Chapter 154 Decades Day
Chapter 154 Decades Day
Skylar's POV
"And this year's best dressed goes to..." The student council rep paused for effect, clearly enjoying the small crowd gathered around the gym doors.
"Skylar and Elias Bennett!!!!!"
The gym erupted into cheering, a few whistles cutting through the noise, and Elias grabbed my hand, laughing, pulling me forward through the crowd toward the makeshift stage someone had set up near the entrance.
"We actually won," he said, disbelief written all over his face.
"Of course we won. Look at us." I gestured down at myself, at the slip dress and flannel tied around my waist, the chunky boots that had already started rubbing blisters into my heels an hour into the day. Beside me, Elias adjusted his round glasses, tugging self-consciously at the high-waisted jeans he'd insisted made him look "authentically 90s" and not, as I'd told him twice already, "like someone's substitute teacher."
"We planned this for days," he said. "It better have paid off."
The photographer took a photo of us holding up the small trophy, some kids from our grade cheering louder than the moment probably deserved. The whole gym felt warm and easy, exactly the kind of normal I'd wanted more of since everything with Ryan had gotten so complicated.
My eyes moved by itself searching the crowd for some reason, that's when I saw him.
Ryan stood near the far wall, close to the exit, not part of the crowd cheering around us. He wasn't looking at the stage. He was already turning, his shoulders set, cutting through the edge of the gym toward the doors….He didn't look back once.
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"Come on, you have to at least try the running man." Elias grabbed both my hands, already laughing at himself before he even attempted it, his arms pumping awkwardly while his feet completely failed to match the rhythm.
"That is not the running man, not even close.” I laughed hard, nearly missing my footing. He spun me by the hand, pulling me deeper into the crowd as the song hit its chorus and the whole gym seemed to surge forward at once, everyone throwing themselves into the beat.
Someone behind me screamed the lyrics off-key, and a group near the speakers started some kind of coordinated jump that had absolutely nothing to do with the actual dance, and the crowd packed in tighter as more people abandoned the sidelines to join in.
"This is chaos," Elias shouted over the noise, grinning.
"The good kind, though."
He spun me again, and I laughed, stumbling slightly as the floor shifted under, too many feet moving in too many directions at once.
A group of guys nearby started a rowdy circle, shoving each other, the crowd bending and reshaping around them, and I got jostled sideways, bumping hard into someone's shoulder. I caught myself against a stranger's arm, laughing an apology, and spun back toward Elias just as the crowd surged again from the other direction.
Something suddenly snagged hard at my hip, a sharp pull against the fabric of my dress, followed by the sound of a seam tearing. It was all torn up before I could react to stop it.
I froze in the middle of the moving crowd, my hand flying to my side.
The fabric had torn wide along my thigh, gaping open with every small movement, showing a good amount of my skin.
It was someone's belt buckle, I realized dimly, catching a glimpse of the guy who'd bumped into me already moving on, oblivious, swallowed back into the crowd.
"Oh my god." Heat rushed to my face, I grabbed at the torn fabric with both hands, trying to hold it closed, but the crowd pressed in tighter with the next beat drop, bodies moving really fast around me to find any real space to fix it.
"Skylar?" Elias's voice cut through somewhere to my left, but the crowd had shifted, pulling him a few feet further away than he'd been a second ago. "Are you okay?"
I couldn't answer him. My hands shook slightly, trying to hold the seam together, panic climbing as more people jostled past.
I looked up and saw him cutting through the crowd, shoving past people without a single word, his eyes locked on me the entire way.
Relief hit me immediately, the panicked knot in my chest loosening just at the sight of him.
He reached me and had his jacket off in one motion, wrapping it around my waist, angling his body so he stood between me and most of the crowd, blocking the worst of the stares I could already feel starting to land on me.
\------------------Ryan’s POV-------------------
I hated how good she looked right now.
I stood near the far wall, well away from the speakers but close enough to see the dance floor. The noise stayed muffled and tolerable, the low throb of bass more of an ache behind my eyes than the full assault it would've been closer in.
She was laughing at something Elias did, her head thrown back, that stupid flannel sliding off one shoulder while she spun, carelessly. Her hair caught the gym lights every time she moved, and I watched her hips sway to a beat she probably didn't even realize she was following properly. Something ugly and possessive twisted low in my chest, watching someone else get to stand that close to her.
I brought the water bottle to my mouth, then thought better of it and tossed it hard into the trash can a few feet away.
She didn't belong out there laughing like that with him. She belonged….I stopped the thought before it finished, disgusted with myself, and forced my eyes away from her for a second.
When I looked back, something had changed.
She wasn't laughing anymore. She stood frozen in the middle of the crowd, one hand pressed hard against her hip, her whole body angled slightly. People kept moving around her, it took me a second to see what she was trying so hard to hide.
The fabric at her thigh had torn wide open, and she was failing to hold it closed with one shaking hand, panic written all over her face as more people jostled past her.
I shoved through the crowd, ignoring the noise climbing louder with every step closer to the speakers, cutting a straight line toward her while people barely registered me pushing past them. She looked up as I got close, relief flickering across her face.
I got my jacket off in one motion, already reaching to wrap it around her waist, angling my body to block the worst of the sightlines from the crowd around us.
That was when it hit….The noise, the bass, the crush of bodies, all of it slammed into me at once, and the ringing tore through my skull without any warning at all, drowning out everything except the pain splitting behind my eyes.
My knees hit the floor before I even understood what was happening, my hand flying up to grip the side of my head, the jacket slipping from my other hand.
Distantly, through the ringing, I heard her voice.
"Ryan?”