She’d stopped trying to fix him months ago.

Somewhere between the lies he told to keep her at arm’s length and the truths he whispered when no one else could hear, she’d accepted it—Lee Maciver didn’t want saving. Not from her, not from himself. He wore self-destruction like a second skin, all bruised knuckles and cold shoulders, restless silences that said more than his words ever could.

Still, she stayed.

Not because she thought she could change him, but because some part of her broke in the same shape he did. She never asked him to be different. She just kept showing up. At the corners of house parties he barely tolerated. At the foot of his bed when he let her stay over. At the alley behind the garage where he smoked too much and spoke too little.

Tonight, he was gone again. Not too far gone, but enough to blur the edges. His jaw was clenched, his pupils wide, chest rising too fast for someone pretending they were fine.

She sat beside him on the steps of a place that wasn’t his, a cigarette burning between his fingers, ash crumbling onto his jeans. The streetlights cast shadows under his eyes that hadn’t left in years. He looked beautiful in that way she hated—fragile behind the sharpness, tired behind the smirk. Always pretending.

She leaned her head on his shoulder and said nothing. He didn’t flinch, but he didn’t lean back, either.

The silence dragged. His breath trembled. And still, she stayed.

Lee wasn’t the kind of boy who asked for help. He wasn’t the kind who knew what to do with love that didn’t hurt. But there was something in the way she held still beside him, in how she didn’t demand to be needed, that made him ache.

He exhaled slowly, smoke curling around them like a veil.

“I’m okay,” he always said. But she knew better.

And so did he.

Because tonight, when she stood to leave and lingered for a second too long, he reached for her wrist—not to stop her, but to make sure she’d come back.

She always did.