Drowning Desires

Maura Leighton has a dark secret from her home city that she is running away from. She moved to a small town in hopes no one would recognise her there, that she could put the past behind her.
Maura only wants to get through the rest of the school year without complications, but when you are the new kid at school, everyone has their eye on you, figuring you out.
Adrien Rayne suffered through the worst school break imaginable, once he returned home he is hoping to be able to quietly put it in the back of his mind and carry on with school, though that turns out harder than he thought when he discovers the girl who turned his break into hell had moved to his school.
And he knew her dark secret.

Maura and Adrien spend the last half of their senior school year battling darkness from both their present and past. What makes it difficult is when they merge into one.
It becomes even harder when the two have an undoubted sexual connection that they can't ignore no matter how hard they try, even when they know how wrong they are for each other.

• • •

Suddenly there was a large tug on the back of my head, someone had yanked my ponytail. I spun around as much as I could, their grip was strong on my hair.

I saw my brown hair in a tight grip, I trailed my eyes up a male's tattooed arm towards a pair of dark grey eyes, his eyelids were red and puffy, as if he had been crying, or he was high.

His face was set in a glare, his dark hair, messy, as if all he had done to get ready was shake his head around. It was the guy, Adrien, who was separated from Riley's group.

He was tall. I was average height, maybe even slightly above average but Adrien towered over me, I had to look up at him.

"What fucking right do you have to come to his school." Adrien snarled.

He knew. I didn't know him though.

• • •

warnings: mature themes and violence, drug abuse, mentions of overdose, mentions of sexual assault