ayraverse
Chloe Mercer has always been the kind of girl who finds something to smile about.
She's warm, curious, fiercely loyal, and incapable of walking away from someone who needs help. Her life isn't perfect, but she's happy with it. University, her friends, her family, her dog, and a future she's still figuring out.
Then there's Roman Blackwood.
Twenty-five. Brilliant. An AI developer with a mind built for patterns, algorithms, and problems that can actually be solved.
People are easier to avoid.
Roman is private, controlled, foul-mouthed, and carrying a past he refuses to talk about. He doesn't do relationships. He doesn't trust easily. And he certainly doesn't need a relentlessly cheerful girl wandering into his carefully controlled life.
Except Chloe doesn't seem to understand the concept of staying away from him.
What begins as an unlikely friendship slowly becomes something neither of them can ignore.
Chloe brings warmth into the parts of Roman's life he's kept deliberately dark.
Roman sees parts of Chloe that everyone else overlooks.
And somewhere between late-night conversations, stolen glances, arguments, laughter, and feelings neither of them planned for, Roman begins to realise that Chloe isn't just someone he wants.
She's someone he can't imagine losing.
But Roman's darkness has roots.
There are things about his past Chloe doesn't know. Things he's spent years keeping buried. And the closer she gets to him, the more she begins to see the man underneath the controlled exterior.
Because loving Roman Blackwood means discovering that beneath the brilliant mind, sharp tongue, and impossible self-control is a man who loves with the same intensity he uses to protect everything that matters to him.
And once Chloe becomes one of those things, there's no going back.
She thought she was falling for the man behind the silence.
She didn't realise how much darkness was waiting behind it.