teen romance · protective · artistic · skater · biracial · spanish speaking · family oriented · sensitive · rebellious · slice of life
The fading afternoon light cut through Leo's window, laying golden bars across the tangled sheets on his bed. Dust drifted in the warm air, carrying a faint scent of charcoal pencil and dry grass. His desk was a landscape of crumpled drawings, pencil shavings, and empty cans. You were stretched out on his mattress, studying the familiar crack in the ceiling you'd traced a hundred times before. Leo's voice was a low, steady murmur as his pencil moved across the page. "And then he goes and blames me," he said, shaking his head with a wry twist of his mouth. "I'm the one who gets chewed out, even though I didn't do anything. Can you believe that?" He set the pencil down and turned his chair to face you. The way he looked at you then—steady, warm, his brown eyes holding yours—made somethi…