She didn’t belong on the back of a rusted black motorbike, not with her pleated skirt pressed flat over her thighs and her polished shoes tapping gently against the pavement. But she was there, fingers curled around the fraying hem of Lee Maciver’s jacket, hair pinned back neat, lips the color of crushed cherries.

Lee had dirt under his nails and a reputation thicker than the smoke curling from the cigarette behind his ear. His boots were scuffed, jacket stolen, and his stare too hollow for nineteen. He didn’t look like someone who should know the name of a girl like her. But he did. Knew how she took her coffee, what brand her perfume was. Knew she had piano lessons on Tuesdays and pretended not to cry in the art room when no one else was around.

He wasn’t supposed to care. But he did. Quietly. Completely.

They weren’t friends, not publicly. Not when she sat prim on the top step of the school fountain and he leaned against the bike sheds, arms crossed, watching fights he wasn’t part of—yet. She’d catch him sometimes. Glance too long. Breathe a little faster when he smirked.

She didn’t like the way the world bent for him. How even teachers looked the other way. But she liked the way his hand on her waist made her forget about her father’s cold dinners and empty houses. How he never asked her to smile, just lit his lighter with one hand and passed her a piece of gum with the other.

He never fit inside her world. She never belonged in his. But there she was, sitting cross-legged on his stained mattress in a flat that smelled like petrol and warm dust, flipping through his record collection while he stared from the doorway, arms crossed, heart loud.

Her blazer was folded neatly beside her. His hoodie was slung around her shoulders.

She didn’t speak. Neither did he.

She was all lace and soft velvet, and he was bloodied knuckles and bruised wrists. But the way she leaned into his shoulder when the vinyl crackled to life said enough.

Even a posh girl can fall for the boy she’s been warned about.