Your Rival Saw Me Naked

Book 4, Chapter 121

It’s been five years.

The gym still smelled like floor wax and teenage regret, which honestly felt like a sign I should have listened to. But no, I walked in anyway with Daniel's hand on my lower back, telling myself I could survive one night pretending high school didn't permanently damage me.

Turns out? Still damaged.

The reunion committee had gone full nostalgia—same cheap string lights, same Bluetooth speaker playing songs that were supposed to make us feel something, same desperate energy of people trying to prove they'd peaked after graduation instead of during it.

Daniel was on his fourth beer, laughing too loud at Kyle Jensen's story about his Tesla. I nursed a vodka soda and wondered why I'd said yes to this. Oh right. Because my statistics-professor fiancé thought it would be "good for me" to face my past.

Cool. Great idea, babe.

Someone suggested Never Have I Ever, because apparently we're all still seventeen and making terrible choices.

I should have left then. Should have faked a migraine or a work emergency or spontaneous combustion. Anything. But Daniel was already sitting down, pulling me next to him like this was going to be fun.

"Never have I ever hooked up in the school," someone started.

Half the room drank. Daniel didn't. I didn't.

A few more rounds. Harmless stuff. People laughing, reminiscing, performing their best lives for an audience that stopped caring years ago.

Then Kyle leaned forward, grinning like he'd just won something. "Never have I ever been disappointed in the bedroom."

Nervous laughter. A few people drank. I stared at my cup.

That's when Daniel decided to become a comedian.

"Hell, I wish I knew what I'm drinking to," he said, voice carrying across the circle. "Two years with this one and it's lights-off, missionary only. I need someone who's actually adventurous."

The gym went dead silent. Like someone had hit pause on the entire universe.

My face burned. My hands went numb. I heard static in my ears.

He kept going. Actually kept going.

"I love her, but come on." He gestured at me like I was evidence in a trial. "I can't marry someone this vanilla. Life's too short to be bored in bed, you know?"

Scattered laughter. The kind that happens when people don't know if they should join in or call an ambulance.

I looked across the room. Amber Crawford—née Mays because of course she got the perfect wedding and the hyphenated name—watched from her spot near the snack table. That same sharp smile from a decade ago. Like she'd been waiting for this exact moment to come back around.

I stood up. Didn't say a word. Just walked.

Daniel's footsteps echoed behind me in the parking lot, but slower this time. Casual. Like this was just a minor inconvenience instead of a public execution.

"Babe, relax." His voice had that edge it gets when he thinks I'm being dramatic. "It was a joke."

I whipped around. "You just told everyone I'm sexually inadequate in front of my entire graduating class."

He rolled his eyes. Actually rolled them. "God, you're so sensitive. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're safe, Zoey. Predictable. I need more than that."

The word landed like a slap. Safe. The same word Miles used. The same word that started everything.

"You need more?" My voice shook. "Then go find it."

He stared at me for half a second, then turned around and walked back inside. Through the glass doors, I watched him already chatting with someone else—probably explaining how his uptight fiancée couldn't take a joke.

I don't remember walking to the courtyard. One second I was standing in the parking lot, the next I was sitting on the same freezing bench where everything fell apart ten years ago. Same cracked concrete. Same broken drinking fountain. Same stupid flyer situation, except now it was about the reunion itself.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I pressed them between my knees and tried to remember how breathing worked.

"Still gravitating toward this bench when life implodes, huh?"

I jerked my head up so fast my vision blurred.

Chase Donovan stood there in the shadows, but different now. Tailored jacket instead of a hoodie. Confident posture that didn't look borrowed. Holding a bag of vending machine pretzels like it was a private joke we'd been keeping for a decade.

Five years vanished in one second.

My throat closed. "Chase."

He sat down without asking permission, same way he had back then. Close enough that I could smell something expensive and familiar at the same time. "Heard your fiancé's greatest hits in there. Real winner you found."

I couldn't look at him. Couldn't process that he was actually here, in this exact spot, when I needed someone to see me falling apart. Again.

"What are you doing here?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"Same as you." He opened the pretzel bag. "Pretending I wanted to relive high school."

The sound of the plastic crinkling was so loud in the quiet. So normal it made everything else feel surreal.

He offered the bag. "Still hate these?"

I almost laughed. Almost cried. Almost did both at once. "Still buying them anyway?"

"Old habits." His eyes scanned my face like he was reading a book he'd memorized years ago but wanted to check for new chapters. "You okay?"

The question broke something inside me. Because he was the only person who'd ever asked it and actually waited for a real answer. Who didn't need me to smile and say I was fine. Who could sit in the wreckage with me without trying to clean it up.

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

He didn't push. Just sat there, patient and still, exactly like he had a decade ago. Like watching me fall apart was somehow interesting instead of pathetic.

"I thought I fixed this," I whispered finally. "I thought I became someone different."

Chase looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, quiet and certain, "Maybe you just picked the same guy with a different face."