TENDER BREAKS

Maya was just trying to survive a new school.
He was just trying to feel nothing.
Neither of them planned on the other.

Maya Brooks doesn't want attention. She wants to get through senior year without falling apart, sketch things that don't hurt, and figure out why her father moved them to Maplewood without really explaining why.

Noah King has one rule. Don't let anyone close enough to matter. It's worked for seventeen years. Then the new girl with the moon necklace and the sketchbook sat down in his seat, looked him dead in the eyes and didn't even flinch.

It should have been nothing.
It wasn't nothing.

But between Ava's jealousy, Camila's schemes, a poisoning nobody can explain, and secrets that stretch back further than either of them realized, Maya and Noah can barely admit what they feel before everything starts to fall apart.

And when Noah vanishes without a word the same night everything changes, Maya has to ask herself the one question she's been avoiding.

Was any of it real?

Tender Breaks is a story about grief, about the quiet violence of growing up, about the people who fracture you and the ones who somehow make you whole again.

Some breaks heal. Some just teach you how to carry them.