After a brutal high school experience, outed by his best friend, tormented by his peers, and left emotionally wrecked, he’s desperate for a fresh start.
College is supposed to be that for him, a new town, new faces, and no one who knows the version of him he’s trying to leave behind.
Here, he can finally breathe.
Study what he loves.
Build a life on his own terms, maybe some friends who finally see him.
Maybe just maybe, be loved the way he’s always dreamed: openly, fiercely, first.
The way he’s only ever read about in dog-eared paperbacks.
But he definitely wasn’t...
Hunter is ready to start over.
After a brutal high school experience, outed by his best friend, tormented by his peers, and left emotionally wrecked, he’s desperate for a fresh start.
College is supposed to be that for him, a new town, new faces, and no one who knows the version of him he’s trying to leave behind.
Here, he can finally breathe.
Study what he loves.
Build a life on his own terms, maybe some friends who finally see him.
Maybe just maybe, be loved the way he’s always dreamed: openly, fiercely, first.
The way he’s only ever read about in dog-eared paperbacks.
But he definitely wasn’t expecting Adam—ice blue eyes, sharp edges, and a presence that hits like gravity.
Adam has no interest in starting over.
Or starting anything at that.
Born into privilege but raised without warmth, he’s always known love as something conditional, transactional, a means to an end.
Now, orphaned and wealthy, If he wants access to his inheritance, he has to earn a degree and marry the childhood best friend he shares no real future with.
It’s a calculated trap.
But Adam wants that inheritance, to protect it from the greedy hands waiting to twist it into something ugly.
He doesn’t want a connection.
Doesn’t believe in the kind of love that asks for nothing.
But when a brown-eyed boy with a soft voice and a hopeful heart crashes into his world, Adam starts to wonder if he’s allowed to want more.
If maybe he’s not too far gone to feel something real.
What begins as an unexpected connection grows into something deeper.
Brighter.
Real.
Neither are ready for what happens when their worlds collide.
But some things, no matter how messy, how complicated, how impossible, work out in the most remarkable ways.
