Chapter 46 : This Will Not Go Away
HAYDEN’S POV:
I didn’t mean to just stand there. For a second after I opened the door, I couldn’t move.
Stephen was in the corner by his bed, knees pulled halfway to his chest, shoulders shaking. His face was buried in his hands like he was trying to disappear inside them. The room felt smaller somehow, like the air had thickened around him.
He looked… wrecked. “Stephen,” I said, softer this time.
His head snapped up.
The moment our eyes met, something shifted. His spine straightened and his expression hardened so fast it almost gave me whiplash.
“Don’t,” he said.
I hadn’t even taken a step yet.
He pushed himself off the floor quickly, wiping his face with the sleeve of his hoodie like he could erase the evidence. Like I hadn’t already seen it.
“I wasn’t…..” I started.
“Don’t,” he repeated, sharper now.
He brushed past me, shoulder knocking mine hard enough to sting. I turned just in time to see him disappear into the bathroom.
The lock clicked.
The sound felt louder than it should have.
I stood there staring at the door, jaw tight, chest doing that strange constricting thing again. I told myself to walk away. Give him space. Pretend I hadn’t seen anything.
But I stayed.
Water ran inside the bathroom, it was not the shower but just the sink. Like he needed noise.
My hands curled at my sides.Why did he look like that? Why did it bother me so much?
I dragged a hand down my face and sat on my bed, staring at the closed door across the room. The fluorescent light above buzzed faintly. Everything felt painfully normal except it wasn’t.
After a few minutes, the water shut off, then the door unlocked.
Stephen walked out without looking at me. His eyes were red but dry now. His expression is carefully blank.
“I’m going to sleep,” he muttered.
It was barely eight. He walked to his room and shut the door. I guess the conversation was over.
I walked back to my room, and lay down slowly, staring at the ceiling.
After that, things got… weird. Every movement felt calculated.
If our hands brushed, grabbing something from the desk, it lingered in my head for hours. If he laughed at something Mateo said, I found myself watching the curve of his mouth longer than I should.
And sometimes I would catch him looking at me and not in the usual careless way but like he was trying to solve something. Then he would look away first.
It was driving me insane.
The dreams started three nights later.
The first one didn’t even make sense.
We were in the locker room after a game. Everyone else had already left. The lights were dim. Steam still hung in the air from the showers.
Stephen was standing too close and saying something I couldn’t hear. I remember reaching for him—like I was trying to stop him from walking away.
But instead of stepping back, he leaned in.
The feeling wasn’t soft or sweet.It was charged and confusing, like grabbing onto a live wire.
I woke up gasping.
For a split second, I didn’t know where I was. Then the dark outline of our dorm room settled into the light and that’s when I realized.
My body had reacted. My dick was hard.
Heat flooded my face instantly. “What the hell,” I whispered to myself.
I turned onto my side, heart pounding, disgust crawling up my throat.
It was just a dream and it didn’t mean anything.
Guys have random dreams all the time. It didn’t mean…..But I knew it wasn’t random.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself back to sleep.
But the dreams didn’t stop.
Sometimes it was arguments that turned too us fucking. I started waking up tense, sweaty and hard. It was a daily occurrence and I felt worse every time it happened.
I would lie there staring at the ceiling, guilt twisting in my stomach.
This wasn’t me. I wasn’t……
I dragged both hands through my hair and sat up carefully.
I started taking longer and colder showers as I tried to clear my head or tried to punish it into cooperating.
But nothing changed the fact that during practice, when he ran past me, I noticed the way his jersey clung to his back. Or that when he laughed, something low in my stomach tightened.
I hated it. I hated that my brain wouldn’t shut up. I hated that I kept replaying the sound of his voice cracking when he told Ella he didn’t care.
I hated that I cared.
One afternoon, we both reached for the same water bottle in the mini fridge.Our hands collided. We both froze.
It wasn’t anything huge, just our fingers brushing but neither of us moved immediately. His eyes flicked up to mine. There was something there, like he felt it too.
He pulled his hand back first. “You take it.” His voice was steady.
I swallowed. “It’s yours.”
He grabbed it anyway and twisted the cap open, but his jaw was tight.
The air between us felt fragile. Like one wrong word would shatter it.
“You’ve been weird,” he said suddenly.
My stomach dropped. “Me?”
“Yeah. You.”
I forced a shrug. “You locked yourself in the bathroom.”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “Forget it,” he muttered.
He walked out before I could respond.
And I was left standing there again, staring at a closed door.
That night, the dream was clearer. It wasn’t a locker room. It was our room.
Stephen sitting on the edge of my bed instead of his own, looking at me like he had that day and he was scared of something but stepping toward it anyway.
I woke up with my pulse racing and shame burning under my skin. I shoved my face into my pillow, muffling a frustrated sound.
This had to stop. It wasn’t fair.
I rolled onto my back and stared across the dark room and my chest tightened for reasons I couldn’t explain. I felt disgusted, confused and angry at myself. But underneath all of it, there was something worse.
I didn’t want the dreams to stop because a part of me didn’t want him to feel far away again.
That realization scared me more than anything else.
I turned toward the wall and squeezed my eyes shut.
Tomorrow, I told myself i would act normal and I would fix whatever this was. But even as I drifted back to sleep, I knew one thing with terrifying certainty.
This wasn’t going away any time soon.