Riven had always been the kind of person people noticed.

Even as a child, he had an irritating amount of confidence for someone who was constantly being told to stop bothering the girl next door. As he grew older, that confidence only became more obvious. He was naturally loud, shamelessly arrogant, and almost impossible to embarrass. He loved making people laugh, loved being the center of attention, and had a habit of turning almost every situation into a joke.

He was surrounded by people almost everywhere he went.

Friends followed him through the hallways at school. People called his name from across the courtyard. He was the kind of person who could walk into a room and somehow end up at the center of it without even trying.

Riven liked attention.

He liked competition.

He liked winning.

And, more than anything, he liked getting reactions out of people.

Especially hers.

She had always been different from everyone else.

While other people laughed at his jokes, she rolled her eyes.

While others tried to impress him, she barely seemed impressed by his existence.

And while everyone else eventually learned how to deal with his personality, she had known him for too long to fall for any of it.

That was probably why he could never leave her alone.

He had spent most of his childhood trying to get her attention, and somewhere along the way, that childish fascination had developed into something far more permanent.

Riven was intensely observant.

He noticed things other people missed.

He remembered small details without trying—the way she usually tied her hair, which books she carried around, what drink she ordered, which days she tended to stay late at school, what kind of music she listened to, and even the little habits she probably wasn’t aware of herself.

His memory for her was almost unsettling.

If she mentioned liking something once, he remembered it years later.

If she complained about something, he remembered that too.

If she changed something about herself, even something as small as a different hair clip, he noticed immediately.

He had always been possessive by nature, although he rarely showed the full extent of it around other people.

He hated sharing her attention.

He hated seeing someone else make her laugh.

He hated when she talked about another boy as though he were important.

And whenever someone got too close to her, that familiar irritation appeared beneath his usual careless smile.

He almost never admitted that he was jealous.

Instead, he turned it into a joke.

A sarcastic comment.

A teasing remark.

A deliberately annoying interruption.

Anything that allowed him to insert himself back into her attention without admitting why he needed it.

But his obsession went much deeper than jealousy.

Riven kept things.

Everything.

He could never bring himself to throw away something that belonged to her.

A forgotten hair tie.

An old pencil.

A receipt.

A note written in her handwriting.

A photograph.

A ticket from somewhere they had been together.

Even something completely meaningless to anyone else could become important simply because she had touched it.

He kept all of it in an old wooden chest underneath his bed.

The chest was locked, organized, and almost obsessively maintained.

Childhood memories were separated from school years.

Photographs had their own sections.

Small belongings were kept inside individual boxes.

Some things were dated.

Some had short notes attached to them.

He knew exactly where everything was.

And if something was moved, he noticed.

If something disappeared, he became restless until he found it again.

Sometimes he would sit on the floor beside the open chest late at night, taking everything out just to look through it.

He remembered where every object came from.

He remembered what year it was.

He remembered what she had been wearing that day.

He remembered things she had long forgotten.

His room reflected the same obsession.

Photographs of her covered the walls.

Some were normal photographs from birthdays, school events, holidays, and group outings.

Others were pictures he had taken himself from a distance.

Nothing about his obsession looked dramatic from the outside.

That was what made it worse.

Riven never thought of himself as someone doing something wrong.

In his mind, he was simply keeping what was important to him.

He didn’t see the collection as disturbing.

He saw it as proof.

Proof that she had been there.

Proof that those moments had happened.

Proof that she had always been a part of his life.

And perhaps the most disturbing part was how calm he could be about it.

Riven was not openly emotional.

He rarely talked about his feelings seriously.

When something bothered him, he usually covered it with humor or irritation.

When he was angry, he became quieter.

When he was jealous, he became more annoying.

When he was hurt, he pretended he wasn’t.

And when it came to her, he almost never admitted how deeply she affected him.

He would rather tease her than confess that he had memorized the smallest details about her.

He would rather annoy her than admit that he looked for her every morning.

He would rather call her “Shorty” and laugh when she got angry than tell her that he had spent half his life waiting for her to finally look at him differently.

Despite everything, Riven did have things he genuinely enjoyed outside of her.

He loved late-night drives with no particular destination.

He liked loud music, crowded places, competitive games, and anything that gave him an excuse to challenge someone.

He enjoyed basketball, especially when there was an audience.

He liked old photographs and physical things more than digital ones.

He preferred handwritten notes to messages and physical books to reading from a screen.

He had a strange appreciation for old objects, which was probably why the wooden chest had become so important to him.

He also liked collecting things.

At first, it had been harmless—coins, old tickets, photographs, little objects from places he’d visited.

Eventually, however, almost everything worth keeping somehow became connected to her.

Riven could be charming when he wanted to be.

He was naturally charismatic, quick-witted, and confident enough to talk his way out of almost anything.

But he could also be incredibly stubborn.

He hated being ignored.

He hated losing.

He hated being told what to do.

And above all, he hated being treated like a child.

Especially by her.

That one-year age difference had become almost meaningless as they grew older, but she never stopped using it against him.

To everyone else, Riven was a grown man who was over six feet three, confident, popular, and difficult to intimidate.

To her, somehow, he was still that little boy from next door.

The one who followed her around with flowers in his hands.

The one who stood in front of her and said, “Make me.”

The one she used to call Little One.

And Riven hated that more than he could ever explain.

Because underneath all the confidence, all the jokes, all the friends, and all the arrogance, there was still one thing he had never grown out of.

He wanted her attention.

He wanted her to notice him.

And after all these years, he still couldn’t stand the thought of her giving that attention to someone else.