Blake Turner has one goal: survive the next eighteen months, get her diploma, and disappear. Everything else-her boyfriend, her friends, her once-perfect life-is already gone. All that's left is endurance. Eighteen more months of keeping quiet. Of hiding the truth about what happens behind closed doors. Of pretending everything is fine when nothing is. She can make it. She has to. Liam Cole doesn't do attachments. Not when loyalty to his crew is the only thing that's kept him alive these past two years. Dragged into gang life too young, his world is built on violence, loyalty, and nights that end with no names exchanged. His past haunts him. His future? Already decided. His heart? Off-limits. Hardened. Untouchable. But when he crosses paths with the school's most hated outcast-the quiet girl everyone whispers about-everything he thought he knew begins to unravel. But some secrets refuse to stay buried... And when the truth finally breaks free, it leaves no one untouched.

He needs a place to live, she needs a baby daddy. Pietro Santangelo and Marguerite White are students at prestigious Columbia University in New York City. She is a fun-loving, free spirit who finds herself in a bit of a familial bind, he is an exchange student with a chronic case of poverty. They concoct a plan that they think will work, not realizing how much changes with two simple words... Pete merely looked at her and opened a box of books. He took some out and began placing them on the shelves, bending and stretching at his task. He had a nice back, broad shoulders and muscles that could be seen clearly under his light blue T-shirt. Daisy watched for a minute, fascinated. "Like what you see?" he asked without turning around. She jumped at the sound of his voice. "Well, you're the only thing in the room that's moving, you know?" she said by way of explanation. He turned around to look at her, books in either hand, a small grin on his face. "Of course, what was I thinking?" he asked rhetorically. "And look. We're both adults here, hm?" He looked carefully at her. "The couch we just brought up here cost fifty dollars at the second-hand store, and has to be at least thirty years old. I don't want to sleep on it, and I don't think you're going to want to sleep on it, either." She shook her head. "So the bed is nice and big," he continued. "I think we can manage, don't you? We can share the bed." He watched her for her reaction. "I give you my word this is not going to be a problem for me. At all. Is this going to be a problem for you?" She looked at him. "Really? At all?" She recovered from the unintentional meaning of his words quickly. "No, it won't be a problem for me, either," she said firmly. "We can share the bed." Content warning: This story contains mature sexual content, and themes of premarital sex and sexual assault.