Oceans Rise

Meredith Baring, Maeve Donne, and Aspen Young have been best friends since sixth grade. One day, out of the blue, it was as if a magnet had drawn them all together. They were all different. Different each other, yes, but even more so compared to everyone else. All three girls possessed gold-rimmed eyes. The night before was when it all started, for them at least.

Griffin Harmon has been watching and protecting Meredith, Maeve, and Aspen since they were eleven and he was thirteen. Now, four years later, he's a senior at their local high school and they're sophomores. And, to protect the girls, he's made a reputation for himself as the school bad boy. Partying, drinking, sleeping around- none of that was true, well, okay so the partying was something that was quite frequent, but that was only because the girls that he had pledged to protect at thirteen years old went to those parties and he couldn't have them discovering what made each of them so different at a high school party. That would be disastrous. But the drinking and sleeping around? All a hoax, he couldn't be drunk or even buzzed if he was going to be able to keep Meredith, Maeve, and Aspen out of the clutches of hormonal, drunk teenage boys. And most girls would probably kill to sleep with him, but he had also made another promise to his mother. He promised her that he would always, no matter what, treat whatever girl he ended up with right. That meant no sleeping around. The tattoos were definitely real. The first one he had ever gotten was on his left shoulder blade, over the scar that was from the accident that he survived and his parents didn't. At fourteen he had gotten the date etched into his skin forever, as a reminder and as a keepsake. That day, when his parents didn't make it and he did, was the day it all started for him. Griffin had two promises to keep, and until he turned eighteen he also had to live in the south Princeton orphanage.