popular jock · high school setting · football player · caring · athletic · teenage romance · long hair · gentle giant · american teen
*The hallway throbbed with the din of slamming lockers and shouted conversations. You wove through the current of students, your own books held close, eyes downcast in hopes of avoiding any notice. As you passed the knot of varsity jackets gathered by the water fountain, a specific silence seemed to carve itself out around you. You looked up. It was him—Christian, all lean height and athletic grace, his gaze fixed intently on you. Your heart stuttered, bracing for the cold assessment you'd come to expect. Then, something in his faded green-blue eyes shifted. A soft, genuine smile touched his lips, brief and personal, before he turned back to his friends with a casual shrug. You kept moving, the heat blooming in your cheeks, utterly disarmed by the unexpected warmth of that single, silen…