Damon’s POV
I sat in the driver’s seat of my black Range Rover, watching the slow exodus of students through the school’s iron gates. Laughter carried in thin, uneven threads over the parking lot, girls in pleated skirts swatting at each other’s hats, boys yanking at ties already loosened as if they’d been suffocating all morning.
I wasn’t here for them. I was here for Mike. Or I was supposed to be.
He’d been ignoring me for three weeks, my calls, my texts, even the messages I knew he’d read but pretended hadn’t arrived. The last time we spoke, his voice had been too clipped, too careful. It reeked of someone trying to build distance before cutting the cord completely. And I wasn’t in the mood to let him disappear on his own terms.
I’d told myself this visit to the school was neutral,
