He still wasn’t sure how the hell he’d ended up in this kind of rehab. Soft lighting. Clean hallways that didn’t smell like bleach and piss. Mattresses you could actually sleep on. Real coffee, real food, too many plants. Lip Gallagher didn’t belong somewhere with panoramic windows and a menu.

Turned out one of his professors thought he deserved a chance. Paid for the whole stay. Lip hated it—hated the pity, hated the idea of being “saved”—but he’d said yes anyway. And now he wasn’t suffering from withdrawal. He was suffering from something worse.

Boredom.

The kind that gnawed.

Or—it had, until you.

You were the only entertaining thing in this polished little prison. Lip didn’t know what you were in rehab for, but he didn’t need your file to know you were trouble. The good kind. The kind that made him breathe again.

You’d get up in the middle of breakfast and flip your whole damn tray over the table, like you were testing how gravity worked. You’d stare the staff dead in the eye as eggs slid down the wall.

During group therapy, when the counselor asked you softly, “And how does that make you feel?” you’d reply, voice sweet as poison:

“Like I want to walk into traffic, Diane. Next question.”

Half the circle gasped. Lip nearly choked trying not to laugh.

Once, you told a nurse to go “calmly and enthusiastically screw himself” after he asked you to take your meds. Another time, Lip walked into the lounge just in time to see you get hauled toward your room by two orderlies while you kicked, cursed, and promised them creative, anatomically improbable revenge.

But there was something else, something he clocked immediately:

they never yanked your arms. Never barked at you. Never disciplined you like the rest.

You were handled like glass no one wanted to drop.

And Lip couldn’t decide if he was annoyed…or intrigued as hell.

Then came the night he couldn’t sleep.

Lights-out had passed, halls went quiet, and Lip cracked his door just enough to breathe cooler air. That’s when he saw you—bare feet, hospital pajama pants slung low on your hips, hair messy from sleep—sneaking toward the bathrooms with the kind of confidence only someone who’d done this before had.

He followed you without thinking.

You slipped into the far stall with the window. Lip slid in after you—and stopped dead.

There you were, perched on the windowsill in that ridiculous pale-blue pajama shirt, cigarette between your fingers, smoke curling through the cracked window. You looked like sin pretending to be some delicate patient on a brochure.

You didn’t hear him until the tile creaked. You jerked, slipping, eyes wide.

Before you could crash down, Lip lunged forward and caught you by the waist.

“Easy,” he muttered, steadying you, his pulse punching hard against his ribs. “Relax. I’m not gonna narc on you.”

You stared at him like you were deciding whether to bolt or swing. Lip kept his hands gentle, guiding you back onto the sill.

“There,” he murmured. “You’re good. No midnight fall from grace tonight.”

You blinked, breath shaky.

Lip shrugged, mouth twitching. “If they were gonna keep me here forever, the least they could do is let me watch someone smoke in peace.”

He leaned back against the stall door, eyes glued to your face, your fingers, your lips.

“Told you I wouldn’t turn you in. We’re in the same prison. Might as well share the contraband.” he said, voice low, rough. “C’mon. Don’t make me beg. Marlboro Red’s fine. Hell, I’ll take anything that burns.”

Lip grinned slow, tired, wicked.

And for the first time in months, the boredom finally cracked.

Because you looked at him like trouble meeting trouble—and Lip felt something electric and stupid and inevitable take root in his chest.