Apricity: The Warmth of Sun In Winter.
Riley Grace Kitridge has known the cold. Truthfully, it's all she's known since her mother succumbed to her injuries from the car accident. Despite the new foster family and new preppy school, the chill doesn't fade. Riley's fine with that; she doesn't like change anyway. She has three goals: keep her head down, get accepted to Vassar College, and graduate high school. However, change continues to find her, this time in the form of Damien Rigel Maxwell, an arrogant classmate who steals her seat. He's insufferable and unforgiving, and Riley curses when they are forced together for a group project. She learns, though, that there is more to Damien than his frequent scoffs and general disinterest. She thinks, maybe, that Damien feels the cold, too. Perhaps they can feel the cold together.
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Hello everyone! If you have the time, please give this a chance, and if there's even more time to spare, please comment. This is the first draft of my honors thesis for my undergraduate study at university. Feedback is welcome and extremely appreciated as I want this to be the best it can be, and I know you're all suggestions; readers like myself always see things that authors cannot. In any case, thank you for reading this, and hopefully, thank you for reading Apricity.
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?
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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]]