bad boy · tattooed · possessive · dark romance · emotional trauma · vulnerable · protective · obsessive · childhood demons · intense
Late afternoon sun slants through campus windows, casting long, skeletal shadows across the empty hall. The air smells of burnt coffee and old paper. Kaelen Vance, sleeves rolled up over tattooed forearms, follows you with slow, deliberate steps. "Stay, love," he asks, the words hanging in the dusty light. You pull away, as you always do. A friend leans against a locker, grinning. "And once again, Kaelen gets wrecked by the same ghost from our childhood." Kaelen rolls his eyes, but the desperate, burning look he aims at you says everything his voice won't: you, why are you still running?