Chapter 55: Puck’s Defense

Georgia

Three days of Puck treating me like I don’t exist, and the ache behind my sternum still hasn’t fully faded. It’s just dulled into something I’ve learned to carry without mentioning. Three days of empty seats and averted eyes and Liam delivering notes like a messenger between countries at war. And then this.

Two words. That’s all it takes for the Bellamy twins to fold like he pulled a string through their spines. Two words, and Puck keeps walking like it cost him nothing at all.

It starts the way most bad hallway moments start, with the Bellamy twins deciding my existence is worth commenting on. I’m at my locker, trying to shove a textbook into a bag that’s already too full, when Bella and Bianca fall into step on either side of me like they planned it.

"Georgia," Bella purrs, my name curling in her mouth like something spoiled. "How’s the training going? Or should I say, how’s the charity going?"

I don’t look up. "Fine, thanks."

"Must be nice," Bianca chimes in, breezy and cruel, the two of them trading sentences back and forth like a single mind split into two mouths, "getting handed a spot here because some coach felt sorry for your mother’s little washed up career."

"Or because your rankings tanked and someone needed a sympathy story," Bella adds, sugar-sweet and vicious. "Which is it?"

Heat crawls up my neck. I know I don’t owe them a response, that engaging with the twins is like feeding a fire more wood. But when they bring up Mollie, I’ve never been great at staying quiet.

"I earned my spot," I say, my voice smaller than I want it to be.

"Sure you did." Bianca’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. It never does. "That’s what they tell all the - "

"That’s enough."

The voice comes from behind me, low and even, almost bored in its delivery, flat and final, with something underneath it I feel more than hear. A low pressure in the air, like the room itself just leaned in to listen. Puck. I haven’t heard it aimed directly at anyone in days. He’s just rounded the corner, bag slung over one shoulder, and he isn’t even looking at me, isn’t looking at anything in particular, just walking past like he happened to catch the tail end of a conversation he didn’t care for.

He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t even really slow down. He just says those two words and keeps moving toward the stairwell like he’s already forgotten them.

But the twins.

Bella’s spine straightens like a string got pulled taut through it, and then, just as fast, her chin drops, throat angling downward in a motion that looks less like embarrassment and more like something ancient and automatic, something her body knows how to do without her permission. Bianca does the same thing half a second later, eyes dropping to the floor, both of them going quiet in a way that has nothing to do with manners and everything to do with something I don’t have a word for.

It isn’t fear exactly. It’s bigger than fear. It’s the kind of stillness you’d expect from an animal that just heard a much larger animal growl somewhere close.

Neither of them says another word to me. Bella actually takes a half step back, like putting distance between us is suddenly important, and Bianca’s hand finds her sister’s sleeve, tugging her toward the far end of the hallway without a single parting insult, without even a dirty look thrown over her shoulder. They just go, fast and quiet, and the hallway feels different once they’re gone, like the air pressure changed.

My pulse hammers too fast. My hands have gone cold around the strap of my bag, and I don’t know when that happened.

I stand there with my locker still half open, staring after them, then turning to look at the space where Puck’s voice came from. He hasn’t stopped. He’s still walking, unhurried, like whatever just happened is already behind him, filed away and forgotten.

"What did you say to them?" The words leave me before I can stop them, sharp with disbelief.

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look back. Just keeps walking toward the stairwell at the end of the hall, shoulders set in that same closed-door posture he’s worn all week, the one that tells me exactly how much distance he intends to keep.

I have no framework for what I just saw. I’ve spent weeks cataloguing strange things about this place: the golden eyes, the impossible reflexes, the healing that happens too fast to be real. But this is different. This wasn’t Puck being fast or strong or hard to hurt. This was two words making two people who have never shown an ounce of deference to anyone bow their heads like they didn’t have a choice. Like something in his voice reached past their ears and grabbed something deeper.

I think about all the times I’ve noticed the way certain students move around him, a careful half step of space they leave in hallways, the way conversations shift when he walks into a room. I always chalked it up to popularity, to the natural gravity of someone good looking and hard to read.

Watching the twins fold like that, I realize it was never about popularity at all.

He’s nearly at the corner now. I don’t call after him again. I just watch, still holding my locker door, still feeling the ghost of Bella’s voice needling at Mollie’s name, and I notice something I almost miss because I’m looking at the wrong part of him.

His hand.

It hangs down at his side, mostly hidden by the fall of his jacket sleeve. A fine, constant tremor runs through it, fingers not quite steady, like something in him is working very hard to hold a shape it doesn’t want to hold anymore.

He doesn’t look back at me. He doesn’t acknowledge what he did, doesn’t wait for a thank you, doesn’t give me anything at all beyond that flat "that’s enough" and the sight of his shaking hand before he rounds the corner and disappears from view.

*He walked away like it was nothing,* I think, *but nothing doesn’t shake like that.*

I stand in the hallway a long moment after he’s gone, my textbook still half in, half out of my bag, replaying it. The way his voice worked on them like a key turning a lock. The way he acted like it cost him nothing at all, walking away without so much as a glance in my direction, like defending me was incidental.

But it wasn’t nothing. I saw his hand. Whatever that was, whatever he just did, it took something out of him to do it, something I don’t understand and he clearly has no intention of explaining.

I close my locker slowly, the hallway quiet again around me, and for the first time all week the ache behind my sternum doesn’t feel like absence.

It feels like a question I don’t know how to ask him anymore.