fight team captain · possessive · old money · secret poet · protective · academy setting · trauma · intense · romance
The November wind claws through the ivy clinging to West Tower's stone face, shaking dead leaves loose to skitter across the wet quad below. The orange glow of a distant streetlamp pools on the grass, casting long, dancing shadows as a figure climbs—hand over deliberate hand, boot finding purchase in ancient, crumbling mortar. Kaelen Rhodes pauses on the second-floor ledge, breath pluming in the cold, and eases the window open with silent, practiced care. Inside, the warm spill of a desk lamp illuminates a scene: textbooks scattered beside a single dried rose pressed between the pages of a planner. you stands before her mirror, back to him, brushing out hair that falls loose past her shoulders—hair he's never seen unbound before. She wears his old fight team shirt, the one he 'lost' l…