TAKE THE RISK

  FOR THE ARENA

  BOOK 2

  BREE HAYDEN

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2026 by Bree Hayden

  Cover Design by: Inked Alpha

  Typography Design by: Mayhem Covers

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Thank you so, so, so much for reading!

  Formatted with Vellum

  CONTENTS

  1. zariah

  not with your skill set

  2. denali

  how’d you guess that?

  3. zariah

  signs are right there

  4. denali

  the bad guy of the story

  5. zariah

  no piss stains on the walls

  6. denali

  because i didn't see anything

  7. zariah

  densky’s pancake emporium

  8. denali

  don’t simp for pussy

  9. zariah

  lone wolf denali

  10. denali

  we’re in business, baby

  11. zariah

  that hasn’t changed

  12. zariah

  take that risk

  13. denali

  ready to get freaky with it?

  14. zariah

  not even close

  15. denali

  secondhand embarrassment

  16. zariah

  waterpark

  17. denali

  goofy guy routine

  18. zariah

  same type of bully

  19. denali

  cut

  20. zariah

  someone you couldn’t ignore

  21. denali

  like clockwork

  22. zariah

  you have to fuck that boy more often

  23. denali

  benedickhead arnold

  24. zariah

  testing the waters

  25. zariah

  dickmatized

  26. zariah

  she doesn’t want me yet

  27. denali

  another gigantic fuck-up

  28. denali

  the most uncomfortable workshop

  29. zariah

  yemeni oasis

  30. denali

  it’s a metaphor

  31. denali

  letters from riah

  32. zariah

  possessive gestures

  33. denali

  mixed messages

  34. zariah

  kept in the family

  35. denali

  christmas gift whiplash

  36. zariah

  one-way exit

  37. zariah

  weird brand of foreplay

  38. denali

  you’re supposed to hype me up

  39. zariah

  a lovely trap

  40. zariah

  ignore the doom and gloom

  41. denali

  you’re a cavity

  42. zariah

  in small doses

  43. zariah

  four word shirt pocket note

  44. denali

  metal prototypes

  45. denali

  that’d make me say no

  46. denali

  the choclava adventure

  47. zariah

  my compliments to the chef

  48. zariah

  heartbroken

  49. denali

  the corrupted file

  50. denali

  tell me it’s not true

  51. zariah

  holier than thou

  52. zariah

  because i’m ready

  53. denali

  nice timing all around

  54. denali

  keep it secret

  55. zariah

  matching

  56. zariah

  fairy tale

  57. denali

  don’t forget me

  58. zariah

  epilogue: the fifth ring

  afterword

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  about the artist

  To the doctors, nurses, and researchers who work with motor neuron diseases. One day, this book will be a relic because there will be a cure.

  And to those in office who cut funding for medical research—choke on a huge, fat one.

  CHAPTER 1

  ZARIAH

  NOT WITH YOUR SKILL SET

  The day I scored the summer scholarship to attend screenwriting classes in Atlanta, I blubbered like a baby. Barely any incoming juniors were selected; it was a one-in-a-million shot. I was so grateful for the chance.

  As soon as my spring semester at Marrs ended, I left for Georgia. It’d been a long time since I was away from my family, especially Elijah. And I was so nervous to leave him behind.

  My brother is a six-foot-one hurricane who shatters everything in his path. Traveling to Atlanta offered something new—three states between us for my mental well-being and his physical health. I love him, I’d do anything for him, but sometimes he pissed me off so bad I wanted to push him into traffic.

  For three months, I didn’t have to worry about my brother. No frantic calls from our parents demanding to know if their precious baby boy was okay. No racing to pick him up whenever he’d inevitably landed himself in trouble. Just time to focus on me and my future.

  I spent the summer working on a short film for one of my classes. The winning film would be selected to intern for a big TV writer, Winter Arkapaw. I had no chance against the senior scriptwriters, but I didn’t care. I poured everything I had into the short horror film anyway. It was a real opportunity to work on my craft in a professional environment. I wasn’t going to waste it.

  Our final week was dedicated to watching everyone’s work, and my film was scheduled for the last day of class. I waited with bated breath, watching my professor’s reaction when the unveiling commenced.

  She stared, arms crossed. For a few minutes, she didn’t budge, then she returned to her desk to write something down.

  Every minute crawled by, an eternity sitting in that dark classroom. When it ended, my classmates leaned over to congratulate me, all smiles, while Professor Wright stayed silent. Our rubrics were passed out, mine was the only one that arrived folded in half.

  I failed.

  Everybody congratulated each other filing out of class, while I stared at the piece of paper, numb.

  When the class emptied, I approached her desk, pleading. “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

  She fanned herself, the room hot and humid with the windows open. “I didn’t feel anything.”

  “Feel anything?” I repeated.

  “The purpose of art is to feel. I didn’t feel anything, so you didn’t pass.”

  “I spent twenty hours animating the exploding alien title sequence⁠—”

  “I didn’t feel anything.” She shrugged. “And I don’t think you did either.”

  The classes were compounded into a transferable group. With a single failing grade, I couldn’t count any of them. My summer in Atlanta would be for nothing.

  “Art isn’t something magical,” she explained, unperturbed by my devastated silence. “Horror’s no different. We don’t care about the nameless aliens or monsters or demons—that’s the flourish. We care about the characters in dire peril, the fear, the anxiety, the monsters with something to lose. The feelings.”

  I gripped my binders. “How do I pass this class?”

  “You can’t. Not at your skill level.”

  Oh my god, this woman was sent to this planet to destroy me. Disappointment was a punch to my gut.

  My sneakers squealed against the floor as I left her office. I’d cry on my two-hour flight back to Houston.

  Fuck Atlanta, I wanted to go home.

  Angry tears slipped down. I wiped them away, shoving open the door to leave the building. This was it, wasn’t it? Was it? I stalled in the stifling Georgia heat, anger gripping me as tight as I gripped my binders.

  Cursing under my breath, I hauled ass back to the classroom.

  Professor Wright watched me storm to her desk. “Yes?”

  “How do I get people to feel things?” I demanded.

  “You really want to learn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go back to the fundamentals. You’re not ready for exploding aliens; it won’t touch the audience. Start at square one.”

  “Which is…?”

  “The most popular genre." She clasped her hands together. "Romance.”

  I thought she was joking and waited for the punchline. There was none. “Romance?”

  “You get better at drawing by learning anatomy, you get better at writing with romance. It forces you to feel⁠—”

  “I—I like romance movies, but I can’t write something like
that.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  “No.” I hesitated, letting my answer linger. “No.”

  “You said no twice.”

  My cheeks heated, a traitorous, unforgivable thing for them to do, and I struggled to remain nonchalant.

  “It wasn’t love,” I finally answered. “We were fifteen. Teenagers are hormonal and so lonely. We were saying ‘I love you’ so fast—we barely knew each other.” I picked at the plastic lining of my binder. “It wasn’t love. It was messy and toxic and—and not a happy story.”

  Professor Wright snapped her fingers. “There it is.”

  “What?”

  “I’m feeling something. Feeling a lot of things actually. So are you.”

  “It wasn’t Romeo and Juliet⁠—”

  “No, but you were a child. I bet you weren’t prepared for any of it.” She motioned to me. “This is what you give the audience, something for them to experience with you. Without that, say goodbye to being a screenwriter.”

  I gave her a long look. “I can’t pass the class?”

  “You can reapply next year.”

  “But for this class. There’s nothing I can do?”

  Professor Wright was quiet for a moment, reaching for her purse. “Tell you what. I’ll give you an incomplete for the grade. Send me a script before next summer’s internship, that’s next May, and if it wows me, you’ll pass.”

  For a moment, relief flooded my senses. My professor achieved the impossible—she grew a heart!

  Yet the longer I stood there, the more I thought about the task ahead. I’d have to write a script to make her feel something when I had failed to do so in a class where I had access to her help three days a week.

  Oh, god.

  There was a very real possibility I could fail this class all over again.

  CHAPTER 2

  DENALI

  HOW’D YOU GUESS THAT?

  I’ve figured out exactly what I’ll do when I see Raya Giallo again. The girl who mangled my heart and hacked it with a rusty axe five years ago. Back when we were fifteen years old and I was so fucking stupid.

  When we meet again in the future, it’ll be after college hockey, when I'm inevitably signed onto a pro team. I’ll probably be at a sports bar with my future smoke-show girlfriend—doctor, model, and Peace Corps advocate—when Raya will approach the table.

  I’ve imagined the fantasy a million times. Her short-cropped curls—rich and thick, always catching the light. Her skin, a warm, liquid gold. Her eyes, such a dark brown, they’re almost black.

  Collectively, I spent hours gazing into those eyes. Overwhelmed. Speechless. Completely without words from how singularly beautiful she was, and from how much I felt about her.

  It was more than a crush, it was a fixation that broke me into pieces.

  Before. Not now. And fuck no at that sports bar.

  Raya will definitely try to get my attention, hesitating at the outskirts. I’ll arch a brow, pretending to place my ex-girlfriend’s face. Or maybe I won’t pretend. Maybe by then, I’ll have scrubbed her memory out of every crevice she’d seeped into.

  She’ll ask if I want to grab a drink to reminisce on the old times. Like I’d want to remember that. Like I’d want to remember when she had me wrapped around her finger, willing and ready to do anything she wanted.

  Where did that devotion lead me? Our summer together came to an unceremonious finish, a shove out the door, a ‘closed’ sign flickering through the window. I’d bared my soul, felt things I’d never felt before, and Raya told me to stop calling her. She barely had a goodbye for me.

  But none of that mattered. Once she realizes she fucked up, that she missed her chance with the guy who’d become a living hockey legend, oh man. The regret would eat her alive.

  I didn’t know how I knew, but it was set in stone. One day, Raya Giallo and I would cross paths again, and I’d get to tell her—you had your chance.

  I’d never be her doormat again.

  The beginning of my junior year was starting tomorrow. And after so much bullshit with my past team, things were finally snapping into place. Nothing could kneecap my future, I’d worked too damn hard.

  At my last school in Michigan, I was forced to take the backseat. My old teammates had pro hockey legends in their families, and even when their stats sucked shit, they were gifted better spots on the lineup, leaving me in the shadows. Everybody knew it. Sportscasters called it ‘iced-out nepotism.’

  Searching for a fresh start, I transferred to Marrs University in May, just a few months ago.

  Is Houston, Texas known for its hockey? No. But I saw an opportunity to be the best of the best here and whip the program into shape. It paid off big time. Over the summer, we fired our shitty coach, got a new one, basically rebuilt the inside of the arena by hand, and became a closer team than I would’ve ever thought possible.

  Yeah, we were stuck at a university that worshipped football. The student body couldn’t care less about hockey. Most of them didn’t even know the Gladiators existed, but not for long.

  Everything would change once we won the Gulf Coast Cup. A team of underdog hockey players who’d transferred for a chance at notoriety and greatness would be heroes. I didn’t have anything to worry about this season. We were too damn good at this. All we needed was a chance to prove ourselves.

  Walking into the ice arena on campus, I knew my life was at its peak, and about to get so much better.

  “Captain!” one of my teammates bellowed from the rink.

  The rest of the guys hollered, urging me over. I’d already attended a morning practice, but it wasn’t unusual for me to hit the ice again. It was kind of what I was known for.

  With a grin, I waved that I was busy as I ducked around the operations staff. They clapped me on the back, happy to see me, but I couldn’t stop for a conversation.

  Breaking from the crowd, I spotted Elijah coming out of the locker room.

  “Hey, man,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to come. I’m sure you’ve got something better to do.”

  “Better than listen to you complain about Houston traffic?” I nudged him. “What could be better than that?”

  A ghost of a smile crossed his face before disappearing. Something that regularly happened with him now.

  I hadn’t had a best friend in years. I wasn’t really a ‘best friend’ kind of guy; I was a little too uptight, a little too focused on hockey. If something messed with my practice schedule, I had no problem cutting it out.

  Elijah was one of the few exceptions. He refused to hear my excuses and dragged me out of my usual solitariness until I realized he was the only one I really felt comfortable around. Which was weird because we’re so different.

  Everybody knew Elijah as a loud, brash hockey player while I had a five-year calendar for my career, highlighted down to the month. He threw punches before asking questions, while I could list the college hockey penalty codes by heart. We balanced each other out.

  Well, we used to.

  Over the summer, Elijah made a mistake that changed the dynamic of our team…and our friendship. A mistake that changed everything. I tried to cheer him up, but nothing seemed to push away his depression.

  A few of our teammates shifted away as Elijah came close. What were they expecting? Him to lash out again?

  I shot them irritated looks, wrapping an arm around Elijah’s shoulders. Once our games started and Elijah helped bring us to victory, our team would let bygones be bygones.

  Turning away, we headed to the door. Elijah needed to pick up his sister from the airport. He played it off when he originally asked me to come along, but I could tell he was excited for her to come home.