Wild Blood, Polished Bones

At sixteen, Alex Alexander Hawthorne left England dressed in pressed shirts and expectations he never agreed to carry.
At twenty, he comes back smelling of smoke and petrol, riding a motorbike his parents would hate, with scars no one asks about.
The Hawthornes are polished, controlled, old money British to the core. Alex is everything they're not-loud, reckless, impulsive. To them, he's trouble.
What they don't see is the truth.
Four years abroad hardened Alex in ways no one prepared him for. The drinking, the racing, the chaos-it's survival, not rebellion. And while his family watches him like he's a ticking bomb, Alex keeps his real lifeline hidden: a tight-knit group of friends who became his family when he had none.
Coming home means facing the people he ran from-and deciding whether he's brave enough to let them see the damage beneath the wild grin.