She built walls to survive. He learned to climb them. Together, they're about to discover that the most dangerous thing you can do is let someone in.
Aria Morgan has three rules:
Don't trust easily.
Don't let anyone see the cracks.
And never, ever fall in love with someone who could destroy you.
She's survived a childhood that left scars no one can see, a mother who chose vodka over her daughter, and a night at sixteen that rewrote the entire map of her life. Now, at twenty-one, she's built walls so high that even she can't remember what it feels like to be touched without flinching.
Then she crashes-literally-into Ethan Cole.
Ethan is everything Aria doesn't need: wealthy, controlled, devastatingly guarded, and trapped in a life his father designed before he was born. He doesn't deviate. He doesn't stumble. He doesn't fall for scholarship students who spill coffee on his shirt and look at him like they're daring him to make them feel small.
But something about Aria gets under his skin.
Her trembling hands.
Her storm-gray eyes.
The way she says brave things with a voice that shakes.
What begins as midnight walks and whispered confessions on a frozen campus fountain becomes something neither of them expected-a love so raw, so real, so utterly terrifying that it threatens to tear down every wall they've spent their lives building.
But Aria is hiding a secret she's never told anyone. A secret buried in sealed court records and the darkest chapter of her past. A secret that Ethan's powerful, ruthless father will stop at nothing to expose.
When the truth collides with the most dangerous man in Ethan's life, they'll be forced to answer the question that breaks most people:
Is love worth the war it takes to keep it?