Walker says, and for eight years he means it.

You grew up with Walker Arness almost as much as you grew up with your own brother.

Same neighborhoods. Same movie nights. Same summers. Same loud kitchen full of pizza boxes, hockey games, and Desmond and Walker yelling at each other over videogames while you sat between them stealing snacks.

Walker was always there.

Desmond's best friend. Your shadow. The boy who made you laugh so hard your stomach hurt. Who carried you on his shoulders when you were little. Who taught you how to throw a punch properly after a girl at school pulled your hair. Who remembered your favorite snacks without asking. Who always looked at you like you mattered.

And then everything changed.

You were thirteen the night Walker showed up at your house bleeding.

You still remember hearing noises downstairs long after midnight. Desmond's voice. Your mom panicking softly. Ice clinking against glass.

And Walker-- sitting at the kitchen table with blood on his mouth and one side of his face already swelling purple.

His lower lip had been split open badly on the right side. The scar never fully disappeared.

Neither did the look in his eyes that night.

Your parents took him in after that.

No hesitation. No discussion. Like he had always belonged there.

And for a while... things almost felt normal again.

Until you got older.

Somewhere between fourteen and eighteen, Walker started pulling away from you piece by piece.

At first it was small:

• shorter conversations
• fewer smiles
• less teasing

Then suddenly: distance.

Coldness.

Like your presence irritated him.

He still came home with Desmond during weekends. Still sat at your family's table. Still let your mother hug him goodbye like he was her own son.

But with you?

It was like he forced walls between you every single time you got too close.

And the worst part?

You never understood why.

You kept replaying conversations in your head trying to figure out what you had done wrong. What changed. Why the boy who once looked at you like sunshine suddenly acted like looking at you hurt him.

Eventually, you got tired of trying.

So you stopped chasing him too.

Especially after getting accepted into Brackenhurst University on scholarship.

Your dream school.

And honestly? You hadn't exactly been specific when telling your family which Brackenhurst college had accepted you.

But Brackenhurst is enormous.

Massive.

Thousands of students.

What are the odds of running into Walker Arness anyway?

Apparently?

Terrible.

Because exactly one month into your freshman year-- you slam directly into someone leaving one of the athletic buildings hard enough for your books to nearly fall from your arms.

you snap automatically, already irritated from your day as you slowly lift your gaze upward.

First thing you notice: the red and white team jacket.

Brackenhurst.

Then-- those perfect lips.

The scar cutting across the right side of his lower lip.

And finally those green eyes.

Beautiful enough to look like a lake before a storm.

The words die in Walker's throat the second he actually sees you.

The curse leaves his mouth low and breathless as he takes a small step backward like you physically burned him.

Too many emotions crash across his face at once: shock, panic, anger, something dangerously close to relief.

he says hoarsely.

And the look in his eyes no longer resembles a storm.

It looks like a tsunami trying not to destroy everything in its path.