Breaking Her Walls

Saturn Woods has mastered the art of disappearing.

With paint-stained hands, sketchbooks full of unfinished dreams, and walls built higher than anyone can climb, the quiet senior spends her days drifting through the halls unnoticed. Most people think she's cold. Distant. Unreachable. Maybe they're right. After all, it's easier to keep everyone at arm's length than let them see the storm she's been drowning in for years.

The only people allowed inside her carefully guarded world are her two best friends, Saylor James and Autumn Hart.

Then there's August Wilder.

Golden-hearted, endlessly optimistic, and impossible to ignore, August is the kind of person who talks to strangers, laughs too loudly, and somehow finds something beautiful in every bad day. As the star of the soccer team, he's loved by nearly everyone-except, perhaps, Saturn. It doesn't help that he's still tangled in an on-again, off-again relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Arden Grey, a habit he can't seem to break no matter how many times it hurts him.

When a senior-year project forces Saturn and August into a semester-long partnership, both are convinced it'll be a disaster.

But between late-night study sessions, shared secrets, and stolen moments beneath paint-splattered skies, August begins to notice the sadness hidden behind Saturn's icy exterior. And Saturn discovers that beneath August's constant smile is someone who understands loneliness more than he lets on.

As their friendship slowly deepens into something neither of them expected, August becomes determined to pull Saturn back toward the surface before she sinks completely beneath the weight she's carrying. The problem is, you can't save someone who doesn't believe they're worth saving.

And Saturn Woods has spent a long time believing exactly that.

(bwwm)