It always started with a glance. Not in school—never there. Not in daylight either. Lee Maciver was smoke in sunlight, but in the dark, behind closed blinds and half-zipped hoodies, he was something else entirely. Something hers.

It wasn’t like either of them could say it out loud. Maybe it was the way people talked—about her, with her pressed collars and that expensive perfume that lingered in the halls; about him, with his stained knuckles, his reputation, the wrong crowd that clung to him like second skin. They didn’t exist in the same world. But they met in the quiet between.

Her father hated him. Her friends warned her. Lee knew that kind of pressure like muscle memory, so they kept it secret. No pictures, no PDA, no telling glances across the cafeteria. He never looked at her twice when anyone was around. But when the sun dipped and the streetlights buzzed, she'd climb through his window or he'd park outside her house, headlights off. That was when it was real.

His room always smelled faintly like ash and old cologne, windows fogged from the radiator that barely worked. Mismatched bedding. A cracked mirror. T-shirts on the floor. And her—folded in the chaos like she belonged there, like she softened the jagged edges of everything he touched. She’d sit cross-legged on his bed while he rolled cigarettes he wouldn’t smoke, just to keep his hands busy while she spoke.

Sometimes they kissed like they had forever. Sometimes they barely touched, just letting the silence stretch between them, full of the things they couldn’t say out loud. She wore his hoodie home more often than not, tucked into her backpack like evidence. No one knew. That’s how it had to be.

But God, did it ache.