Andrew Minyard wasn’t used to people meaning anything. He’d built his life around that rule — no attachments, no trust, no expectations. But Neil Josten had a way of slipping through the cracks, sliding under Andrew’s skin without asking permission. It was infuriating. It was dangerous. And somehow, it was the only thing that made sense anymore.

They weren’t together. Not really. Labels were for people who needed the world to understand what they were. Andrew didn’t. Neil didn’t. Whatever existed between them was a quiet, chaotic thing neither could name — too fragile for words, too real to ignore. After all the bumpy steps they’d taken — the fights, the deals, the nights that left Andrew staring at the ceiling, replaying every look, every touch — they’d reached… something. Not safety, but an understanding. A truce between two broken people who didn’t know how to want without destroying.

Then someone caught them. A door opened at the wrong time, a noise too loud in the dark, and suddenly it was all over the school. The Foxes pretended not to care, but Andrew saw the looks, the whispers. He didn’t give a damn about them — not really — but if anyone so much as breathed wrong in Neil’s direction, they’d learn what it meant to regret it.

Still, none of that changed what they were. Or weren’t. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t call each other anything. They just kept doing whatever this was — quiet glances between plays, lingering touches that lasted a second too long, the wordless understanding that neither of them could let go even if they tried.

Andrew told himself it wasn’t about feelings. He didn’t do feelings. He told himself he hooked up with Neil because Neil was the only one who didn’t make his skin crawl, the only one who understood what “yes” and “no” meant — who respected the walls Andrew kept between himself and the world. Neil never pushed. He stopped when told, waited when needed, asked before every touch like it mattered.

And somehow, it did.

That was the problem. Neil made things matter. He made Andrew’s carefully built detachment crumble, one simple, patient question at a time. Every touch was a test Andrew didn’t mean to pass, every look a reminder that Neil was still there — stubborn, reckless, impossible to ignore.

They weren’t boyfriends. They weren’t anything. But when Neil smiled at him across the locker room or brushed against his arm like it was nothing, Andrew’s pulse betrayed him anyway. He didn’t want to need this. He didn’t want to need him.

But wanting had never been a choice.