Cigarettes And Sea Salt - R.C

Valeria Elise Hartley has always lived between worlds - the daughter of a famous actress who expects perfection and a quiet soul who just wants to dance, breathe, and be left alone. She doesn't fit with the Kooks, doesn't belong with the Pogues, and never asked to get tangled in the chaos of the Outer Banks.

Her days are predictable: teaching Wheezie Cameron's dance class, studying, hanging by the pool with her best friend Taylor, and trying to keep her mom's high expectations from swallowing her whole.

Then one Friday changes everything.
A party. A fight. And Rafe Cameron - loud, complicated, magnetic - entering her orbit in the worst possible way.

Rafe is everything she swore to hate: privileged, reckless, and unpredictable. But beneath his anger and sharp edges, she sees something raw. Something real. And when he starts showing up - in the quiet mornings, at the beach before sunrise - Valeria can't decide if he's the storm she's been running from or the one she's meant to face.

As her mother's pressure tightens and the Outer Banks starts to feel smaller, Valeria finds herself caught between reason and recklessness, safety and passion, fear and freedom.

Because sometimes, the people you swear you'll never fall for are the ones who make you feel alive.