Winning 19

Alexia Biggs is everything they say she is - brilliant, brutal, and built like armor. With perfect grades and a sharper mouth, she's feared more than she's liked at Tommen College. She doesn't care. She doesn't need anyone's approval. What no one knows - not her classmates, not even her closest friends - is that Alexia has bipolar disorder. The only people who know are her parents, and that's exactly how she wants it.

What no one suspects is that the coldest girl in school spends her nights behind the wheel in Cork's underground racing scene, where she trades control for speed and silence for smoke.

AJ Lynch has been the talk of Tommen for as long as anyone can remember. With a dangerous grin and a don't-care swagger, he's known for wild nights, bad decisions, and a magnetic charm that gets him out of almost anything. But behind the easy confidence is a boy raised under pressure - the son of a legacy family, the center of every room, the guy who's expected to have it all figured out when he barely knows who he is.

The only place he feels real is behind the wheel. Racing is the one thing he doesn't fake - where it's just him, the road, and the roar in his chest that finally makes sense.

Alexia and AJ have never gotten along. Not when they were kids, not now. They've spent their whole lives circling each other like fire and gasoline - sharp words, eye-rolls, tension so thick it chokes. At school, they pretend the other doesn't exist. On the streets, they race like their rivalry is life or death.

But when two people are hiding everything and fighting everyone, sometimes the only person who truly sees you is the one you can't stand. And the more time they spend in the same lanes, the harder it becomes to deny the truth under all that tension: the looks linger too long. The fights hit too hard. And somewhere in all the chaos, hate stops being the loudest thing between them.