There are people who walk through life untouched by the dark — the ones who glide through the noise and never look back at the wreckage. I’ve never been one of them. I was born into it. Born under the weight of a surname that carried more ruin than pride.

The Grayson’s have always been a cautionary tale — money, vice, and a generation’s worth of unfinished apologies. And me? I was the punchline. The one who swore he’d never end up like his father but inherited every shadow he left behind anyway.

Then she happened.

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She was never supposed to stay. Not here. Not in my orbit. She walked in with that impossible light in her eyes, like she hadn’t yet learned the art of flinching when someone raised their voice. She had dreams stitched into her, stubborn as anything — the kind you don’t get to keep in this world, not if you’re smart. And still, she stayed. God knows why.

Right now, she’s sitting cross-legged on the worn rug in front of me, hair spilling over her shoulder, sketchbook open and graphite smudged on her knuckles. There’s a record playing in the background . I told her once it’s too bloody melancholic, and she just smiled, said I needed to learn how to sit in soft things without flinching.

She hums along now, off-key but gentle. The sound threads through the air and wraps around the noise in my head until it goes quiet. I didn’t think that was possible anymore.

“You’re staring again,” she murmurs, not looking up.

“Occupational hazard,” I say, lounging back on the couch. “You put a work of art in front of a man like me, he’s bound to get distracted.”

She huffs a laugh, shaking her head. “Aren’t you supposed to be brooding or something? Very on brand for you, Will Grayson.”

“That’s unfair. I do other things too.”

“Like what?”

“Self-sabotage. Drink too much coffee. Overthink things that were never my business.”

She grins then, all soft and knowing. “You forgot being wrong about yourself.”

And that — that’s the sort of thing that gets me. The way she throws truth at me like it’s a kindness, not a weapon. The way she refuses to see what the rest of the world does — the rich boy with the cold stare and the cigarette habit, the one they call damaged because it’s easier than calling him human.

I want to tell her that she shouldn’t waste her light on me. That I was already halfway to sinking before she found me. But she wouldn’t listen. She never does when it comes to that.

Instead, she closes her notebook, pushes herself off the rug, and climbs onto the couch beside me. She tucks herself into my side like she’s always belonged there. Her hand finds mine, fingers tracing the lines of my palm like she’s memorising something fragile.

“Why do you look at me like that?” I ask quietly.

“Like what?”

“Like you can see something worth saving.”

She shifts, rests her chin on my chest, eyes meeting mine — steady, certain. “Because there is. You just haven’t looked in the right places yet.”

Christ.

The song ends, the record crackles, and rain starts up against the window — a soft, steady rhythm that fills the room. And for the first time in a long time, I feel something I can’t name, something almost like peace.

“You think too much,” she murmurs after a while, her voice muffled against my shirt.

I smirk. “You keep saying that, but you’re the reason I’ve got something to think about in the first place.”

She pokes my ribs, fighting a smile. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re here anyway.”

“Yeah,” she says softly.

There’s a version of me that never met her — the boy who drowned like his father did, who mistook loneliness for safety and silence for control. That version died the second she looked at me like I wasn’t a lost cause.

She didn’t just save me. She reminded me I could be something other than broken. And if this is what it feels like to be found — the rain, the record, her heartbeat steady against mine — then maybe ruin was just the beginning.

Because she didn’t pull me from the dark. She taught me how to live in the light.