Dare leaned back in his chair, tilted his head, and squinted at me like I was speaking in another language. “You think I’m gonna be happy that you’re withhim? Andre Vargas is a dick. He’s worse than that. He’s a fucking walking warning label.”
He’d probably say that about anyone I dated. “I just… didn’t expect you to be such an asshole about it.”
“Well,” he muttered, pushing his chair back with a screech, “then you don’t know me anymore.”
I looked down at the grooves in the wood table. The same table we used to sit at while eating popsicles after swimming. The same one where he used to nudge my knee with his when he was bored. Where we used to kick each other under the table during dinner and pretend it wasn’t on purpose.
“I knew you once,” I said softly.
Dare froze for just a breath, like the words caught him unexpectedly. But then the wall went back up.
“Yeah,” he said coldly. “Well, people change.”
He dropped his glass and plate in the sink and walked out. I sat in the cold strip of light, staring at his vacant seat.
Dare was wrong. Not all people changed. I didn’t. I think I just finally gave myself permission to be who I was all along. And maybe that’s what he really hated.
I rounded the corner between third and fourth period, tucking a crumpled sketch into my binder, when I saw Andre Vargas.
He leaned against the lockers, cocky as ever, surrounded by a couple of guys from the team. They laughed at something he said, but his smirk faltered when he spotted me. That’s when I noticed it.
His bottom lip was split open. Not scabbed, but fresh.
He shifted awkwardly when he saw me looking and tugged his hoodie higher over the bruising that spilled from his jaw like an oil slick. It wasn't makeup or a trick of the light. It was real.
Real.
I paused mid-step, blinking at him, my mind scrambling backwards through the last twenty-four hours.
It could be from soccer. Maybe he pissed someone off?
Dare’s knuckles.
Raw. Split. Angry red. My stomach twisted.
I knew he was the one who punched Andre before I evenrealized I knew it. It hit me like a delayed bruise, tender and sharp at once. He did it for me. Of course, he did.
He waited until no one was around. He made sure there were no witnesses. I didn’t know how he knew. Maybe he saw us last night? But he stood up for me. Darien Carter defended my honor. And never said a word.
It was ironic, really, that the boy who bullied me relentlessly was the same one who protected me against others.
My mouth dried up. My throat tightened, trying to choke the truth out before I let it surface fully. My fingers clutched my binder until they went numb.
Ever since he’d moved in, Dare had been a terror, a thorn in my side. He’d dumped my backpack in the yard. He’d tinted my shampoo with red food coloring from my mom’s baking supplies. He made a point to over-chlorinate the pool so it’d irritate my skin and eyes.He’d made it his full-time job to ruin my peace.
And yet… He punched Vargas.
He did it in silence. Out of sight. Without demanding anything in return. That shouldn’t mean anything. That shouldn’t matter. But God, it did. It hurt how much it mattered.
Because for all the venom he spat, all the ice in his voice when he spoke to me… There was still something buried deep in him that refused to let me be hurt. Not by someone else.
Only by him, apparently.
I pressed my back to the cool metal of the lockers, feeling the heat in my chest rise. It wasn’t hope. More like longing.Confusion.Mourning.For the boy he used to be. For the boy I thought might still be in there.
And for the part of me that still wanted to be protected by him. Even if it meant bleeding in silence.
The house was mostly dark except for the sliver of light leaking from under Dare’s bedroom door. Our last night alone before our parents returned from their honeymoon. I hovered there a minute, the rock gripped tight in my palm, the one he gave me last year on my fifteenth birthday. The gift that wasn’t really supposed to be a gift. It was small and smooth, etched with an apology.
