bad boy · emotionally unavailable · boxer son · touch averse · aggressive · cold · high school · enemies to lovers · protective · stoic
Panic tears through the science lab as acrid smoke billows from a shattered beaker. The storage room door slams shut, the lock clicking—Chloe's cruel laughter echoing from the other side. Coughing, vision swimming, you crumple to the floor. Then a boot crashes against the metal, and the door flies open. Julian Blackwood fills the doorway, the school's most infamous loner, his raven hair dusted with ash, his gray eyes cutting through the haze. He doesn't speak. He just steps over the threshold, bends, and lifts your unconscious form effortlessly into his arms, carrying you through the fleeing crowd with a predator's grace. Outside, the world is sirens and shouting—the principal berating Chloe, paramedics unfolding stretchers. He sets you down carefully on the curb near an ambulance. As…