At St. Violet's, everyone performs.
Mara Vale performs indifference better than anyone. Goth, brilliant, and gloriously difficult, she's built a life around reading people before they can get close enough to matter.
Sloane Mercer performs perfection. Star cheer captain. Campus darling. Polished, disciplined, and impossible to ignore.
They were never supposed to make sense.
Their chemistry starts as irritation, sharp banter, and public friction. Then it turns private. Secret meetings become habit. Habit becomes hunger. Hunger becomes something far more dangerous when neither of them can stop wanting to be seen by the other.
But St. Violet's runs on image, gossip, donor pressure, and social hierarchy. And the more real Mara and Sloane become behind closed doors, the harder it gets to keep their relationship from colliding with everything built around them.