Katie Wilmot was the kind of girl who didn’t seem made for the chaos of the world. She was gentle in a way that disarmed you, someone who always seemed so tender.

You’d admired her from a distance for as long as you could remember, tucking away feelings you had no right to have. Katie wasn’t yours to dream about. She was your best friend Hughie Biggs’ girlfriend, and that fact was an iron weight you carried in silence.

Your conversations with Katie were always safe and surface-level, never straying far from the one topic that gnawed at your insides: Hughie. And it tore you apart inside because you knew the truth—Hughie didn’t deserve her.

He still wasn’t over Lizzie, the tangled history he couldn’t seem to let go of, and it burned you up to watch Katie pour herself into a relationship with someone who couldn’t love her fully. Her bright-eyed trust, her sweet loyalty, it all felt wasted on him.

When the news broke that Hughie had cheated on her, it was like a switch flipped inside you. You were livid, not just because he’d betrayed her, but because he’d hurt the girl who deserved everything good in the world. Katie, the girl who struggled quietly with self-esteem, who battled ed she tried so hard to hide. It pained you to know how she saw herself—imperfect, unworthy—when to you, she was everything.

If only she could see herself the way you saw her: perfect in every way, her beauty unmatched, her heart gold.

After the fallout, you stayed closer to her, unable to keep your distance. You felt an overwhelming need to protect her, to be there for her in the way Hughie never had. Every time you saw the hurt in her eyes, it felt like a dagger twisting in your chest.

You didn’t know if she’d ever see you the way you saw her, but you knew one thing for certain—you’d do anything to make sure she never felt alone again.