When 𝐌𝐢𝐚 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 has to move back to Cedarsville, the perfect, glittering village of her childhood, she expects to pick up right where she left off: rich, admired, untouchable. But Cedarsville remembers, and so does 𝐀𝐮𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐲 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐤. Once, they were inseparable: two girls building worlds in a treehouse, dreaming about forever. Until Aubrey kissed her, and Mia called it gross, and everything broke. Mia's family whisked her away to England. Aubrey stayed behind to become the outcast everyone whispered about. Now, six years later, Mia's back. Aubrey's still the same: clever, sharp, a little desperate to be seen, and Mia's still pretending she feels nothing at all. It's not a love story. It's obsession, humiliation, revenge, and the kind of attention that burns more than it heals. They destroy each other slowly, intimately.
Because somewhere deep down, they both think it's what they deserve.

Dr Alexandria Byrne had once believed that tenderness was a kind of safety. A shelter. A promise. Then someone she loved broke that promise, and the aftershocks hollowed her out in ways she still couldn't speak of. Now, years later, she carried herself with the calm precision of someone who could not afford softness again. Her voice clipped, her posture immaculate, her emotions tucked away as neatly as the papers on her desk. Her colleagues called her distant. Students called her cold. But she called it survival. She never imagined the girl who would unravel all of it had already stepped onto campus-heart bruised, hands trembling, carrying a grief heavier than her rucksack. They would meet in a storm, though neither knew it yet.