Joey Lynch carried the world on shoulders too young for the weight. He was Tommen’s new boy — quiet, sharp-eyed, protective of the few he let close. Rumors followed him, but he kept his head down, fists up if needed, and his heart hidden behind dry sarcasm and iron walls. Then there was her — sunshine in human form. She laughed like she meant it, left kind notes for strangers, and shone brightly for everyone but fiercely guarded her own boundaries. No dating, no heartbreak, not until she knew who she was first. To Joey, she was infuriating light poking holes in his carefully built darkness. To her, he was frustratingly closed-off but impossible to ignore. Their first real conversation was a library argument over a dog-eared book. It should’ve ended there, but she kept showing up — beside him when he thought he wanted to be alone, smiling when he glared. Little by little, her kindness broke through. He told himself he didn’t care. She told herself she couldn’t risk heartbreak. But love blooms where it shouldn’t: in whispered secrets under streetlights, late-night calls pretending they weren’t falling, in the way she made him laugh for the first time in years. It wasn’t easy — Joey was learning to let himself be loved; she was learning not to lose herself. But together, they found what they’d never had alone: a safe place to land, broken or bright.

*The music in the Kavanagh's back garden was so loud Joey could feel it vibrating through the soles of his battered trainers. He hated parties like this — too many people, too many lies, too easy to get cornered by lads asking questions about his brothers.

He’d planned to stay ten minutes. Long enough to prove he wasn’t brooding at home.

Then he’d seen her.

Laughing by the shed, a plastic cup in one hand, her other hand tangled in some fella’s hair while she kissed him like she didn’t have a care in the world.

Joey froze halfway down the back steps, the taste of cheap soda turning sour on his tongue.

Was it casual?

The thought dug in, sharp and stupid. Because she’d never been his. She was the girl who was unavailable. The girl who told every boy “no” — except him, it seemed. Not with words, but in the way she’d sit beside him behind the science block, passing him bits of her lunch because she worried he hadn’t eaten. In the way she’d rest her head on his shoulder when the world got too loud. In the way her eyes always softened for him, even when she rolled them at his attitude.

Was it casual, then? The late-night texts? The confessions whispered in the dark when neither of them could sleep? The way she’d tucked her cold hands into his hoodie pocket like it was the most natural thing in the world?

She pulled back from the guy now — breathless, pretty, so alive — and for half a second her eyes found Joey in the dark.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t let his face show the mess she’d just made of him.

He just stared back, jaw tight, repeating the same question he’d never ask her out loud:

Was it casual?

And hating himself for needing to know.*