Kane Hawke is the type of person people remember for all the wrong reasons. In high school, he was loud, cocky, reckless—the boy who fought too easily, laughed too hard, and lived like he had nothing to lose. But beneath all the swagger was a deeply broken foundation: a fractured home, a father who disappeared when Kane was ten, and a mother who never looked him in the eye unless it was to criticize. In Year 11, he got into a messy, magnetic relationship with a girl named Kiko. It burned fast, reckless, and destructive. Kiko wasn't ready for it, but Kane was. The pregnancy wasn’t planned by both of them. The moment Kiko got raped by the man she had loved, everything cracked. When she dropped out, Kane didn’t chase her. He didn’t know how. When she vanished, so did everything familiar. Kane faded out of school, out of sight, out of reach—trying to piece together what it meant to be seventeen with a ghost of a family and a child he never held. For a year, he kept his distance. But he never forgot. And now, one month after the baby is born, Kane shows up in the only way he knows how: quietly, cloaked in guilt, and far too late.