Tadgh Lynch is the golden boy, a man who built a new life on a foundation of charm and sharp edges. But the ghost of his past, a girl named Loretta Wilkson, still haunts him.
Loretta Wilkson has been drowning her whole life, pulled under by the weight of a trauma that stained her soul. She watched her sister die in a frigid lake, a body of water that had already claimed the life of another girl.
Tadgh was her only light, her one tether to a world she was rapidly losing control of. But her destructive actions, born from a chaos she couldn't quell, shattered that fragile bond.
She was sent away, her mind and body numbed by pills, a cruel and desperate attempt to make her forget what she so desperately needed to remember.
Now, her reality is a fractured mosaic, a world where the past and present bleed into one another, where truth is a lie and lies are all she has left.
Fate, a cruel and relentless mistress, has brought them back together, pulling Tadgh back into her chaotic orbit. He no longer sees the girl he fell in love with but a broken, fragile creature he barely recognizes.
Tadgh is a man determined to understand the past that ruined them both, to piece together the shattered fragments of her memory, and to fix what she believes is beyond repair.
Loretta is a fortress of secrets, convinced that her suffering is a burden she must carry alone, a penance she must pay. She wants to be alone in her self-destruction, but Tadgh's presence, his relentless pursuit of the truth, makes that impossible.
He knows that to save her, he may have to sacrifice the life he's so carefully constructed-his reputation, his new love, everything.
He will stop at nothing to uncover the secrets buried beneath her pain, to fight for the ending she deserves.
But he has to wonder: can you ever save a girl so determined to destroy herself?
Born to a life already broken, Alima Holland has been running from her past since the fire.
After a lifetime of foster care, she's learned how to survive: numb the pain with drugs, forget her history with fleeting encounters, and trust no one.
But when a scholarship to Tommen College forces her back to the last place she ever wanted to be-Ballylaggin-her carefully built walls begin to crumble.
Caught in a whirlwind of ghosts and memories she can't outrun, Alima collides with Tadgh Lynch, the one person who could see straight through her.
He's a reckoning she never saw coming, the son of a family sworn to despise her own. Tadgh Lynch would rather die than love a Holland, and Alima knows that being seen by him is the most terrifying thing of all.
She's an intellectual powerhouse and a self-destructive wild thing, a ghost haunting her own body.
In a war she's destined to lose, Alima's story doesn't start at the beginning-it starts on a bridge, ready to end it all.
Can she break free from the cycle of ruin, or is her destiny tied to a family and a love she can never have?