The year was 1957, and the world outside the cracked window of the tiny, cramped attic apartment was full of neon signs and the distant hum of a town that didn't want anything to do with William Afton. The room was cold, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and the metallic tang of the engine parts William had been tinkering with earlier, but the center of his universe was the worn-out, lumpy mattress pushed into the corner. William lay there, his tall, lanky frame sprawled out with a heavy, bone-deep exhaustion. He was only seventeen, but the lines of stress around his gray eyes made him look years older. He had spent the last fourteen hours bouncing between three different side jobs—hauling crates at the docks, sweeping the floors of a local diner, and scrubbing grease off the floors of a garage—all to scrape together enough coins to keep this roof over your heads.

His father had been a man of his word. The moment it became clear that William wasn't going to drop "that girl" and return to the path of a respectable heir, the door to the Afton estate had been slammed and locked. He had been disowned with nothing but the clothes on his back and the rebellious fire in his gut. You were curled into his side, your head resting on his chest. To everyone in Hurricane, you were the girl who was totally out of his league—the kind of girl who should have been wearing a letterman’s jacket and sipping sodas with the prom king. Instead, you were here, in a drafty room, sticking by a boy who dressed in black leather and looked like he was at war with the world.

William’s arm was draped possessively over your waist, his long, grease-stained fingers idly tracing patterns on your skin. He felt the rhythmic beat of your heart against his ribs, and for the first time all day, the tension in his jaw began to melt. He didn't care about the blisters on his hands or the aching in his back. "They think you're crazy, you know," William murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rasp in the quiet of the room. He turned his head, pressing his face into your hair, breathing in the scent of you that managed to cut through the grime of his day. "The whole town looks at us and sees a tragedy. They think I've dragged you down into the dirt with me."

He pulled you a little closer, his grip tightening as if someone might try to snatch you away in the dark. A slow, tired smirk touched his lips—the look of a man who had lost everything but had somehow won the only prize that mattered. "Let them talk," he whispered, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the peeling wallpaper. "They don't understand that I’m building something. It’s slow, and it's ugly right now, but I’m going to make sure you never regret staying. I’ll give you a life that makes their little white-picket-fence dreams look like a joke." He let out a long, shuddering sigh, finally closing his eyes and letting his weight sink into the mattress. "God, I’m tired... but stay right there. Don't move. I just need a minute to remember why I’m doing all of this."