Rowan froze.

Not dramatically. Not visibly. Just enough that her breath caught in her throat, and her heartbeat tripped over itself like her body hadn’t been prepared for that level of sincerity.

He’d whispered it like it was nothing.

Like it hadn’t just cracked something open in her.

“I’d write you poetry, by the way. Cringey or not.”

She blinked at the spot where he’d stood a second ago, binder clutched to her chest, heart thudding like it was trying to beat out a reply.

Cringey or not, huh?

He was impossible.

She caught up to him with three quick steps, nearly smacked him in the back with the binder—nearly—but changed her mind at the last second. Instead, she yanked lightly on the back of his hoodie to slow him down and stepped around to face him, walking backward as he slowed.

“I’d say that was cheesy,” she said, her tone teasing, “but you get points for delivery. And cheekbone proximity.”

Then—softer—she added, “You meant that, didn’t you?”

He didn’t have to say anything.

She could already see it on his face.

Her smirk melted into something gentler. She tilted her head, studying him for a moment, then reached up and brushed her fingers across his cheek again—the same spot as before, like she was marking it as hers.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,” she said, voice quieter now. “Honestly? I’d read it. All of it. Cringey metaphors and all.”

She leaned slightly, barely enough for her lips to brush his jaw. Not a kiss. Just… warmth. A promise.

Then she stepped back, tucked the binder under one arm, and flashed him a look over her shoulder that was all fire and mischief.

“You write it, Hayes,” she called as she started down the hallway, “you better believe I’ll grade it.”

And with that, she disappeared around the corner—smiling.

Because somewhere deep down, she hoped he really would.

Second period was supposed to be American Government.

But Mason’s notes stopped halfway through the heading, and his brain had stopped functioning the moment Rowan Starling walked away with that look.

That look that said she wanted the poetry.

Cheesy metaphors and all.

He sat there, hunched a little in his chair, pretending to be attentive while his notebook filled with something else entirely. He turned to a blank page and started scribbling in the margins—first just lines, then thoughts, then full-on verses.

They were terrible.

Embarrassingly earnest.

Exactly the kind of thing that would’ve gotten him laughed out of the locker room once upon a time.

But he didn’t care.


---

Ode to a Girl Who Could Kill Me with a Look
She walks like thunder in combat boots,
laughs like stolen summer,
kisses air like she’s daring it to touch her back.
And me?
I’m a puddle in her storm path,
flattened by cheekbones and courage.

Grade that, Starling.

(Or don’t. Just read it and maybe smile.)


---

He grinned down at the page, then winced, then kept going.

More lines. More metaphors. At one point he compared her to a flame wrapped in sarcasm and denim. Another stanza was just about the way her voice shifted when she got righteous. And somehow—God help him—there was an entire couplet about how even her eye rolls had rhythm.

The bell rang, jolting him back to reality.

He slammed his notebook shut, crammed it into his bag, and took off—dodging slower walkers, apologizing to a freshman he nearly collided with, and scanning the hallway like she might vanish if he didn’t move fast enough.

Third period could wait.

He just needed to see her face again.

Even for a second.

He spotted her just outside the drama wing, leaning one shoulder against the wall, binder hugged to her chest like she hadn’t moved since their last conversation—like maybe the air had stilled there, too.

For a second, Mason forgot what to do with his limbs.

Then her eyes landed on him.

And he remembered everything.

His feet moved before his brain caught up. His heart was thudding too fast, too loud, and his hand was already in his bag, fumbling for the folded page.

“Hey,” he said, breathless, holding it out like it might catch fire if he kept it too long. “You said to write it. So. I did.”

He watched her eyes flick to the paper. She didn’t take it right away—just looked at him, a mix of curiosity and something gentler beneath it.

“I’m not saying it’s good,” Mason added quickly, “but it’s… mine. Yours now, I guess.”

Finally, she reached for it—fingers brushing his just slightly.

She didn’t open it yet. Just held it like it mattered.

“I wrote the whole thing in Government,” he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Which means I now know nothing about checks and balances, but I do have, like, four metaphors about your boots.”

Her lips twitched.

“Four?”

“And a haiku,” he said, deadpan. “It was a low point.”

That made her laugh—low and real, the kind that curled in his chest and stayed there.

The bell rang.

Mason glanced down the hall, then back at her, reluctantly stepping away.

“I gotta go,” he said. “But—uh—text me your grade. Or your insults. I accept either.”

He started backing away, walking a little sideways until the crowd pushed him into motion. But even as he turned the corner, he caught one last glance:

Rowan Starling standing there, the poem in her hands.

Smiling like she already knew what it said.

Second period was trigonometry.

Which meant Rowan spent forty-seven agonizing minutes pretending to care about sine waves while her mind kept drifting somewhere else entirely.

Mason Hayes.

Or more specifically, the way he’d looked at her this morning—like the ground had shifted under his feet and he was still smiling anyway.

She sat in the back corner of the classroom, propped on one elbow, letting the dull rhythm of Mrs. Kerr’s voice fade into background static. Her notebook was open in front of her, but the equations on the board never made it to the page. Instead, her pencil moved absently, almost unconsciously, across the margin.

Doodles.

Nothing intentional. Nothing coherent. Just shapes and spirals and jagged lines that softened the longer she stared. She wasn’t even aware of what she was drawing—just letting her hand move while her brain quietly unraveled everything she felt and wasn’t ready to say out loud.

It wasn’t about Mason, not exactly.

But somehow, it was all him.

She caught herself pressing a little too hard with the pencil and paused, exhaling slowly. Her chest felt too full for how quiet the room was. Like her body was waiting for a cue that hadn’t arrived yet.

When the bell finally rang, she snapped her notebook closed with a sharp flick of her wrist, gathered her things, and headed for the one place in the building where she could actually breathe.

The hallway was crowded, chaotic. But just outside the drama wing, she found a quiet stretch of wall and leaned her shoulder against it, binder hugged tight to her chest.

Waiting.

She didn’t let herself overthink it.

And when Mason appeared—racing down the hall like he’d been holding his breath since she left—her smile bloomed before she could stop it.

“There he is,” she said, warm and teasing. “I was starting to think you got lost in a sonnet.”

And just like that, the chaos quieted.

Because he was here.

And he had something in his hands.
And she had a feeling it was for her.

Rowan stood there long after Mason disappeared around the corner, her fingers curled gently around the poem like it might dissolve if she held it too tightly.

The hallway bustled around her, students sweeping by in waves—laughing, yelling, shoving binders into lockers—but she didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared down at the folded paper in her hands like it held something sacred.

She could still feel his presence in the air.

His nervous smile. That breathless look when he’d said “You said to write it. So. I did.”

She unfolded the page slowly, smoothing it with one hand, her eyes skimming over the first few lines.

And then—

Her chest clenched.

She walks like thunder in combat boots…

Rowan inhaled sharply, lips parting just slightly.

It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t perfect. But it was honest in a way that made her throat tighten.

Her eyes flicked down the page, the corners of her mouth twitching when she got to “flattened by cheekbones and courage.”

God, Mason.

Her fingers lifted to her lips without thinking, like she was trying to trap the feeling before it slipped out. No one had ever written her anything like this. Not even close. She’d been complimented, sure—called hot, called cool, called intimidating in ways that were meant to be flattering. But never like this. Never with this kind of softness. This kind of wonder.

Like she wasn’t just something to be admired.

Like she was something to be felt.

She skimmed the rest of it again, slower this time. And when she reached the end—

Grade that, Starling.

She laughed.

Soft. Disbelieving. Entirely undone.

She didn’t grade it.

She folded it carefully, tucked it into the inner sleeve of her binder, and pressed her palm against the front like she could keep the words close that way. Like she could press them into her skin.

And for the rest of the walk to third period, she didn’t hear a single whisper.

Didn’t care about the looks.

Because someone out there was writing her poetry between notes on the U.S. Constitution—and that someone was hers.

She slid into her seat just as the bell rang, one hand still resting over the binder like it held her favorite secret.

Rowan Starling didn’t need love to look like a fairytale.

But this?

This felt like the start of her favorite scene.

Third period was supposed to be AP Lit.

But Mason spent most of it pretending not to glance at the clock every ninety seconds like it might tick faster if he stared hard enough.

The classroom smelled like over-sharpened pencils and old carpet, with posters of famous authors scowling down from the walls as if daring them to misinterpret their metaphors. Ms. Bradford was launching into some dramatic monologue about the tragic futility of longing in The Great Gatsby—and Mason? Mason was staring at a blank margin in his annotated copy, doodling a constellation that reminded him of the freckle under Rowan’s jaw.

The same one his breath had nearly stumbled into this morning.

He tilted his pen just slightly, sketching an arrow through the stars. It wasn’t subtle. It was a terrible metaphor. He loved it anyway.

"Yo, Hayes."
He blinked. Looked up.

Ezra Bennett was leaning halfway across the aisle with a grin that meant trouble. He was wearing his usual vintage band tee, backwards cap, and a look like he knew something Mason didn’t.

“I heard you and Rowan Starling are, like, a thing now. True or false?”

Mason blinked once. Then again. “Uh.”

Ezra gave him a knowing look. “Dude. You walked her to class. She smiled. You were holding a folded piece of paper. That’s basically a proposal in high school.”

Mason flushed. Not quite enough to deny it. Not quite enough to admit it either.

“…It was a poem,” he mumbled.

Ezra sat back in his chair like he’d just been personally blessed. “Oh my god. It is true.”

Mason didn’t answer.

He just let the grin tug at the corner of his mouth and tried not to smile too hard when Ms. Bradford shot them both a withering glare.

The rest of the period blurred around the edges—words about symbolism and unreachable dreams floating somewhere just out of reach. But Mason didn’t need Gatsby to tell him about longing. He was living it. Every minute he wasn’t with her, his brain was scripting nonsense—lines of verse, unfinished metaphors, half-formed ways to say I see you, Starling. I see all of you.

When the bell rang, he was up fast enough to be suspicious.

Ezra called after him—“Tell her I want credit in the acknowledgments if this ends in a novel!”—but Mason was already gone, slipping through the crowd like a current.

The third period felt like molasses.

Her psych notes were a disaster—half scribbles, half sentence fragments, one dramatic all-caps “DO NOT MURDER ANYONE” that was supposed to be a joke about Freud but looked like a threat if taken out of context.

She couldn’t concentrate. Not really.

Everything was too loud.

The fluorescent lights. The tap of someone’s pen. The secondhand embarrassment pulsing off a classmate who mispronounced “id.” It was all noise: everything but his memory.

Mason.

She's still replaying that moment outside the drama wing. He’d looked at her like she was gravity and never learned to land properly, like he wasn’t even trying to impress her. Just… handing her something real.

The folded paper still sat in the inside pocket of her binder, and the poem was inked onto notebook paper with one corner dog-eared. She’d reread it three times while pretending to look for a pencil. Every time she did, that stupid freckle on her jaw suddenly mattered because Mason Hayes had noticed it.

And it felt like she was wearing a secret.

Something sacred. Hilarious. Terrifying.

And entirely hers.

The bell finally rang.

She didn’t wait for the hall to clear. She was already on her feet, threading through the crowd with her binder pressed to her chest, boot heels clipping confidently against the tile.

She was already smiling.

The energy in the drama room was always a little too much—but today, it buzzed with something extra. That messy mix of adrenaline and nerves came from teenage egos and stage fright.

Rowan thrived in it.

She stepped into the room like always—shoulders squared, face composed, eyes cool. But her gaze was scanning, looking for one person in particular.

There he was.

He slouched against the stage steps, script in one hand, hoodie sleeves shoved up to his elbows like he hadn’t decided whether to commit to being warm. His hair was slightly messy in the way it got when he ran his fingers through it during class, and his foot was tapping out a beat against the scuffed wood like he was thinking about something—probably too much.

God, she could feel herself soften just watching him.

“Hey, Hayes,” she said coolly, dropping her bag beside his foot.

He looked up—eyes lighting in that slow, stunned way they always did when she talked to him like no one else was in the room.

Rowan bent down slightly, the edge of her lip curling into a smirk as she murmured, “Read it again during the third. You’re lucky I’m not grading you, but…” She leaned closer, letting her fingers ghost across his paper. “A+ for the freckle detail.”

Then she sank into the seat beside him like it was always hers.

And maybe… maybe it was now.

That look.

It wasn’t love.

Not yet.

But it was something deep. Something real.

Mason didn’t look up right away.

He felt her before he saw her—the way her presence always carved out space around her, like gravity remembering how to be specific. Like the room bent a little to let her through.

But then—

“Hey, Hayes.”

His name in her voice had no right to sound that good.

He blinked once, then looked up—and there she was. Cool. Effortless. Stupidly radiant in a way that made his breath hiccup in his chest. And then she leaned in, smirking like a challenge wrapped in satin, and said something about his poem that made the tips of his ears go pink.

A+ for the freckle detail.

Mason exhaled a laugh, slow and quiet, like he’d been holding his breath all day just to hear that.

“Well,” he murmured, shifting his script to the side and tugging his backpack open with theatrical flair, “I was gonna offer you half my sandwich, but now I’m thinking I should frame it instead. For the archives. ‘Lunch shared with the girl who complimented my freckle metaphor.’ Pulitzer-worthy stuff.”

He pulled out a wrinkled brown paper bag and peeked inside with exaggerated caution.

“Today’s tragic protagonist: peanut butter and jelly. Still clinging to life after a second act in my locker.”

Then, with a glance at her—warmer now, less stunned, more in it—he added softly, “You read it again, huh?”

There was a pause. Not awkward. Just full.

Then he nudged the bag her way without looking at her, eyes still on the stage.

“You can have the cookie. But only because your boots are terrifying.”

Rowan rolled her eyes, but the smile playing at the corners of her mouth betrayed her. God, he was ridiculous.

And she liked him so much it was starting to annoy her.

She didn’t take the cookie—not yet. Instead, she leaned back in her chair, legs crossed at the ankle, chin tilted just enough to be both amused and dangerous.

“You should probably know,” she said lightly, loud enough to carry over the soft pre-rehearsal chatter, “you don’t get points for flattery anymore. You already cashed in your beginner’s luck with the poem. So now you’re operating on sheer charm and snack-based bribery.”

Her fingers drummed lazily on the edge of the chair. She was looking at the stage, but her attention was still clearly fixed on him.

“Which, to be fair, is working,” she added with a smirk. “But let’s not pretend that wasn’t a bribe. That’s girlfriend tax, Hayes. Standard rate. Cookie for compliments. Compliments for letting you skate into class with your hair doing… whatever that’s doing.”

She finally reached into the bag and retrieved the cookie, holding it up like a trophy before casually taking a bite and leaning slightly toward him.

“I do appreciate the drama of a tragic sandwich protagonist, though,” she murmured. “You’re giving full Shakespearean lunch energy today. All angst. No structure.”

Then, after a beat—softly, almost an afterthought:

“I liked the poem.”

Her fingers brushed his knee on the way back to her lap. It's not a big gesture. Not a bold one. It is just a passing touch, grounded and sure. She didn’t need to look at him again.

She knew he had heard her.

Rowan took another bite of the cookie, slow and deliberately like she was taste-testing it for poetic merit. Then her gaze flicked to him—his profile, soft and focused and just a little flushed—and something tugged behind her ribs.

She reached out before she even fully decided to.

Gently and quickly, fingers brushed through the fringe of his hair, tucking a wild piece behind his ear before it could flop into his eyes again.

“There,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Now you look slightly less like a wind tunnel attacked you and slightly more like someone I’d willingly be seen on stage with.”

A pause.

Her hand hovered a second longer than necessary, just above his shoulder, then dropped back to her lap like nothing had happened.

But her lips curled at the edges, quiet and satisfied.

Because it had.

Mason could’ve sworn the world narrowed to her and a cookie.

She was sitting there like she ruled the whole auditorium with nothing but crossed ankles, dry wit, and the absolute audacity to make fun of his hair while eating his dessert. And he—well, he was a goner.

He watched her bite into the cookie like it was a character study. Slow, deliberate, full of judgmental flair like she was in some black box performance titled “Girlfriend Evaluates Cookie: A Tragedy in Three Bites.” And he loved it.

God, he loved her.

He didn’t even try to hide his smile. It bloomed slow and crooked, tugging at the side of his mouth like a secret trying to escape. His voice, when he finally spoke, was low and warm.

“You know, if this is the girlfriend tax, I’m gonna need to start packing more cookies. Maybe some dramatic grapes. A charcuterie board with mood lighting.”

She didn’t look at him, not fully—but he could see it in her smirk, the way her fingers tapped rhythmically against her leg, how she let her words linger like stage directions.

“I liked the poem.”

He felt that line settle right under his ribs—no spotlight, no applause, just the kind of praise that mattered.

His knee bounced once, a flicker of nervous energy, before her hand brushed it—calm, unbothered, hers—and suddenly, the day felt survivable again.

And when she fixed his hair?

Oh.

Oh no.

That was it. That was the moment Mason Hayes short-circuited. Not because she touched him—but because she did it like she could. Like it wasn’t strange or scary to reach for him in the quiet. Like maybe she’d been waiting to do it just as long as he had.

“Well,” he said, voice slightly hoarse as he blinked hard to get his heart out of his throat, “now I have no choice.”

And then he moved.

Not fast. Not bold. Just sure.

He leaned in, slow as molasses and twice as sticky-sweet, and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

Then her jaw.

Then her temple.

Then her shoulder, her hairline, the curve of her smile—

All these tiny, ridiculous kisses, scattered like stars across the places he’d spent whole weeks imagining.

“That's for third period,” he murmured between them. “That’s for AP Lit hell. That’s for the part where I had to pretend not to think about this exact moment while writing a four-paragraph analysis of The Great Gatsby.”

He kissed her again—right on the edge of her smile this time—and finally sat back, flushed and grinning like an idiot.

No one was staring. No one cared.

They had the whole room to themselves, for just a second.

They’d made it halfway through the day, and the sky hadn’t fallen.

They could breathe here. They could laugh. They could have lunch.

Rowan couldn’t stop smiling.

Not the kind she wore for cameras, crowds, or even Seraphina’s parents. No—this was something quieter. Wilder. The kind of smile you only let out when you’re safe. When you’re known.

He kissed her cheek, and she didn’t flinch.

He kissed her jaw, and she didn’t pretend to care.

He kissed her temple, and she almost laughed, not because it tickled but because it felt like a secret being whispered across her skin.

By the time he reached her shoulder, Rowan was practically glowing. Not in the dainty, glowing-girl way the movies loved to show. But in that electric, too-much-heart-in-too-small-a-body way that made her feel like maybe—for once—she didn’t have to guard it all.

She let him finish.

Let him scatter those soft, ridiculous kisses like punctuation marks across the chaos of her day.

And when he finally sat back, flushed and grinning like someone who’d just lived through a musical number, Rowan reached out and gently tugged him by the sleeve.

She kissed him once. Slow. Short. Right at the corner of his mouth—half possession, half punctuation.

Then she raised her brow.

“That’s for the cookie,” she said dryly.

A beat passed before her fingers reached up again, smoothing the soft curls at his temple with practiced ease, as she’d already done it a thousand times in her head. Her thumb lingered for half a second—too soft, too intentional.

“And that’s for writing me a poem about my boots,” she added, voice lower now, almost amused. “Even if you did rhyme ‘sarcasm’ with ‘phantasm.’”

Another pause. Her gaze softened.

“But you’re lucky you’re cute.”

She settled back beside him, knees brushing his as she folded the last bite of cookie into her mouth like she hadn’t just rearranged his entire internal architecture with three words and a smirk.

The auditorium buzzed faintly around them—muffled footsteps in the halls, the distant hum of someone rehearsing lines. But it all blurred.

Because Mason was beside her.

And Rowan Starling—ever the queen, ever the cynic—was stupidly, irrevocably, head-over-heart smitten.

This wasn’t just lunch.

It was everything.

Rowan leaned her shoulder into his, still chewing the last bite of cookie, gaze flicking sideways without fully turning her head.

The smirk lingered—lazy, playful—but her voice was gentler when she spoke, like she was offering something weightier than the question sounded.

“So,” she said, her foot nudging his under the table, “what do you want to do after school?”

Then, after a beat—eyebrow raised, tone dry but fond—

“And no, writing me more poems about my boots doesn’t count. You’re already dangerously close to earning a dramatic reading in front of the drama club.”

But something in her eyes—half challenge, half curiosity—said: Whatever it is, I want to be there.

Mason nearly choked on air.

Which would’ve been wildly on-brand, honestly—him, rendered speechless by a girl who weaponized wit and wore affection like armor. And now she was smiling at him like that and asking him what he wanted to do after school like it wasn’t the most important question he’d ever been asked.

He blinked. Then grinned. Then blinked again, because his brain was still halfway stuck on she kissed me for the cookie and she kissed me for the poem and she kissed me. Full stop.

“Well,” he said, slow and dramatic, lifting their joined knees like he was preparing to unveil something deeply theatrical, “that depends. Are you in the mood for a tragic indie film that’ll ruin us emotionally? A walk in the woods where we inevitably get lost because I refuse to use Google Maps on principle? Or—and hear me out—we go to your parents’ bookstore and dramatically re-enact scenes from bad YA novels using accents that would offend entire countries?”

He raised an eyebrow, then dropped his voice to a scandalous whisper. “Option four is me reading the boot poem in a British accent while lying on top of the librarian’s desk like it’s the sinking door from Titanic—but I feel like that one’s best saved for when you’ve had more sugar.”

Mason leaned toward her, shoulder brushing hers, like the pull was magnetic. He gave her his full attention, chin propped on his hand now, the picture of exaggerated sincerity.

“Choose your chaos, Starling,” he said. “But choose wisely. You’re dating a theatre kid. We don't do chill.”

And when she looked at him like she was already planning some sarcastic rebuttal, Mason smiled even bigger—because whatever she picked, wherever they ended up, as long as it was her?

He was in.