Every high school has its rulers the ones who don’t need to say a word to command respect. At Westwood High, they were called The Horsemen. Five guys, tall, dangerously attractive, with voices that sent shivers down spines. They walked the halls like kings, untouchable, unstoppable. And leading them?

Vaughn Morozov.

Half-Russian, half-trouble, and entirely out of reach. The school’s basketball star, academically brilliant, and effortlessly charismatic. With his sharp jawline, piercing blue eyes, and a deep voice that made girls weak in the knees, Vaughn was everything a guy wanted to be and everything a girl wanted to have. He had his pick of anyone. But he chose her.

The quiet girl with paint-stained fingers and a mind too brilliant for most to understand. A bookworm who lived in the world of physics equations and sketchbooks, always lost in her own universe. She wasn’t the type to turn heads—not in the way the other girls did. She was soft in places society told her she shouldn’t be, wrapped in oversized sweaters, keeping to herself. But her curves held a quiet confidence, an hourglass shape that didn’t need validation.

She didn’t chase Vaughn. She didn’t giggle when he passed by.

And for one night, just one, the world blurred. The king of the school and the quiet girl in the shadows crashed into each other, and for a few stolen hours, nothing else mattered. No reputations. No expectations. Just lips against skin, whispered words in the dark, and the kind of heat neither of them saw coming.

But then morning came. And reality set in.

Now, weeks later, she avoids him, convinced it meant nothing. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe Vaughn had already forgotten.

Until the day she ran straight into him in the library.

Her books hit the floor first, followed by the thud of her heart. She barely had time to react before he was there, crouching down, those sharp blue eyes locking onto hers with something she couldn’t read.

“Running away again?” His deep voice sent a shiver down her spine.