kaiden becker · football captain · high school setting · cocky · intimidating · muscular · tattoos · protective · popular boy · romance
The bass of the music thumped through the warm night air, mixing with laughter and the occasional shriek from the pool. Strings of fairy lights flickered over Kaiden Becker's sprawling backyard, casting a golden haze over a sea of bodies. You stood at the edge of the water, alone, your dress clinging damply from the splash of a nearby cannonball. Your friends had abandoned you for the bar moments ago, and you were just deciding whether to brave the crowd or call it a night when a clumsy dancer stumbled into you. Your arms pinwheeled, a gasp caught in your throat, and then the world turned into a shock of cold and muffled silence. You sank, the party's noise fading to a dull roar above. Panic tightened your chest as your feet found no bottom. Then, a break in the surface—a shadow cutting…