Thea Slater is average. Average hair, average school life, average family, all around average seventeen year old. She has her moments that are perfect and amazing, but she has her faults as well. She likes to visit the little arcade on the pier just as much as the next teen. It's an escape from reality, a break from stress, basically a safezone.
Aiken Greene, on the other hand, is on a completely different spectrum. He is eighteen, and he basically lives at the arcade to get away from his not so average family. Their a bunch of nitwits that think they are so special because they have a big house, big money, and run a big company that they only got from inheritance. He has a high score on every game, no matter who tries to beat him.
Well, he did.
When he walked in and out of the blistering heat of California, he looked at the scoreboard on a game and had to do a double take.
Someone had gotten a higher score than him, and his winning streak had ended.
He couldn't believe it.
He's had high scores for years.
Until she beat him, of course.
As Claire aims to leave her oppressive stepfamily behind, she befriends Zion. Will he be her ticket to freedom or a distraction in achieving her dreams?
*****
Claire Olsen has had a crush on Zion Petrakis since the first time she laid eyes on him, but he never noticed, instead only having eyes on the school's it girl, Maddie Jennings. Knowing she couldn't compete with Maddie, Claire hid her feelings for Zion, satisfied with admiring him from afar. However, when a series of events led Claire closer to Zion, her feelings for him grew from infatuation to love. And despite fighting hard to keep her feelings contained by distancing herself from Zion, he was determined to show her that he's earned a spot in her life.
[[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]