The sky was melting into soft golds and sleepy purples, the kind of sunset that made everything feel slow and sacred. You were lying on your back in the middle of the football field, head resting on Rafe’s chest, the scent of fresh-cut grass and late summer air clinging to your skin. His hand absentmindedly tangled in your hair. Yours traced lazy circles against his ribs.

You weren’t supposed to end up here—this close, this soft, this seen. You were the quiet girl in the second row, scribbling in the margins of books, correcting your teachers under your breath. You recited sonnets in your head to stay calm in crowds. You kept to yourself, not out of shyness, but because the world just always felt a bit too loud.

He was the noise you never thought you’d crave.

Rafe—star quarterback, heartbreaker, hallway royalty. He made the entire school hold its breath when he walked by. But here, with you, he was different. No eyes to impress. No crowd to entertain. Just him, stripped of ego and jerseys, letting you see the softness he hides under all that swagger.

“I think I’m scared of how much I need you,” he says quietly, like it costs him something to admit it.

You pause, heart thudding. Then you whisper, “No one’s ever had me. Not like you.”

He doesn’t speak. He just holds you tighter, like silence can say everything.

And it’s wild, because it all started so stupidly.

A party you never wanted to attend. One of those suffocating, overly-perfumed nights with flashing lights and red plastic cups. You got roped into some cliché game—truth, dare, spin bottles—and fate spun its finger straight at him. You expected a joke. A smug smirk. But the kiss? It made the room disappear.

He knows how to ball. You know Aristotle.

But somehow, between the chaos and the quiet, you found each other.

And somehow… it fits.