Ghosted My Onlinemate Chapter 05

Ghosted My Onlinemate Chapter 05

My heart sank all the way to the floor. I’d saved it a long time ago.

“Why are you keeping his essay?”

Yvette took another step closer.

“And your old phone passcode, 0922. That’s Elias’s birthday, isn’t it?”

I frowned.

“How would you even know that…”

The only person I’d ever told my passcode to was Maya.

Yvette didn’t answer my question. She just let out a cold laugh.

“Sienna, you’re in love with Elias.”

Students in the hallway started noticing the commotion.

Heads turned.

“Yvette, I—”

“Save it.” She cut me off, her voice suddenly rising. “Don’t you think what you’ve been doing is disgusting?”

“Sienna, how starved for love do you have to be to go after someone else’s mate?”

“You make me sick.”

The hallway went dead quiet for a beat.

The onlookers exchanged glances.

I opened my mouth, tried to say something.

But my throat felt like someone had their hands around it. Nothing came out.

Then she raised her hand.

Crack.

A slap landed square across my face.

My head snapped to the side.

My ears rang. My cheek burned like fire.

The noisy hallway fell completely silent.

Even the students sitting inside the classrooms turned to look.

Yvette’s hand was still trembling. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Sienna, we were classmates. We were friends. And the whole time you were coveting my mate.”

“Do you have any idea how sick I felt when I found that essay?”

“You kept it for almost three years? How twisted are you?”

I didn’t lift my head.

My legs were giving out, my body swaying.

In that moment, I truly thought maybe she was right.

I was disgusting.

All those years.

Secretly pining after someone I had no right to want.

Saving his things. Using his birthday as my passcode.

Any one of those things on its own was nothing.

But together, they painted the full picture of a girl who’d spent five years in love from the dirt, too small to be seen.

And that love, in everyone else’s eyes, was obsession. It was pathetic. It was shameless.

Then footsteps sounded behind me.

The air filled with the scent of pine and the charged pressure before a storm. His scent.

Elias appeared, his chest rising and falling, but his eyes were ice-cold.

His gaze swept over Yvette’s trembling frame and finally settled on the angry red welt blooming across my cheek.

His voice dropped low, laced with a barely restrained growl that raised every hair on my body.

“Yvette, what the fuck did you do? You hit her?”

I slowly lifted my head.

Yvette’s brow furrowed hard, and she looked even angrier than before.

“What do you mean what did I do? Ask her what she’s been doing—”

Elias’s gaze fell on me, and I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

The words came out choked.

“I’m sorry.”

Then I turned and ran down the stairs.

Behind me, Yvette’s crying and the murmur of classmates blurred together.

I didn’t hear what Elias said.

All I heard was the wind, and my own ragged breathing.

I ran out the school gates.

Ran two blocks, and when I couldn’t run anymore, I crouched on the curb and cried.

No sound came out.

Just tears streaming down without stopping.

My face hurt so much.

But I couldn’t tell which hurt worse, my face or my heart.

I don’t know how I made it home.

When I pushed the door open, my mom was in the kitchen cooking, the range hood humming away.

“You’re back? Got off early at the plant today. See? Your mama came straight home to cook for you.”

“Go wash your hands, dinner’s almost ready.”

I stood in the kitchen doorway without moving.

She glanced back at me, and the spatula in her hand went still.

“What happened to your face?”

“Nothing.”

I ducked my head and hid my hands behind my back.

She turned off the burner, came around, and walked up to me.

Her voice turned serious.

“Look up. Let me see.”

“It’s really nothing, Mom. I just bumped into something.”

“Bumped into something?”

She lifted my chin with her hand, her thumb brushing lightly over my burning cheek. I flinched.

“Since when does bumping into something leave five finger marks?”

I went quiet.

“Who hit you?”

“Nobody.”

“Sienna.”

When she used my full name, she wasn’t going to let it go.

I couldn’t speak.

My eyes stung, and the tears spilled over.

She didn’t ask again.

Just sighed.

She got a damp towel and pressed it gently against my face.

“Does it hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Tell me the truth.”

“…Yeah. It really hurts.”

She was quiet for a long time.

Then she said, “Eat first.”

That night, my mom made cheesy baked ribs, my absolute favorite.

But I had no appetite. I barely touched them.

She barely ate either.

Later, I was in my room studying history.

She pushed the door open and sat on the edge of my bed.

Didn’t say anything. Just watched me.

I set down my pen, my voice a little hoarse.

“Mom.”

“Tell me. Who hit you.”

I opened my mouth, the words coming out muffled.

“…A classmate.”

“Why?”

“Because I did something wrong.”

My mom asked what I’d done wrong.

I thought about it for a long time.

Gripped my pen tight, head bowed.

And finally told her everything.

The next day, my mom went to the school.

She didn’t make a scene.

She laid out exactly what happened to my homeroom teacher and the dean of students.

Finally, in the office, facing a room full of people, she spoke calmly.

“My daughter made a mistake. I’ll deal with that.”

“But your student put her hands on my kid. That doesn’t just go away.”

Yvette was called in.

She looked unbothered, eyes locked on me, saying nothing.

Her parents came too.

Her mother was dressed to the nines, frowning the moment she walked through the door.

Her opening line: “Your daughter was going after my daughter’s mate. What do you have to say about that?”

“My daughter will apologize for what she did wrong. But your daughter hit mine. You owe an apology too.”

“Well, it takes two to—”

“Then let me slap you and see if it takes two.”

The office went dead silent.

In the end, the dean stepped in to mediate.

Yvette apologized, wrote a formal reflection report, and received a disciplinary warning on her record.

Compensation: Yvette’s family covered the medical expenses. The school provided an additional hardship stipend.

On the walk home, my mom was in front. I trailed behind.

She didn’t speak. Neither did I.

When we reached the bottom of our building, she stopped.

“Sienna.”

“Yeah.”

“I know you got a raw deal.”

I couldn’t hold it in. I cried again.

She turned around and pulled me into her arms.

Her hands were rough, smelling of dish soap and cooking oil.

She patted my back, slow and steady.

“It’s over now.”

“Mama’s here.”

I cried even harder.

That night, I lay in bed, wide awake, tossing and turning.

My phone lit up.

An unknown number.

[One slap for three hundred bucks? Not bad. Should’ve gotten a few more in. Money’s no object for us.]

A little while later, the phone buzzed again.

A friend request.

I sat up in bed.

Elias had found me through the class group chat.

I bit my lip and set the phone down.

The incident seemed to pass.

But when I went back to school, the isolation was everywhere.

The second I walked into the training grounds, conversations dropped to a murmur.

Nobody wanted to pair up with me for drills.

Maya and I stopped talking entirely.

My passcode. I’d only ever told Maya.

As for how Yvette found out, well. There was really only one possibility.

Math class.

The teacher had just called me up to the board to work a problem.

A snicker came from below.

My step faltered, but I ignored it and kept walking.

I didn’t know who laughed.

I took a deep breath.

Forced myself not to care. Stepped up to the board. Picked up the chalk.

Passing the third row, I caught Elias lifting his head in my peripheral vision.

He looked at me.

I didn’t dwell on it.

Elias and Yvette had both been called to the teacher’s office.

After that day, they stopped walking to and from school together.

I didn’t have the energy to care about them anymore, because I was in my senior year now, and the final qualifying exams were barely a hundred days away.

I took a deep breath, forced myself to tune everything out, walked up to the board, and picked up the chalk.

Passing the third row.

In my peripheral vision, Elias lifted his head and looked at me.

I didn’t dwell on it.

Whatever was in that look, I didn’t want to decode it anymore.

Five years of decoding.

Every single time, all it ever proved was that I’d been reading too much into things.