She was the girl who followed the rules. He was the boy everyone warned her about. One night was supposed to mean nothing. No labels. No promises. No feelings. But some rules are easier to break than others-and some people are impossible to leave behind. "I should've walked away the first night. Instead, I let Killian Davenport become a habit."

Ava Sinclair and Damien Cross are forced into an arranged marriage to merge two rival empires. They hate each other in public. They avoid each other in private. And neither of them wants the life they've been assigned. So they do the only thing they can control: They escape into anonymity. On a dating app, under fake usernames, they meet a stranger who understands them in a way no one else ever has. What they don't realize is simple: The person they're falling for... is the same person they're being forced to marry. And now every message is a lie they didn't mean to tell.

Everyone at Blackthorne University knows Dean Sullivan. The boxer with bruised knuckles, a permanent suspension warning hanging over his head, and a temper people swear is one second away from exploding. Most students avoid him. Others provoke him. Nobody really knows him. Not the nights he spent protecting his little sister instead of sleeping. Not the childhood he survived. Not the guilt that follows him everywhere like a shadow. Then there's Ella Hayes. Quiet. Brilliant. Impossible to intimidate. She's the only person who looks at Dean Sullivan and doesn't see someone dangerous. She sees someone hurting. What starts as late-night conversations and accidental run-ins slowly turns into something neither of them expected - a relationship that feels safe, terrifying, and impossible to walk away from. But Dean has spent his whole life believing violence is the only thing he's good at. And loving Ella might mean learning how to become someone else entirely. Or losing the only good thing he's ever had.