I’ve always been the girl with her head down, hiding behind glasses and textbooks, slipping through the crowded halls like a ghost. Straight A’s, perfect attendance, and a seat in the front row of every class—that’s me. People know my name because teachers call it, not because anyone actually talks to me.

But then there’s him.

Rafe Cameron. The loudest laugh in the room, the boy everyone watches when he walks by. He has this wild energy that pulls people in like moths to a flame. Everyone wants him. Everyone but me. At least, that’s what I told myself.

It started small. I caught him staring in class when he was supposed to be joking with his friends. His smirk would falter, eyes narrowing like he was trying to figure me out. Then, he started sitting closer. In the cafeteria. In the library. Places he had no reason to be.

“Why do you always hide in here?” His voice cut through the silence one afternoon, as I was buried in a chemistry textbook.

I froze. “I’m not hiding.”

He leaned over the table, his shadow spilling across my notes. “You are. You think nobody sees you, but I do.”

That’s when I realized it wasn’t just curiosity. Rafe wasn’t watching me like people glance at something unfamiliar—he was obsessed. He liked the way I blushed when he teased me, the way I avoided his eyes, the way I never tried to impress him like everyone else.

And the more I pulled away, the closer he came. His arm brushing mine when we walked down the hall. His voice lowering just for me, even in a crowded room. His friends didn’t get it. They’d laugh, asking why he was wasting time on “the nerd.” But he didn’t care.

“You don’t get it,” I overheard him snap one day. “She’s the only real thing in this whole damn place.”

I never asked for Rafe Cameron’s attention, but suddenly it was all mine. The popular, reckless boy everyone wanted was addicted to the one girl who never thought she’d be noticed.

And maybe, deep down, I wasn’t so invisible after all.