Story Notes

This isn’t a sweet high-school romance.

Forget fairy tales.

This is real life, raw and uncut.

No vampires—just the kind of predators your mom calls “nice boys.”

What you’re about to read?

It happened.

Deal with it.

This isn’t a story about becoming a better person.

They want a confession?

Here’s the truth—I’d do it all again.

It’s the blood on the asphalt after a fight.

It’s the metallic taste of fear when you know there’s no way out.

It’s your best friend’s fist coming at your face over some girl neither of you will remember next year.

Forget Afterschool Specials—this is the shit they don’t put in the yearbook.

That first punch you never see coming.

Texts that go too far.

Friends who bail when shit gets real.

Welcome to high school.

No one’s innocent.

Especially me.

P.S. Strong language throughout.

This story contains strong language, emotional trauma, and unfiltered teenage rage—because real life isn’t PG-13.

Copyright © 2026 by T.Vexx. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Summary

Your parents got divorced, and you had to quit track. Your old life—your friends, your future, everything—just vanished. Now all you have left is this school—a place you'd spent years showing up to without ever really seeing it. You're trapped in a building that used to be nothing more than a waiting room. You miss your friends. You're trying to make new ones. You don't need a guy who thinks school is something you get through, not something you get from. And who treats rules like they're made to be broken. Too bad life doesn't care what you need.

Genre: Drama,Romance

Author: T. Vexx

Status: Complete

Chapters: 28

Rating: 5.0 (2 reviews)

Age Rating: 18+

Prologue

Pretty sure that was her first real kiss. I mean, the whole tent bullshit didn’t count—hell, I was the dumbass who scared her as some stupid prank to begin with. But when I crawled into her tent after… I couldn’t make myself leave. Just sat there at her feet like a goddamn lost dog. I fucking froze when she whispered, “Stay.”

“Sleep,” I told her, but I just lay there watching—how her eyelashes fluttered, the way her breath hitched, lips moving like she murmured secrets to someone in her dreams.

Jax almost caught me at dawn. “Dude, you were with Rask all night?”

I lied through my teeth, “Chill, just checking on her after the scare. Making sure she didn’t piss herself.” Weak fucking excuse.

His voice snaps me back to now.

Nikki Vega—moving like a drunk giraffe—just drenched him in fucking soup. Jax, of course, loses his shit. Dude woke up pissed today, and now he’s standing there drenched in fucking soup like a pathetic cafeteria joke.

I watch him cycle through the stages in his head:

1. Shock (The fuck?).

2. Rage (I’ll skin her alive).

3. That scary-ass calm (No. I’ll make her beg for death).

Swift, dumb fuck that he is, couldn’t keep his trap shut. His “crush” joke was so predictable I mentally checked a box: Four-eyes goes for the dumbest possible reply—again.

I braced for impact. That idiot just signed his own death warrant. Jax doesn’t take disrespect—not from anyone, especially not some twerp he already wants to gut. And now this public humiliation?

Jax goes corpse-white. Saw the killswitch flip behind his eyes. If Mrs. Kowalski hadn’t been standing right there, he would’ve rearranged Swift’s face on the spot.

But nah, poor little Swift wasn’t getting off that easy. Jax was gonna handle this like a man.