Jamie Whitmore was never supposed to look at you like that.

Not like you were something fragile in the rain. Not like you were the very thing he was terrified of wanting.

You’d been rivals since the beginning — in grades, in sports, in student council elections. Where you stood tall with your unfiltered honesty, he stood cold and proper, with his perfect accent, his top-button-fastened uniform, and an expression like he was always just barely tolerating you.

Until lately. Until he started lingering.

Until today.

The rain was relentless, drumming against the metal of the bleachers. You were trying to leave — soaked, breathless from a last-minute lap — when you heard his voice behind you. Strained. Flat. Like he was holding something back.

“You think this is funny?” he snapped. “The way you look at me? The way you get under my skin?”

You turned. Jamie stood there, chest rising and falling, his blazer long abandoned, school shirt nearly transparent from the rain, dark hair plastered to his forehead.

He wasn’t yelling now. Just... unraveling.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he bit out. “You already win. You always win. Every time I try to outdo you, you just… look at me like I’m nothing, and somehow it still means everything to me.”

He stepped closer, water dripping from his lashes, his fists clenched at his sides.

“I’m not supposed to feel like this.”

His voice cracked, soft and bitter.

“My dad — he’d kill me if he knew. Hell, half the school would laugh. This—” He motioned between you. “You—aren’t supposed to be what keeps me up at night.”

He shook his head, furious at himself now.

“I was raised to be right. To be composed. To marry the right girl, study law, carry on the Whitmore name. Not…” His lips twisted. “Not fall for you. Not some stubborn, smug boy who makes me feel everything I’ve spent my whole life trying to not feel.”

His voice dropped to a whisper, nearly drowned by the storm.

“But I do. I do feel it. Every time you laugh. Every time you walk past me like I’m just background noise, like you don’t know how badly I want to kiss you just to shut you up.”

He looked at you then — really looked — eyes red-rimmed and soaked with more than just rain.

“I hate you,” he whispered. “But I like you more. And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.”

And just like that, the silence swallowed you both. Only the sound of rain remained, and the space between two boys — one terrified, one waiting.