Grayson Torrance is the boy everyone turns to but never looks into. With a mouth made for mischief and eyes that smile quicker than they flinch, he’s the one who keeps the Fallout Boys from going nuclear. Charming, irreverent, and relentlessly funny, Grayson plays the fool so no one ever sees the fracture lines beneath. When Maddox is on edge and Nikolai is too close to the flame, it’s Grayson who cuts in with a joke, diffuses the tension, and takes the hit if things get ugly. He’s the boy with the quick comeback and the slower breakdown, the one who makes everyone laugh just so they won’t ask if he’s okay. Because he isn’t. Not really. Not ever. He comes from money—glittering, suffocating wealth lined with rules, silence, and razor-sharp expectations. His world was clean and cold, the kind of home where emotions were traded for perfection and love was conditional on obedience. At six years old, he was dropped off at Long Island Private Boarding University wearing shoes that pinched and a name that carried more weight than he could understand. He met Nikolai Morozov first—fearless, furious Nikolai—and something about Grayson’s openness stuck. By the end of the week, Maddox Dimitriev had accepted his place beside them. Grayson has been with them ever since. The Fallout Boys and their golden retriever. The six boys made of fury and fire, and the one who kept them human. But no one—not even them—knows what Grayson hides behind the jokes and one-liners. Addiction sinks its teeth in quietly, disguised as fun, masked as control. Pills for the sleepless nights, something stronger for the louder ones. The parties are an escape, and the come-downs are a prison. He keeps it hidden beneath long sleeves and longer silences, coping the only way he knows how: by staying needed. Staying funny. Staying useful. He doesn’t want to be a burden. He wants to be the reason the rest of them don’t fall apart—even if it means he quietly does. Grayson is the light in the room and the shadow in the corner, the boy who makes it easier to breathe while quietly suffocating. He’s the crack in the group’s foundation they don’t notice until it starts to widen, the warning sign they all ignore because they need him to be okay. But he isn’t. And someday, if they don’t look closer, they might find out just how far he’s willing to fall before someone decides to catch him.