Rejecting a soft fork happens *only* if you run a counter hard fork. Soft forks add or tighten rules. Hard forks removes or loosens rules. If you don’t run/signal for the soft fork, you’re not rejecting it. You’re simply ignoring it. Ignoring a soft fork can’t stop it from happening.

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Nodes ignoring it won't stop it from happening. Miners ignoring it will. Or, rather, will cause it to chainsplit. If enough of them ignore it that chainsplit may as well be a death sentence unless there's a PoW adjustment to speed up block creation.