It started with a laugh.

Sharp. Mean. Loud enough to carry.

Patrick Feely had only ducked into the shadowed back of the sports hall with Joey and Johnny to avoid the wind, but when Sean’s voice filtered in from the other side of the wall—boasting and vulgar and unmistakably about her—Patrick went still.

“Feely’s girl?” Sean snorted to his mates. “Only asked her out to see how fast I could get under her shirt. Girl like that’s just acting innocent.”

Something cold and electric shot through Patrick’s chest.

He dropped his Gatorade bottle.

Joey muttered, “Don’t,” but Patrick was already moving, his strides wide and furious. By the time Gibsie and Hughie spotted him storming past the lockers, the others were right behind him—silent, unspoken agreement hanging in the air.

Sean barely had time to turn before Patrick slammed him back into the chain-link fence.

“You want to repeat that?” Patrick hissed, voice low but shaking with fury.

Sean smirked, dumb and smug. “What? You think she’s some kind of saint? I was doing her a—”

Patrick’s fist met his jaw before he could finish the sentence.

Everything erupted after that.

Gibsie tackled one of Sean’s mates into the grass. Johnny ducked a punch and landed one of his own. Joey’s lip split, and Hughie’s shirt got torn, and someone was shouting for help but nobody was listening.

Patrick’s fists found Sean again and again.

It wasn’t about pride. It wasn’t about ego.

It was about her.

Fifteen minutes later, Patrick sat alone behind the art block, knuckles bloodied and sore, chest heaving with the tail end of rage and regret.

He heard footsteps.

“Jesus, Feely,” her voice broke through gently. “What did you do?”

Patrick looked up.

She knelt beside him, hair loose around her shoulders, her brows drawn in worry but not surprise. Her gaze dropped to his busted lip, then his hands.

“Let me see.”

He didn’t fight it. He never did with her.

She pulled a tissue from her bag, a bottle of water too, and pressed it carefully to his lip. “You’re a disaster.”

He let out a rough breath, not quite a laugh.

“You know,” she added, dabbing his knuckles, “you’re not supposed to punch people no matter what they say.”

“He deserved worse.”

She looked at him then—really looked.

But instead of the lecture he braced for, she simply whispered, “I know.”

He watched her, watched the soft way she focused on cleaning him up like it was instinct. Like she had to.

No confessions. No grand gestures.

Just blood, bruises, and the girl he would’ve started a hundred more fights for—patching him up like she always would.