Novocaine - a local anesthetic used to numb pain. This isn't your average love story-the kind where love conquers everything and everyone gets a happy ending. This is the story of two broken people who meet at the wrong time, become enemies, fall in love, and try to make something beautiful out of everything that has hurt them. Xana is seventeen years old and studying at Oxford University. Smart, reserved, and guarded, she is the typical good girl. She doesn't smoke. She doesn't drink. She doesn't party. Struggling with abandonment issues and a complicated family life, Xana keeps people at a distance before they get the chance to leave. She would rather disappear into her own world than risk being rejected by someone else's. Or, as Keith likes to tell her, she lives inside a bubble. So how does someone like Xana end up falling for someone like Keith? Keith is nineteen and known across Oxford as the life of every party. He is always the loudest in the room, always chasing the next high, and always one pill away from forgetting whatever he is trying so desperately to escape. To everyone else, he is the reckless party animal. An addict. But nobody asks what happened to make reality so unbearable that he would rather numb himself than face it. Xana and Keith are complete opposites. She hides from the world. He tries to outrun it. She is terrified of being abandoned. He believes love is just another way to get hurt. Neither of them expects the other to become the person they cannot live without. Until Keith meets Xana. His Novocaine.