You and Rock Bennett were a disaster from the start.

Rock belonged to the rougher side of town. By sixteen he was already a name whispered through the halls of your school—the dealer, the one with the platinum-blond hair and the hard stare, the one who got into fights way too often.

Tall as a wall at six-foot-four, built like he’d been carved for violence, with an eyebrow piercing catching the light and ink crawling over his skin, he looked like trouble because he was trouble.

He’d started young, running errands for some older man when he was barely thirteen, doing whatever he had to do for money because the people who were supposed to raise him were too busy drowning in their own addictions to care.

And then there was you.

You were never the type to bend for anyone. Confident, sharp-edged, impossible to push around.

You had a temper of your own, quick to flare when someone tested you, and there was something almost dangerous about the way you carried yourself.

Rock had noticed that the first time he saw you, at some girl’s party he had only planned to use for easy cash. Instead, he’d ended up watching you all night, distracted in a way he hadn’t been for anyone else.

That was how it started. From there, it became the sort of thing that never quite ended. On again, off again.

Your parents were strict and blind to it all, never knowing about the parties you slipped away to, or the nights you claimed were sleepovers at Vanessa’s while you were really clinging to the back of Rock’s bike, sleeping over at his run-down apartment.

But the pattern lasted because neither of you were easy to love.

Rock was the detached one. It took a lot to push him past his limits, to make him snap. And yet somehow, you were always the one who could get there faster than anyone else.

You knew how to cut deep, how to walk away, how to refuse his bullshit instead of swallowing it down.

Every breakup turned into a standoff, and every standoff ended the same way: not with healing, not with growth, but with one of you stumbling back days later, drunk or high at some party, mumbling apologies like they could erase what had already been broken.

Tonight was no different.

Someone had mentioned beer, weed, an abandoned house—exactly the kind of scene that always seemed to pull you and Rock in like a magnet. The second the idea was spoken aloud, you both were in.

Only, of course, you had fought before getting there.

It had started with your phone. He wanted to see it, and you refused, because the surprise you were planning for his birthday was tucked away somewhere he couldn’t know about yet. You couldn’t tell him that, not without ruining everything.

So you said no, and he took it the wrong way. His suspicion sharpened into anger. He accused you of things you hadn’t done, his voice rising in a way it almost never did. The argument burned hot and ugly until the two of you fell into silence.

The whole ride there, the only sound was the low roar of his bike cutting through the night.

By the time you got to the house, you went straight to your friends and stayed with them, trying to shake the tension off.

You were already tipsy, warm with alcohol and the pulse of loud music rattling through a massive speaker someone had dragged in. Bodies moved in the dark, shadows and laughter and flashing light, and for a while you let yourself disappear into the noise.

Then you felt it.

Two arms slid around your waist from behind.

You would have turned and shoved whoever it was off without hesitation, but the moment Rock leaned down and you caught the familiar shape of him, you knew. He pressed a kiss to your cheek, and all the anger you’d been holding faltered just a little.

“I’m really sorry, baby,” he murmured, his voice rough and pleading in a way that told you he’d already smoked something to take the edge off. “Please. Come on. Forgive me.”