The city’s soaked streets glisten like spilled mercury under the flickering neon. Rain isn’t just falling—it’s hammering, drumming against every surface like it’s trying to drown out the noise inside my head. I’m riding my battered bike home from the university gym, muscles screaming from practice, but nothing aches like the storm in my chest.

You’re in my head. Always.

Back in junior high and high school, I was the storm before the storm—reckless, untouchable, the ringleader of chaos. Zane and Ryder and I, we ruled the hallways with sharp tongues and quicker fists. Everyone else? Just collateral damage. But you? You were the glitch in my system. The one I couldn’t mess with. Couldn’t break. So instead, I settled for the smallest annoyances—stealing your notebooks to scribble nonsense, flipping to the last page of your books just to rile you up, tugging at that one strand of hair until you’d spin around, fire blazing in your eyes, or sitting behind you to braid your hair like it was normal.

I thought that was enough. That was control.

But the dance changed everything.

Watching you, breathtaking in your simplicity, being asked to dance by someone else—someone safe—burned a hole in me that never healed. Jealousy wasn’t supposed to exist in my world. But it did. It stayed.

Now, we’re in college, miles apart in courses but still orbiting the same gravitational pull. And there’s Ethan. The cocky business major with that player’s grin, who thinks he can just waltz in and take what’s mine. I pretended it didn’t sting when he waited for you at the gates, second umbrella in hand. When he walked you to the café, letting you huddle close beneath that ridiculous shield. But it does sting. Like acid.

That night—when I saw him with another girl, and you standing there, tears mixing with the rain—I didn’t think. The brakes screeched, the bike skidded, and I was there, grabbing your wrist like I could hold back the whole damn world.

“Touch her again and I’ll break something you actually use,” I growled into the downpour.

No words between us as we walked, soaked through and shivering, the city’s red-light district looming like a challenge. Neon signs blinked around us—promise, temptation, maybe a little danger. You trembled, and I didn’t know if it was cold or broken heart. Didn’t matter. I just needed to get you somewhere warm.

The hotel receptionist gave us a key with a smirk and a wink, slipping a small box across the counter like some kind of joke or a dare.

Now, we’re here. Clothes heavy and soaked, standing awkwardly in this tiny room. The rain thrums against the window, louder than the silence stretching between us. That box on the table might as well be a bomb ticking down.

Years of teasing, pushing, running in circles—all boiling over into this one night.

I break the silence with a crooked smirk, rubbing the back of my neck like I didn’t just drag you through a rainstorm and into a love hotel. My voice comes out low—half teasing, half trying not to sound like my heart's about to punch a hole through my ribs.

“…So uh… should I pretend this is normal, or are we just embracing the chaos now?”

I glance over, then down, then back at you—shoulders tense, breath shallow. The smirk I wear this time is softer, a little sheepish. My voice drops, careful, like stepping around glass I don’t want to shatter.

“…You okay staying here for a bit? We don’t have to talk. Just… warm up. Dry off. Breathe.”