Empowering 9

❝ I can admit, I am not fireproof. I feel it burning me. I feel it burning you. I hope I don't murder me. I hope I don't burden you. ❞

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Tadgh Lynch knows what broken looks like.

At seventeen, the scars he carries don't show on his skin, but they live in his chest. Quiet until something, or someone, wakes them. He's learned how to survive by pretending he's fine, by locking the past away and refusing to look too closely at the people around him.

Especially her.

Alannah Kennedy is the girl everyone underestimates. The protector. The reckless one. The one who burns so her family doesn't have to. She loves too hard, hurts too quietly, and copes in ways that are slowly destroying her. Drugs, alcohol, bodies that don't ask questions. She's learned that if she keeps moving, she won't have to feel.

When Alannah crashes into Tadgh's life, he sees the signs immediately. The flinches. The self-destruction. The way pain clings to her like a second skin. It mirrors his own too closely to be a coincidence.

So he ignores it.

Because recognizing her pain means confronting his own-and some wounds don't fade when you press them together. Some only bleed more.

As their worlds intertwine, the lines between saving and hurting blur, and the people around them become lifelines neither of them asked for. But love doesn't always fix what's broken.

Sometimes, it just shows you how deep the cracks really go.

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* All characters in this book are owned by Chloe walsh, Except for the Kennedy siblings, Kian Donovan, Niamh Buckley and Finn McCarthy!!!! *