Prologue

Grace Young’s life had been shattered six years ago, though at the time, she hadn't fully understood what it meant. The divorce between her parents—Rachel West and Steven Young—had been the beginning of a new chapter, one where her family was no longer whole. The long days spent in a home that no longer felt like home, with too many unanswered questions and a void that only grew larger, became her reality.

Her mother, Rachel, always distant in her own way, had never tried to fill that gap. She was busy—always busy—building her empire, climbing higher and higher in the world of business. There was no room for sentimentality in her life. And when Grace’s father, Steven, had remarried Emily Thomas, everything became even more complicated. Emily, gracious and polite, had never been the problem, but the presence of her new stepbrother, David, a stranger of sorts, was an intrusion. He was twenty-eight, and Grace had always felt like an outsider in his world.

But now, as the years passed, Grace had grown used to it. She had learned to survive her mother’s detachment, her father’s awkward attempts to keep their family together, and the distance between herself and the rest of the world. Or at least, she thought she had.

Then came the call.

It was a normal Tuesday morning when Rachel broke the news. Grace was to fly to California to live with her father for a while. At first, it seemed like nothing more than a temporary arrangement—a short business trip for Rachel, who had far more important things to do. Grace had assumed she’d be back in no time, that things would return to normal. But she was wrong.

Rachel told her that the time away from home would be good for her, that she’d find new opportunities, maybe even a new school. She wasn’t told, however, that it wasn’t a vacation or a break—it was a relocation, a complete uprooting from everything Grace knew. And worst of all, she wasn’t told about the lie her mother had carefully constructed about her schooling. Grace had no choice but to face the truth once she landed in California.

Her world, it seemed, was changing yet again. What she thought was going to be a chance to catch up with her father and escape the suffocating silence of their past life turned into something else entirely. She was about to be thrown into an unfamiliar world, at an unfamiliar school, without a friend in sight.

But perhaps the most jarring part of it all was the person she’d meet there—a boy named James Anderson, the one everyone whispered about, the one they feared. Unbeknownst to Grace, he would become a part of her story—a story that would intertwine with her own journey of self-discovery, unexpected friendships, and an exploration of her true place in a world that felt too large and too small all at once.

Grace had no idea that her life, her very identity, was about to shift again in ways she couldn’t yet comprehend.