Free Falling

Nora Vance is nineteen, completely alone, and scraping by on cold diner shifts and sweet vanilla coffee while trying to code her way out of poverty. She doesn't have room in her hyper-vigilant, realist life for complications- until she meets Peter Parker in their building's flooded basement laundry room.
Peter is the reclusive, ghost-like boy from down the hall. He has no friends, no family, and a mountain of dark bruises he claims are from a rough night shift. But when he uses his bare hands to crush a high-pressure copper pipe to save her laundry, Nora realizes the clumsy boy next door is harboring a massive, dangerous secret.
Peter knows that getting attached is a death sentence for anyone who crosses his path. He tries to build his walls back up, convincing himself that a normal girl like Nora could never care about a phantom like him.
But as they bond over late-night coding on a cracked laptop screen, two isolated souls find a rare sanctuary in each other.
In a city built on cold concrete and broken promises, can a hero who balances the weight of the world learn to let himself be loved, or will his secrets bring the ceiling crashing down on the only bright spot he has left?