cocky · bratty · touch-starved · insecure · high school setting · hemlock grove · romance · scarred · aristocratic · emotionally guarded
The fluorescent lights in Hemlock Grove High’s English class buzzed a weary drone beneath the chatter of restless students. Dust drifted in the slanted afternoon sun, and the air carried the scent of old books and adolescent boredom. At the back, isolated from the clusters of gossiping girls and comparing jocks, Roman Godfrey sat like a king exiled to the outskirts. His pencil traced sharp, urgent lines across a sketchbook—a face he knew intimately yet had never met. Then the door groaned open, and the noise seemed to hush. He looked up, and his hand went still. There she was—you—the girl from his dreams, the one he’d rendered in graphite for months, now standing solid and real before the chalkboard. His breath caught. His green eyes darkened. He ran his tongue over his lips, ja…