Sweet Romance11 min read
I Am a Certified Coward, and He Turns Out to Be My Rescue
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I am a certified coward.
"You think that's how you flirt?" Sophie Booth laughed, nudging me with her elbow as I squinted at my phone.
"Shut up," I said. "Just—just show me."
"Show you what?"
"The messages. All of them." My thumb stalled over the screen. Ninety-nine plus. Ninety-nine plus! My head throbbed like a drumstick had taken up residence behind my ears.
"Open it," Sophie urged.
"I don't want to know." I tried to sound casual and failed spectacularly.
Sophie tapped the notification. Her eyebrows shot up. "Holy—"
"Don't!" I yelped, suddenly all nerves. I flipped over, trying to hide my face under the blanket.
"Hayley," she called, because I refuse to be Hayley in hiding, "people are posting photos of you."
I threw the blanket off. "What kind of photos?"
Sophie tilted the phone so I could see. My stomach went cold.
There I was, in the middle of the frame—neckline tugged, one hand on a tall boy's chin. I was propping it up with two fingers like a silly caricature. My eyes were drunken, loose, dangerous. The room behind me blurred into the kind of chaos a party leaves behind.
"Who—" My voice was thinner than I'd intended. "That's Knox Brantley."
"Knox Brantley?" Sophie echoed. "The Knox Brantley? The one with the 'don't cross me' aura?"
"It can't be." I curled my toes inside my slippers, remembering nothing but the last game and a glass of something sweet enough to make me brave and loud.
My roommates crowded around the phone. "You promised you'd never do truth-or-dare again," Lisa Marino half-joked, but the worry showed.
"I lost," I confessed. "I—" Heat rushed to my face. "I was dared."
"You didn't—" Sophie stared as if seeing a bad movie. "Hayley, you cornered him?"
"He cornered me," I protested. "I walked right up and—"
"Right," Sophie said, grave. "And someone—somebody took pictures."
"Who would—" My fingers trembled. Messages poured in by the dozen. Comments, shocked faces, "Did she just—?" and the one that made my chest sink: Knox's name at the top of the chat.
My phone buzzed. For a second, I considered not answering. Then another buzz—this one an actual message.
"Are you awake?" it read.
My thumb hovered. Knox Brantley.
I typed, then deleted, then typed, then deleted again. My courage was a paper boat in a bathtub.
"I see you typing," the screen said.
"Kill me," I whispered.
"Ten minutes. Be downstairs. I need to talk."
"Talk?" I looked up. My roommates exchanged glances. "You should go home," Lisa murmured, but I couldn't. If he's coming, hiding felt wrong.
Down the dormitory stairwell the corridor hummed with curiosity. People clustered near doorways, pretending to sort laundry, perfectly willing to peek at calamity.
"You sure you're okay?" Sophie whispered.
"No," I said. "But I'm going anyway."
I came out like a guilty animal. Knox stood at the building's only exit, hands in his pockets, jaw set. He looked exactly like every rumor had promised—sharp cheekbones, the kind of posture that could make a crowd fold like a deck of cards. He caught sight of me and called, "Come here."
I took two small steps. "Why are you here?" My voice was brittle.
He tugged one corner of his mouth into what might have been a smile. "Those photos?"
"Delete them," I offered like a bargaining chip.
He didn't move. "Why should I?"
"What—what do you mean why?"
"You were drunk," he said. "You said a lot of things. Do you remember any of it?"
"No," I blurted. "Only—" My cheeks flamed. "Only fragments."
"Like what?" He drew closer. Up close, his scent was faint like aftershave and sunlight. My knees forgot how to behave.
"You said—" My mouth shut. I couldn't say it, not in front of everyone.
Knox shrugged, then with a dramatic flick signaled to someone nearby. A kid I hadn't met jogged over with an armful of takeout: six boxes of fried chicken.
"Breakfast," Knox declared. He... handed them to me. "For the wife," someone else teased.
"Who calls their girlfriend 'wife' at sunrise?" I muttered.
Knox's jaw tightened. "You told me you liked me. That you wanted to date me."
I gaped. "I—what? I never—"
"You did," he said, slow. "And I agreed."
"What?" My head swam.
"Don't try to back out," he said. "If we start, you can't keep dreaming of someone else. You hear me? No thinking about—" Knox spat the name like a curse: "Samir Edwards."
Samir Edwards. Silent, brilliant Samir, who sat in the front row of every lecture and collected awards like seashells. Samir, who looked like Knox if you smoothed the edges and took the menace out of him.
"Wait," I protested. "You can't—"
"Say yes," Knox demanded, his eyes sharp as blades. "Say yes, or say yes. Don't embarrass me."
I blinked. "Okay." I said it because my throat cramped and the world felt like a tight sweater.
He grinned, victorious. "Good."
Back in the room, my friends clapped like I had arranged a wedding. I sat with the takeout untouched. My mind rewound the night in fragments—truth-or-dare, the warm courage, the two fingers at the chin, a joke that had gone sideways. How had Knox misunderstood?
"Maybe he thinks you're bold," Sophie said carefully.
"Maybe he does," I whispered.
That night, Knox video-called me, unannounced and insistent. His face filled the screen, and for a moment he looked less like the group's "king of teeth" and more like someone off-duty.
"Why'd you cry?" he asked, softer.
"No one was bullying me," I lied.
"Don't lie," he said. Then, unexpectedly, "Someone hits you, I will find them. I'll—I'll knock some sense into anyone who dares."
He sent me anime links—"One Piece" episodes—because he knew I liked them. He dozed off half-watching, thumbed through the phone in his sleep. I pressed a finger to the place where his lips rested on the screen—two inches of illusion—and felt my heart trip over itself.
"Don't laugh," I scolded when he did.
"Okay." He didn't laugh. "But you're coming climbing with me tomorrow."
"Climbing?" I asked.
"Mountain. You complain, I carry you. Deal?"
"Deal."
The mountain air was a different language—sharp, clean, honest. Knox's car—sleek, aloof, and very expensive—stole my breath before Knox did. "Get in," he barked.
"Wow," I breathed, because it's one thing to be told he was rich and another to be up close to the kind of car I only see in movies.
"You nervous?" he asked.
"Terrified," I admitted.
"Good. That means you have character."
We started up the trail. He joked about my sneakers. I tripped on the first real step and twisted my ankle.
"Careful," Knox snapped. "You want to fall off?"
I tumbled toward the edge and felt a massive hand scoop me back. Knox's hands were sure, warm. He said, "Don't do that. I can't have you falling because I like you." He said it, and the world kept turning like the phrase was a normal thing to say.
"Like—like me?" I repeated, because the English word for shock had grown legs and ran all over my vocabulary.
"Yes." He squinted. "Don't you remember? I told you. I am not good at being soft, but I can be protective."
"You're weirdly poetic for someone who says 'I am' a lot," I joked, and he slapped my shoulder.
At the peak, the wind unraveled the tangle of my doubts. He handed me water and then—without dramatisation—plucked a stone from the path and wiped the dirt off my ankle.
"If you fell and got hurt," he said, soft as something dangerous, "I would be ruined. I like you too much to be ruined."
My heart clapped like a seal's flipper. "So you actually—"
He pressed his hand to the bruise forming on my skin. "I'll carry you down if you need it."
I didn't have to ask; my ankle throbbed. He hoisted me without ceremony, and I fit into the hollow of his chest. For the first time, his arm around me didn't feel like intimidation. It felt like a shelter.
That night we ended up in a single hotel room because there were no other rooms left. I told myself it was practical; the truth was less tidy. I was terrified and thrilled.
"Please don't—" I started.
"How could I take advantage?" he asked, but there was a gentleness in it that surprised me. "You are literally my upperclassman—I mean, lower— I mean—"
He faltered. Then kissed me. Quiet and deliberate, like a confession.
When we pressed apart, breath mingling, I wasn't sure whether I had been brave or only cowardly.
"Why did you start the photo thing?" I asked another day, when I thought honesty had earned me safe harbor.
"What?" Knox's brow furrowed.
"The photos. Who uploaded them? Why put me out there?"
He looked away. "I wanted to make sure you'd notice me. People don't listen to me unless I make a mess."
"Make a mess," I repeated, incredulous. "You call making me the joke of the campus 'making a mess'?"
"I call it making us visible." He said the last word slowly, like it could be broken into pieces and understood. "Hayley, I couldn't tell you how I felt. I tried and I couldn't."
"Why?" The question wasn't fair. "Why leave it to chaos?"
"Because I thought you'd laugh. I thought you'd look away."
"You thought you'd push me away by... by making me the punchline?" I choked a little on disbelief.
He scooted closer. "I thought if the world saw you with me, you'd have to answer for us. And then you'd have to spend time with me." He shoved his hands in his pockets like a kid embarrassed to show his test score. "Stupid, I know."
"And did it work?" I pressed.
His face went very small, earnest. "I hope so. I didn't mean to hurt you. I was trying to be brave, but I did it like I always do—badly."
"You are afraid of words," I observed.
"And you are afraid of silence," he returned. "We are perfect for each other's weaknesses."
On campus, rumors swirled like weather. A teacher—Mr. Robert Williams—accused me of doodling idols instead of listening, and the class laughed as if I had performed a magic trick.
"Hayley, are you drawing Samir Edwards?" he called. The whole room froze like something in a photograph.
"It—it's not Samir," I said, but my voice shrank. The truth is, I'd been sketching the line of someone's jaw, and the teacher's finger landed on a visible mole that wasn't mine to claim as distinctive. It was an accident, a pen slip, but words have teeth.
Samir happened along right then—quiet, composed Samir—and looked at the sketch. "She draws well," he said, straightforward. "The face is hers."
"And who is it, then?" the teacher demanded.
"I don't know," Samir said. "She drew, and she won't tell. The point of art is not always to name."
"Whatever." The teacher dismissed us with a wag of a hand. The classroom murmured, but this small intervention by Samir felt like a window opening.
Later, Knox and I sat in the courtyard, the air full of late autumn dust.
"You know him?" I asked.
He swallowed. "Samir? He lives in his books. He is not—he is not flashy."
"Knox, why did you say I might like Samir?"
Knox's face crimped. "Because you—" He hesitated, then jabbed his thumb toward his chest. "Because you once kissed me and then drew him. I get afraid. I am a stupid man who gets jealous."
"You were jealous because I drew someone?" I laughed, half-crying. "I don't know what you're expecting. 'I drew a handsome face. Are you jealous? Cause it's not you.'"
He looked stunned. "I wanted you. I wanted you to want me." He grabbed my hand and squeezed it until the bones hummed. "I didn't know how to ask."
"You could have told me," I said.
"I know." He looked miserable, adorable, and full of self-loathing—all at once. "I know. Sorry."
Apology offered; not everything mended.
Weeks passed with the kind of careful tenderness that grows when two people try not to step on each other's skinned knees. Knox did things that were small in the way that meant everything—he lent me his jacket when my teeth chattered, he tugged me into line so I wouldn't be jostled in the crowd, he left sticky notes with terrible puns on my desk. He smiled in a way he reserved for me—like a boy who had discovered a private joke.
Three times, my heart jumped.
"Do you like that?" I asked once as he looked at me, mouth tugged into a secret.
"Only you," he said, and then, just below his breath, "Don't you like me back?"
When he defended me to a group of students who whispered about the photo scandal, he looked like he might explode with pride. "Nobody touches her," he said, meaning the words as armor.
And when he gently slipped his jacket over my shoulders in a sudden downpour, it smelled like cigarettes and cinnamon and everything safe.
But the campus loves rumor; it's a relentless creature. An old whisper resurfaced about Knox's "white moonlight"—someone he had once loved and who hadn't loved him back. I stared at my reflection in a cafe window, checking for two dimples that could replicate someone else's face. What if I'm a substitute? What if I am only enough because I look like someone he can't have?
"You're being ridiculous," Sophie told me.
"Am I?" I wanted to shout that being ridiculous is my natural state.
Everything teetered on a single wire: my fear of being second, his clumsy declarations, Samir's quiet friendship. The solution arrived in a ridiculous, domestic scene—dinner with Knox's friends and Samir at one table.
"Hayley!" Knox announced, proud and loud, and shoved me into the seat beside him. He introduced everyone—Bram Ward, Fabian Volkov, Wyatt Karlsson—friends with hard lines and stranger smiles. And there, across from us, sat Samir Edwards.
"Hi," he said gently, like an apology.
"You two are...?" prompted a friend.
"We're... family," Samir said easily, as if explaining the weather. "Cousins." The resemblance clicked: similar jawline, same cool eyes. Knox rolled his eyes at the implication and then, with a huge grin, declared me "officially his girlfriend" in front of everyone.
"Call him 'cousin,'" Knox announced to me, dutifully. "Call me 'husband' later."
"Call you what?" I choked on my spoon.
Then Samir did something quiet that made my face go hot: he slid the pink envelope—the misdelivered love letter—onto the table. He pushed it toward Knox.
"This was the note," Samir said. "Hayley, did you—"
"It was meant for Knox," I blurted, red as a beet. "No—wait. It was meant for him. My roommate messed up and gave it to someone else. I never—"
Knox smirked and then, theatrically, pulled the letter from Samir's hand. "So this is mine," he crowed, then held it high like a prize.
My face seemed to have betrayed me. Knox opened the letter and read the words out loud, slowly and deliberately: "I like you."
"You wrote it for me?" Knox asked, eyes bright.
"Yes!" I protested. Then because the world is messy and honest, I stepped closer and said, "I like you. I really do. But—"
He leaned in and kissed me, right there at the table, like a punctuation. It wasn't showy. It was sincere and messy and the kind of thing that makes your stomach do a backflip.
Samir watched us with a small, almost amused smile. "Good," he said softly. "You both make a strange pair."
"I am the strange one," Knox admitted. "But we fit."
From then on, people started telling the rumor differently. They said I was brave for choosing him instead of fearing who I might be in his shadow. They said Knox had matured enough to carry someone. They said Samir had quietly stepped back, like a willow that yields to the stronger oak. He didn't vanish from my life; he stayed like a cool breeze through the sewing room of my heart—comforting, distant, unclaimed.
There was still the job of living with the fallout.
"Did you do that on purpose—draw the mole?" I asked Samir one afternoon, throat tight.
He shrugged. "Art teaches accidents. Besides, the truth is messy. People try to name things and then forget to look."
"You said my drawing was good." The words were small. "Did you mean it?"
"I meant it," he answered. "Keep sketching."
Knox listened from his place beside me and smiled like a sunbeam. "She draws me," he said. "That's all I ever wanted to be."
You can be brave and still feel foolish. You can be loved and still want proof. But Knox kept on being there—grumpy, ridiculous, generous—and every time his mouth broke into that grin reserved for me, the coward inside me melted a little.
Three heart-throbs later, two arguments, one public misread, and a hundred small kindnesses, we learned how to be rough around the edges and soft where it matters.
One afternoon, as leaves went gold, Knox took my sketchbook and turned to the page where I'd drawn a silly, accidental mole. He kissed the corner and wrote, in a slanted, boyish hand:
"For the girl who was brave enough to draw me."
"Do you mean that?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. Then, mercilessly, he added, "And stop calling me 'old man' in public. It ruins my image."
"You're the only 'old man' I know who climbs mountains on a dare."
"Then climb again," he urged.
I looked at him—the way his eyes crinkled, the dimple that appears when he's amused, the way he speaks as if being half-kind is a victory—and I decided the risk again.
"Okay," I said. "One more climb."
"Good." He kissed my forehead like a benediction. "Don't be a coward."
"I won't," I promised. "Not today."
We walked back toward the campus in the mellow evening, hands linked, the world conspiring politely around us. Somewhere in my bag, the pink letter settled like a small, secret sun.
The movie of our early days would be a flurry of texts, a storm of gossip, a hike with too many jokes, an accidental sketch, a dinner that achieved reconciliation by way of a kiss and a cousin sitting across the table who approved with a smile. Unique items—my pink envelope, the sketch with the stray mole—would keep reappearing like bookmarks.
When I fold the sketchbook closed now and tuck the pink envelope into its back pocket, I can still hear his laugh—Knox's laugh that had once sounded like a warning now sounded like home.
"You're not a coward," he told me later, in the half-light of another hotel room, when the world outside was a soft glow of distant headlights.
"I was," I admitted. "Before you."
He kissed me then, slow and unbegrudging, and the coward inside my chest felt like she had been given a name. She didn't vanish. She simply stopped getting in the way.
The End
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