Is this stranger taking me away to take advantage of me in this state?

Is he even a student? The body carrying me did not feel like the one of a teenager.

Am I going to die?

The questions ran through my mind one after another, fortifying the sense of danger of the situation I put myself in. Dani's words echoed in my mind in return. Hamza, he called the guy. A bell rang in my mind then, the realization hitting me like a brick. There was only one notable person with that name in the entire school—Rafael Hamza, whose name everyone was whispering, almost like an incantation.

Since the day I returned to this town, Rafael Hamza has been the center of every conversation. But despite living there most of my life, I had never heard of him until I returned. I remember how curiosity gnawed at me after the first week until I caved and finally asked Becka.

Glancing up from her phone, her eyebrows were raised high, and her forehead crunched and was cut by expressive lines.

"Are you for real?"

Well, sorry, I am not well-versed in who's-who after being away for almost four years.

Setting her phone aside, Becka crossed her legs and straightened her back as if preparing to educate a clueless child.

"Since you're not from here, I'll give you a pass."

I wanted to correct her and say that I was born here but decided against it. To them, I was the new classmate, a stranger who appeared out of nowhere in the last year of high school.

"Hamza is..." she began with a dreamy sigh. Just his name piqued curiosity and drew others to our desk.

"You giving Isa the rundown on the resident celebrities?" Laura chimed in, sauntering over with a lollipop between her lips.

She tilted her chin in greeting, and I smiled back. By some twist of fate, Laura had been my neighbor and classmate since kindergarten. Who would've thought that we'd end up in the same class again? It really was a small city, I guess.

"Celebrities?" I frowned. Since when does this shithole have celebrities?

Laura popped out her pink lollipop, her expression turning sly. "Infamous personalities, if you may."

She's always been a gossip magnet, her foxy eyes sparkling with the thrill of juicy information as she spoke.

Becka scowled at the interruption but pressed on. "You know how every school has its popular kids, right?"

I nodded. In cities like ours, with so many high schools scattered, being "popular" meant people knew your name, or you had thousands of "friends" on Facebook. The latest status symbol was Instagram, where the number of followers and likes determined your worth. Useless bullshit. I never saw the point of it.

After moving away, I closed all my accounts and only reactivated them now to keep up with class updates when I skipped class. Becka, like everyone else, was an adept Instagram user, and I couldn't reach her otherwise.

"Well, Hamza and his group are above that. Like Laura said, he's infamous. Everyone in this city and the next knows not to mess with him."

I snorted. "What, is he gonna murder them?"

The laughter around us died down, and suddenly, everyone was silent.

"You know about the street races at the port, right?"

I nodded again. Back in middle school, the older guys from my neighborhood started talking about it, but it seemed more like a distant urban legend than anything.

"Hamza and his group are part of it," Becka said, her voice flat.

"Ok, so he goes to drift and make lines*? What's the big deal?"

Growing up in the outer neighborhoods, racing seemed like a tame endeavor. The real trouble lay with the guys who fought in the streets and got themselves stabbed. Even Laura, who used to date one of those idiots, stayed silent.

"Well—"

"There are rumors that gangs run the races, and Hamza is in deep," Laura cut in, earning herself a glare from Becka.

"I heard he's a drug dealer," Ion, a guy from the third row, chimed in, excited to share his bit of knowledge.

"Really? I heard he's the heir to a mafia family," another guy added.

"Nah, bro, that's been debunked," Ion waved him off.

Becka sighed and turned back to me. "Anyway, he used to go to the Technical High School down on Gării* but transferred here last year."

"He was supposed to get expelled after a fight, but somehow, he managed to get away with just a transfer," Dani, who until then acted all uninterested, added.

"Allegedly. He was allegedly supposed to get expelled," Becka stressed the word, earning an eye roll from Dani.

Dani rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, sure, keep fangirling."

Becka ignored him, undeterred, but I found myself frowning. How bad was that fight to get him close to expulsion?

"He's in class 12A* next door, but don't expect to see him around much," she continued.

"Why's that?"

Becka shrugged. "He hardly shows up."

"Unfortunately," sighed Maia, one of the girls hovering nearby. "He's a blessing to the eyes!"

"Divine," someone else echoed wistfully.

"More like unholy," Laura snorted. "The guy looks like the devil's son sent to ruin you with those tattoos and that dangerous aura that surrounds his pretty face."

"I heard he put the guy he fought in a coma," Ion added, his voice low. "And he's laying low to avoid any legal trouble."

Another guy scratched his head thoughtfully. "I thought he was on house arrest for dealing."

Tutting, Ion shook his head. "No way, bro. He's still at the port."

Hearing all that nonsense, I couldn't help but chuckle. From what I was hearing, Rafael Hamza sounded like your typical high school bad boy who skipped classes and attracted rumors like a magnet. Every school had one. The guy probably had no idea how many stories people spun in his absence.

But as I laughed at their silliness, a chill ran down my spine. As much as I wanted to dismiss it all as teenage exaggeration, there was something in their hushed voices, and the way their eyes darted around that told me one thing: not all the stories about Rafael Hamza were lies.

Now, with my body betraying me in the worst possible way, I knew those rumors were more than just stories. Prying my eyes open just enough to glimpse my potential savior—or perpetrator—I could feel the truth of them in the tension that gripped his car, in the way Hamza watched me with a mixture of concern and something darker, something that made my pulse quicken despite the cold sweat creeping up my spine.

"What was it." The strain in his voice made it sound like a statement, but I could hear the question beneath.

"I don't—" My voice was cracked and weak, each word strained and barely above a whisper.

"Bullshit," he cut me off, his tone sharp enough to make me flinch.

A different kind of shiver ran down my spine as I turned to face him. I squinted, trying to focus.

He had a chiseled face that could rival a work of art—sharp but beautiful in a way that felt almost cruel. The buzzcut hair only enhanced that crazy bone structure. And his eyes? God, his eyes were like a forest set aflame, sending me into another dizzying spiral. They sent me spiraling, my thoughts scattering like ash in the wind.

"You think I don't know those dilated pupils? The way your body's shaking like you're about to crash?"

His tattooed muscles flexed as he tightened his grip on the wheel, and the intensity of his stare made me open my eyes wider. Like a physical reminder of all that surrounds his persona, they snaked up his forearm and caught the light, intricate and dark, against his ivory skin.

"Unless you plan on dying in my car, you'd better tell me the truth, baby girl."

I could feel the need to gag at the awful pet name. Ugh, what a fuckboy.

A bitter laugh threatened to bubble up, but I swallowed it down. fuckboy or not, he took me from a disaster in the making. And who was I kidding? Hamza saw right through me. I looked like hell—there was no point in pretending otherwise.

My chapped lips felt like sandpaper. I brushed my tongue over them, suddenly aware. His eyes followed the motion, a silent scrutiny that made me feel even more exposed.

"Benzos, oxys, praf..." I trailed off, the words scraping my throat as I forced them out. Each name felt like a confession, a piece of the wreckage I'd become. "eroina... That's most recent, I guess."

Abandoning ballet and hitting rock bottom, I'd sniffed and smoked like I had a free trial for every drug under the sun I could put my hands on. But it was praf and later eroina, that cursed fairy dust, that got me good and dragged me into trouble, forcing my mother to intervene.

By the time eroina became a regular in my life, I wasn't just abandoning my dreams—I was giving up on life itself. To this day, I gladly bet that if the cops hadn't shown up that night, if I hadn't snorted that last line, they wouldn't have caught me, my mother might've never found out about my new hobbies, and I wouldn't be back in this shithole. I wouldn't be here at all. I would be free.

Hamza cursed under his breath, a low grunt that almost made me laugh, though it sounded more strained and grim than amused.

"How long?" Hamza's voice, though firm, had a soothing, low tone. The voice of a jazz singer who'd smoked too much for the night.

"Give or take... Two years?" My answer was barely a murmur.

The cold sweats returned in full force, each breath coming out like frost, my body overtaken by ice, encased. Shutting my eyes tight, I curled up, pulling my hands and legs close to my chest in a futile attempt to warm myself.

"You cold?" His words were laced with genuine concern.

I nodded, feeling him move next to me, hearing him press a few buttons, likely starting the heater. But the ice inside me was relentless.

When I felt my teeth starting to rattle, his scent, that seductive combination of citrus and bergamot, filled my nostrils once more. In an instant, the seatbelt was off, and Hamza pulled me onto his lap. His warmth enveloped me, a welcome contrast to the chill that gripped my body.

"You're gonna be fine. I can promise you that."

The wheel pressed against my back. Rafael Hamza was a dangerous guy. I knew all the rumors about him. I knew how bad he could be for me. It shouldn't have been comfortable, but his warmth and the slow, circular motions his free hand traced on my back made me nuzzle at his chest. The combination of his body heat and the soothing motion lulled me into a state of sleep, taking me away from the relentless cold and the tumult of my thoughts. 

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Glossary

To make lines - the literal translation of "să facă liniuțe," which refers to drag races. Drag racing typically involves two vehicles racing side-by-side on a straight, short track, often a quarter-mile (400 meters) or an eighth-mile (200 meters) in length, to see which can reach the finish line first.

Class 12A - High school in Romania is four years, starting with grade 9 and finishing with grade 12. Only up until grade 10 is school mandatory, but you need to finish all four years to graduate high school. Each year will have multiple classes, ordered alphabetically and divided either by concentration of study (usually Mathematics and Informatics, Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, and Filology-Bilingual or by vocational training in case of practical high schools such as Canto, Teather, etc.).