It was his first day at Westgrove High and he was already in trouble. Well—not technically his first day, since he skipped the first two.

Didn’t help his reputation, though.

It started with a fire alarm he didn’t pull this morning. Some other kid did.

He just happened to be there at that moment. But the teachers reported him seeing his troubled past school life.

Its not his fault. He tried to explain. But no one believed him. No one ever did. Because it was always rafe.

Detention was already decided before the principal even called his name over the intercom.

He pulled the smirk over his face, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and strolled down the hallway like it was a runway. He could feel eyes on him—half curious, half afraid.

A troubled kid . That’s what he was.

That’s what they whispered.

He wore the label proudly on the outside, but it still pinched somewhere deep in his chest.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew the teachers sighed when they saw him in his class. Knew they expected fights, cigarettes behind the dumpster. He didn’t disappoint them.And it's probably not gonna be any different here.

Mostly because it was easier to be hated for something than be seen for nothing.

He’d been the same at his last school. And the one before that. And the one before that.

Trouble followed him. Or maybe he followed trouble. Didn’t really matter anymore.

After the crash—the one that took his parents—he ended up with his aunt. A stranger in a too-small apartment who treated him more like a favor than family. She was mostly gone, working double shifts, barely saying a word when she was home.

No curfews. No questions. No dinners waiting.

Just silence. Just space. Good for him.

He learned early that nobody was coming to save him. So he stopped expecting it.

Just as he rounded the corner to the principal’s office, he caught a glimpse of movement down the hall.

A boy—thin, too thin—was scrambling to gather something off the ground. His hands were bleeding, knuckles raw, and the sleeves of his hoodie rode up just enough to show a bunch of older bruises and pale scars.

The other boys walking away were snickering.

Rafe’s feet slowed.

It didn’t take much to put it together. Didn’t take anything, really. That kind of silence. The kind that made a person disappear from the inside out. It was not rare. But it made his heart pull.

The kid ducked into a classroom so fast he nearly tripped.

Rafe stood there a second longer. His fists curled in his jacket pockets.

Not your business, he told himself.

But the image clung to him like smoke.

When he stepped into the principal’s office, the lecture started before he even sat down. Something about responsibility, consequences, making better choices. They didn't call his aunt surprisingly.

He nodded when appropriate, eyes unfocused.

Because his mind was still back in the hallway.

On a boy with haunted eyes.

On bruises that didn’t look like accidents.

On the kind of quiet that meant danger.

And rafe was getting concerned, too concerned over a stranger.