From the next morning after the party, everything felt different.
Marcus was ignoring me.
Not just in the casual, aloof way he sometimes did before—when he wanted to pretend that what happened between us didn’t mean anything.
No. This was intentional. Calculated. A complete shutout.
I first noticed it during training.
He was talking with his teammates, his usual cocky smirk in place, completely at ease in his element. But when I walked past—close enough that he had to have noticed me—
Nothing. Not a glance. Not a twitch.
Not even the slightest acknowledgment that I was standing there.
It wasn’t until later, when I purposely moved closer, standing just a few feet away, that I decided to test him.
"Hey, Marcus," I said casually, feigning innocence, acting as if nothing had changed between us. "You still feeling sore from the game?"
I expected something. Maybe his usual mocking smirk. A teasing, cocky retort. Hell, even a glance. But instead? He just kept talking to Roy, acting like I hadn’t even spoken.
Like I wasn’t even there.
Something inside me twisted uncomfortably.
But it wasn’t just that day. It happened again. And again. And again.
Anytime I was near him, he would go out of his way to avoid looking at me. To act as if I was nothing more than a speck of dust in his peripheral vision.
But when we were alone —when no one else was watching—that’s when it changed.
That’s when the tension came roaring back, thick and suffocating.
The way his eyes would darken when they flicked over me. The way his fingers twitched, like he was fighting every urge in his body.
Like he was barely holding himself back.But the second someone else entered the room? Blank. Distant. Cold.
Like I was nothing. And I had no idea why.
I catch myself searching for Marcus's eyes across the room for the hundredth time today, even though I know exactly what will happen. He'll look right through me, laugh a little louder with his teammates, pretend I'm nothing but empty space.
My chest aches with a familiar hollowness as I watch him turn away again, his jaw set in that rigid line I've come to recognize. The memory of his lips on mine at Roy's party burns like a brand beneath my skin.
How can someone kiss you like you're oxygen one moment, then treat you like you're poison the next?
"Betty?" Sasha's voice snaps me back to reality. "We need to run through the routine again."
I force myself to focus on The Unseen, my squad waiting for direction.
They're counting on me, and I can't let Marcus Archibald's hot-and-cold game derail everything we've worked for.
"Right," I say, straightening my shoulders. "Let's take it from the top."
The Unseen received an official invitation to participate in the inter-university cheer competition.
It was everything we had worked for. Proof that we weren’t just a second-rate, thrown-together team of rejects.
We had earned this. We deserved this.
And, of course, Stacey hated every second of it. Because the second the announcement went public, things started going wrong.
At first, it was small things.
We would show up for training at the gym, only to find that Stacey’s team had already booked the best time slots, leaving us with whatever scraps remained.
Then, it got worse.
One night, the lights shut off in the middle of our practice, plunging us into complete darkness.
The building staff claimed it was a circuit malfunction.
But I knew better.
And then? The equipment started disappearing.
Our mats. Our resistance bands. Our ankle braces. Gone.
No explanation. No trace. No proof. But we all knew who was behind it.
And if she thought she could scare us off, she had another thing coming.
"We should report her," Sasha said, slamming her water bottle onto the table as we gathered at the campus café, going over the long list of ‘coincidences’ that had plagued our practices all week.
"And say what?" Carlos scoffed. "That Stacey and her little minions are secretly conspiring against us? That she somehow managed to rig every gym slot in her favor?"
"Well, yeah," Sasha shot back. "Because that’s exactly what’s happening."
Lucy sighed. "Even if we report it, do you really think anyone would believe us?"
Jade exhaled sharply, drumming her fingers on the table. "Then we take matters into our own hands."
"Meaning?" I asked, arching a brow.
"Meaning," Jade said, leaning in, her eyes gleaming with determination, "we make it impossible for them to ignore us. We train harder. We outshine them. We make it so painfully obvious that we belong in this competition, that not even Stacey’s dirty tricks can take it away from us."
The fire in her voice ignited something inside me. She was right.
We couldn’t fight Stacey’s pettiness with more pettiness. We had to win where it actually mattered. We had to make it so that when we stepped onto that stage at the competition—
No one would ever question us again.