew the truth—how badly I want the ice, the escape, the silence—she would not understand any of it.
She kisses me without hesitation. Hungry. Demanding. Nothing like the first two.
She digs her nails into my shoulders and whispers against my mouth, “Do not tell my boyfriend.”
I pull back. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Everyone has something,” she says. “This is mine.”
I do not answer. I do not have to. The hallway stays quiet enough for her to pretend this never happened.
The fourth girl shows up after a game. She does not speak. She just grabs my hoodie, pulls me into a dark section under the bleachers, and kisses me like she is drowning. Her breath is shaky. Her hands are cold. She never looks at my face.
When she is done, she whispers, “They do not have to know,” and rushes away like she committed a crime and I am the evidence.
I do not chase her. I do not chase any of them.
The fifth girl is the only one who surprises me.
Because she does not approach me in the dark. She does not hide. She does not pretend she is not doing exactly what she wants. It is after class on a Friday. Everyone is packing up their bags, rushing toward early weekend plans. She walks straight to me. Stops at my desk. Tilts her head.
“You like control,” she says.
I blink once. “Do I?”
“Yes.” She smiles, wicked and curious. “So do I.”
She waits until the classroom empties, then lifts herself onto my desk like she has done this before, with other boys, in other rooms, wearing the same kind of confidence money buys but guts sharpen.
She wraps her arms around my neck. Kisses me slowly, deliberately, letting the silence stretch enough that I can hear her heartbeat.
Then she pulls back, lips flushed, voice soft. “No one would understand.”
“I know,” I say.
“That is why I want you.”
She kisses me again, long and deep, then leaves the room with perfect posture and not a single glance back.
That is the moment the pattern finishes forming in my head.
Not that rich girls come to me. Not that they hide me.
Not that they break their own rules quietly and blame me for being the temptation.
No. The real pattern is this: No one wants the whole of me.
They want the version of me that fits their rebellion.
Their secret. Their escape. Their curiosity. And they never want it seen.
By winter break, the whispers start. Not about me. Not about them. About something else entirely.
“Volkov is different this year.”
“He is playing meaner.”
“He is obsessed with someone.”
“Who?”
“Watch practice. You will know.”
I hear it. Ignore it. File it away. Because the only person who sees me fully is the one rich boy who never asks me to hide. And he is the one person I cannot afford to need.