Chapter 71 Extra Chapter 3: The Note Never Sent
Nathan was constantly, intensely exasperated by Chloe's infuriating tendency to completely lose her mind the absolute second a conventionally attractive guy walked into her line of sight.
Since the beginning of high school, her golden-brown eyes would light up with a sickeningly bright sparkle, and she would flash that devastating, radiant smile at any boy who crossed her path.
What drove Nathan absolutely insane was that her reasons for developing these fleeting, agonizing crushes were always so completely simple.
Take Eugene, for instance. They had been sitting in the exact same mundane class for two entire years without her giving the guy a second thought. Then, one random Friday afternoon, she happened to stay late and watched him play a varsity basketball game. Eugene had been on a hot streak that game—every single desperate girl in the gymnasium stands had been screaming his name.
Suddenly, Chloe found herself completely swept up in the pathetic, hormonal excitement. She decided he was incredibly handsome: he was tall, he looked arrogantly cool on the court, and he even managed to maintain decent academic grades. But the absolute real clincher? His family was obnoxiously wealthy. He brought expensive, limited-edition imported snacks to class every single day, and he carried the untouchable aura of a star athlete on the varsity team.
She was instantly hooked. Every single day, she and her best friend Lisa would huddle together in the seat directly in front of Nathan, aggressively whispering about Eugene's every move.
"Wow! Eugene literally scored twenty-four points in yesterday's game! That is absolutely insane!"
"I know, right? The other team barely scored a single point in the second half!"
"He is seriously so strong!"
Sitting right behind them, Nathan shot a dark, lethal glare at the back of Chloe's head. Her delicate hands were cupped around her flushed face, and her eyes were sparkling with absolute adoration. He couldn't help but feel a violent, sickening pang of absolute contempt.
What the hell is so incredibly great about him? Nathan complained silently, gripping his mechanical pen so hard the plastic nearly snapped. He is literally on the varsity team. Isn't it his basic, fundamental job description to be able to actually play basketball?
"He barely even acknowledged the head cheerleader from the neighboring class when she tried to talk to him!" Lisa squealed.
"Yeah, he completely turned down free water bottles from several girls. So cool!" Chloe sighed happily.
What exactly is cool about that? Nathan’s jaw tightened. That’s just objectively rude.
"Don't you think he looks exactly like Justin Bieber during his early 2010s street-style era when he wears his red baseball cap?" Chloe swooned.[capichecaps]
"Exactly! God, I love him so much!"
Nathan completely froze, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
They look absolutely nothing alike, Nathan thought, a bitter, jealous poison burning the back of his throat. Is there something fundamentally, clinically wrong with your eyesight?
Nathan aggressively twirled the heavy pen in his hand, feeling an increasingly violent, suffocating irritation crawling up his spine.
Before long, Chloe actually wrote Eugene a love letter.
Well, calling it a love letter might have been a massive overstatement—it was just a pathetic, incredibly short note confessing her superficial feelings, less than a hundred words long.
How exactly did Nathan know all these agonizing details?
Because Chloe was far too shy to actually deliver it to the jock herself, and she violently insisted that Nathan be the one to hand it over.
He wasn't remotely close with Eugene, but he took the folded pink paper anyway, his heart completely burning with a dark, territorial rage. Under Chloe's desperate, expectant gaze, he walked across the classroom to Eugene's empty desk and aggressively shoved the paper straight into the drawer.
Eugene's desk drawer was a complete, disgusting mess. It was violently overflowing with crumpled scrap paper, greasy empty snack bags, a half-empty bottle of stale mineral water, and a sweaty team uniform jacket the idiot had forgotten to take home to wash.
Nathan didn't just place it inside. He deliberately, casually stuffed the delicate pink note deep inside the very bottom of one of the greasy, empty chip bags.
Then, his face a mask of absolute, icy indifference, he returned to his seat and looked at Chloe. "It's in there."
Chloe was practically vibrating with nervous excitement, incessantly rubbing her hands together under her desk.
Then, the two of them sat in absolute silence, waiting.
They watched Eugene saunter into the classroom and drop carelessly into his seat. Then, they watched the jock immediately start rummaging through his disgusting drawer in search of a pen. Finding nothing but trash, Eugene grabbed the entire pile of junk—including the empty snack bag holding Chloe's heart—and aggressively dumped it directly into the nearby garbage can.
Chloe completely froze. The color violently drained from her face. "He... he didn't just throw my note away without reading it, did he?"
Nathan completely ignored her panic. He didn't even bother looking up from his advanced calculus workbook. "No idea," he replied coldly.
Chloe frantically nudged his shoulder. "Nathan, please! Go over there and ask him for me!"
Nathan violently shook his head, his tone absolutely merciless. "I am studying. I don't have time for your pathetic drama."
Chloe looked deeply conflicted, her bottom lip trembling. "Should I... should I go over and ask him myself?"
Nathan finally stopped writing. He slowly lifted his head, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a flat, terrifyingly cold expression. "I really, genuinely admire you, Chloe. I admire the fact that you actually have the extra mental energy to aggressively worry about this garbage."
"What's wrong?" Chloe asked, genuinely taken aback by his icy tone.
Nathan smiled, a dark, utterly ruthless smirk. "Today’s advanced math quiz, the AP English spelling test, and the grueling physics unit exam. Your final scores on the recent quizzes for these three core subjects haven't been higher than a miserable C, right?"
Chloe looked completely stunned, thoroughly humiliated.
Nathan didn't stop, aggressively twisting the knife. "It looks like you are completely, fundamentally ready to just give up on your future. If that's the absolute case, then do not ever bother me with your pathetic tutoring questions again. It completely wastes my valuable time."
Chloe completely panicked. The thought of losing Nathan's attention terrified her far more than a rejected note. "No, I'm not giving up! I swear I will aggressively study! Please, Nathan, don't abandon me!"
Nathan scoffed, his eyes dark with suppressed satisfaction. He grabbed a scrap of notebook paper, aggressively scribbled "162 Days Until SAT" in massive, thick red ink, tore it off the binding, and violently slapped it directly onto her forehead.
"Here," he demanded, his voice dropping to a low, commanding register. "Use this to aggressively sober yourself up."
With that, he completely ignored her, lowering his dark head to calmly continue solving his complex equations, hiding the deeply triumphant smirk playing on his lips.
Chloe quickly ripped the sticky note off her forehead. Staring at the terrifying red penciled "162 days" and watching Nathan—who already maintained a flawless straight-A GPA—studying so fiercely beside her, a massive wave of guilt crashed over her. She suddenly realized she'd been aggressively wasting her life thinking about a boy who didn't even know she existed, completely ignoring the brilliant one sitting right behind her.
How utterly, fundamentally unacceptable!
Chloe violently snapped back to reality instantly.
"I absolutely must study! No one will ever distract me again!" she declared fiercely.
She aggressively buried herself in her heavy textbooks, her focus completely absolute. She didn't spare a single thought for Eugene again until the grueling SATs and their high school graduation were finally over.
Whether it was because she was far too excited about the impending freedom of college life, or because Eugene's superficial appeal simply faded with the high school environment... that very first, inexplicable flutter in her heart ended exactly as mysteriously as it had begun.
All exactly according to Nathan's terrifying, possessive design.