Beyond Bloodline - Unbreakable Bonds

thirty two

because I've found a new passion in writing Nigel × Hayley interactions

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Hayley wanted their happy moments to last for as long as possible. Stupid gossip didn't matter. They'd been going at this tango for so long and had finally managed to get together. Only their own opinions should matter. She knew that in the back of her head and had forcefully engraved it in her heart but she still couldn't help herself. The gossip forum was nothing if not addicting and that morning, bored with nothing to do after completing her assignments the day before and not having to turn up for a Saturday shift, she'd decided to scroll through.

She'd inadvertently stumbled upon two poll that had made her eyes turn hot with tears. Last year, there'd been a poll to rank the guys every girl wanted to date. Nigel had been top for that and second for the one everyone wanted to sleep with. He was freaking popular and he was hers. Though if she kept seeing posts like these then she might not feel that way for much longer.

This poll ranked his current relationship with her against his then relationship with Cassandra. People had envied it, she too, because they'd been nothing but perfect together. She didn't care for any other girl he'd dated after her friend, was only annoyed their relationship was far more than 'the girl he just broke up with because he lost interest' and all what that meant fot her.

The second poll was casting votes on how long their new relationship would last. The one with the highest number of votes, nearly seventy percent with more than half of their school's population, bet they wouldn't get past the end of the term which just had some short three weeks left in the term.

She frowned and left the polls, not wanting to hurt herself with the comments that followed. Instead, she went in search of who'd started this whole drama in the first place, quite sure students wouldn't just wake up to start nitpicking at their new relationship out of nowhere at all.

Her face turned blotchy when she did find it and saw the number of embellishments the original poster had used in describing her. Third-party? Who, her? She hadn't been butting in anybody's relationship. He and Cassandra had broken things of cleanly already. Too cleanly might she had.

Glancing past the staggering number of reposts, ten thousand and counting since no one wanted to be fucking productive anymore, she opened the comments section that had thrice that amount of comments and felt her blood beginning to boil.

@dramafirst.schoollater: i envy him tbh. he gets the thrill of sleeping with two best friends with no shade thrown at him

@psychedelic: omgg yes. how long do you think that'll take him?

@forthegame_7: two weeks? less? he's got the charisma thing going for him so honestly less

@psychedelic: one minute. i'm gonna start this poll

@thenutjobthatwas: is there like a stake for this shit? or are we just casting votes for votes sake?

@dramafirst.schoollater dropped a link

Fingers shaking, she didn't dare to touch that link with a ten foot pole. She began typing to vent her anger but soon thought better of it, backspacing and angrily tossing her phone outside. She curled up on her couch and just stayed like that for a while, forcing back tears until sometime later when her doorbell rang.

Declan? He hadn't mentioned he'd be dropping by. They hadn't really hung out much with him suddenly being cast in a new lead role for this movie they were preparing to push out by Christmas time.

It wasn't until she'd pulled open the door that she felt her blood freeze. Right. He'd said he was going to drop by if he could get away from home.

And here he was, now, on her doorstep, hands around a fluffy white teddy whose head covered most of his face.