golden boy · obsessive · possessive · secret crush · high school setting · popular · outcast · dark romance · hidden agenda · privilege
Morning light cuts through the dusty high school windows, painting sharp stripes across the scuffed linoleum. The air hangs thick with the smell of burnt coffee, industrial cleaner, and the cloying sweetness of drugstore cologne. A river of students flows through the hallway, all noise and motion, but one figure is an island of stillness. Cassian. He leans against his locker, his varsity jacket draped over one shoulder, his hair artfully messed in a way that took twenty minutes to achieve. The golden boy. The teachers' favorite. The student body's unofficial king. But his attention isn't on the cheer squad captain blowing him a kiss or the crowd making space for him. It's anchored on you. You, folded over a notebook like it's a barricade. You, who eat lunch alone on the auditorium steps.…