13 parts Ongoing Mature"You really want that?" he asks. "You want the part of me that doesn't know how to be gentle?"
"Maybe I don't need gentle," she fires back, voice barely a breath.
Something in him breaks.
Rowan's hand grabs her jaw-not hard, but firm enough that she can't look away. His thumb rests under her lip, lifting her chin higher.
Her pulse is everywhere. Too loud. Too fast.
"Say it again," he murmurs.
Too close. Too soft. Too dangerous.
She swallows, but her voice doesn't shake.
"I. Don't. Need. Gentle."
For a moment, the world holds its breath.
Rowan's eyes drop to her mouth-slowly-like he's memorizing the shape of it.
She doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Doesn't dare.
Their breaths mingle.
Electric. Violent. Magnetic.
Then he leans in-barely.
Their noses almost touch.
"So you want rough?" he whispers, lips brushing hers without landing.
"Yes."
----------------------
He was the school's ghost.
A rumor with a pulse.
A bruise wearing a hoodie.
Rowan Blackwood learned early that softness gets you killed. With a drunk for a father and a little sister who counts on him to stay alive, he traded childhood for survival before he ever hit high school. Street races at midnight. Fights in flickering alleyway light. Drugs passed, blood spilled, ribs cracked-but food on the table. To everyone else, he's the freak who doesn't speak, the boy with haunted eyes, the one you do not mess with.
She was the school's shining star.
Perfect smile, perfect grades, perfect life-at least, that's the mask.
Seraphina Everhart is the golden girl with the world at her feet. Cheer captain. Rich. Worshipped. Untouchable. But no one knows about the brother she protects with her entire heart. No one knows about the ferret hidden in her room or the flour-smudged baking marathons at 2 AM.
At school, she is seraphic.
At home, she is invisible.
Only in the dark does she get to be real.
