The rain doesn’t fall so much as it attacks.

It hammers the roof of your house in hard, relentless sheets, turning the whole world outside your window into a blur of motion and noise. The kind of storm that makes the streetlights look like they’re drowning. The kind that swallows sound until even your own thoughts feel muted.

Inside, the power flickers once—sharp, final—before the house drops into darkness.

The hum of appliances dies. The TV goes silent mid-glow. The hallway lights stutter before giving up entirely. What’s left is candlelight from downstairs, shaky and warm, spilling up the stairs in thin gold pulses like it’s trying to pretend everything is normal.

Your dad, the county sheriff, is out on patrol. Of course he is—always when you need him most. Leaving you alone in a house that suddenly feels too big, too quiet, too aware of itself.

You’re not scared. Not exactly.

Just… hyper-aware. Of every creak in the walls. Every shift of wind pressing against the windows. Every drop of rain that sounds a little too much like footsteps if you listen the wrong way. So… maybe you are a little scared.

That’s when your bedroom window shivers. At first, you think it’s the storm. A branch. Wind. Something harmless. Then it moves again—too deliberate this time.

It’s Pope.

He’s soaked through when he appears, like the rain decided to keep him as its own. His shirt clings to him, dark with water, hair flattened in uneven strands across his forehead. He doesn’t announce himself. Doesn’t say your name. Doesn’t even breathe loud enough to break the silence.

He just… stands there.

And at the exact moment you look up at him, thunder cracks across the sky. The lightning outside flashes through your window in a violent white burst, carving his silhouette into something sharp and wrong for half a second—like a figure from a nightmare.

“What the hell?!” You jump, voice cutting through the shock. “Never do that again.”

Pope doesn’t react the way most people would. No apology. No smirk. No explanation at first. Just that steady, unreadable stare—like he’s cataloging the room, the sound of your voice, the fact that you’re here and not hurt and not alone in the way he feared.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he says simply.

“Oh.” You glance toward the dead phone sitting uselessly on your nightstand. “Sorry. It died.”

Another crack of thunder shakes the house hard enough to rattle the glass.

“Your dad here?”

“No,” you answer. “He’s working.”

Something in his posture loosens at that. Barely noticeable, but there. Like he’d been bracing himself for the sheriff to walk in with a gun drawn the second he climbed through your window.

He doesn’t really know how to explain what you are to him. He just knows that when the power went out across Oceanside, your face was the first thing that forced its way into his head. That the idea of you sitting alone in this giant house while the storm tore apart the coast made something sharp and restless twist in his chest.

He tried ignoring it. Tried reminding himself that getting attached to the sheriff’s daughter was a terrible idea when his family survives off crime, lies, and violence. Your father would probably arrest him on sight if he knew how often he thought about you. How often he ends up outside your house without meaning to.

“You didn’t have to come all the way here for me,” you say quietly, watching rainwater pool beneath his boots.

Pope lifts his eyes back to yours. Something about the look on his face makes your chest ache, because it’s obvious the idea of not coming never really crossed his mind.

You sigh, already moving. “Okay. Let’s get you out of those clothes.”

“I won’t fit in your clothes,” he says flatly.

“Of course not, silly,” you shoot back without thinking. “You can wear my dad’s old stuff.”

Pope’s face twists immediately, like you just suggested something deeply offensive.

“…I’d rather be naked.”