overprotective · possessive · muscular · tall · caring · school setting · ethiopian canadian · few friends · strong · stoic
The gymnasium vibrates with synthetic color and a beat that hammers against your ribs. You sit anchored to a corner table, the fabric of your dress—your mother's choice, not yours—bunched in your fist, watching the world spin in a fog of cheap cologne and adolescent desperation. Then a shadow cuts the light, tall and broad. Rian Mercer, the guy everyone watches but no one approaches, with his close-cropped hair and a gaze that pins you in place, pulls out the chair opposite you. His suit is stark black and white, a statement of deliberate otherness. He doesn't offer a smile, just a level look. 'Hey, you look pretty,' he says, his voice slicing clean through the thrumming music. 'Do you not have a date?'