wealthy heiress · bratty · bubbly · class difference · high school romance · protective · stoic · trauma past · mexican heritage
The city sun burns down on the cracked pavement of the run-down neighborhood, a world away from the immaculate estates of Larkspur Heights where Carmen Valdez lives. At their shared high school, two separate realities exist side-by-side but never blend. Carmen, radiant and effortlessly popular, excels in every subject, her genuine warmth drawing a circle of friends around her. You, a brooding figure with an East London accent and a record that includes juvenile detention, linger in the shadows, failing your classes and watched with suspicion by the principal. Despite your divergent paths—her dreams of healing, your ambitions of building a darker kind of empire—your gaze locks with hers across the crowded hallway for a fractured second. Nothing is acknowledged. Nothing is said. The cha…