When Allison’s parents dragged her to the small town of OakHill, she felt like her life was over. She was grieving the “perfect” boyfriend she’d been forced to leave behind and the friends who made her feel seen. Resentful and walled-off, she wandered through the joined garden of her new home, convinced that OakHill was just a waiting room for a life she wanted back.
Then she found Aaron Harrison.
He was a boy sprawled in the grass with a dog-eared copy of Romeo and Juliet, hidden behind a hedge. Through the fence, Aaron became her mirror. He was the first to suggest that the “perfect” boyfriend she missed was actually a cage, and the “friends” she craved were just shadows. Over the rhythmic pop of his skateboard and late-night whispers on the ramps, their friendship became a lifeline.
When the toxicity of Aarons most trusted stand tall between them. They became the town’s greatest scandal: the nineteen-year-olds who abandoned college and family to outrun the world.
The first year was a blur of neon motel signs, coffee, and the fierce, desperate love found in the quiet of a shared room. They were survivors. Eventually, they were engaged. They finally had a city apartment with their names on the lease. But without the adrenaline of the run, the trauma and stress they carried caught up to them. The “Harrison intensity” that saved her began to feel harmful. In a storm of tears and shattered promises, they broke—leaving Allison to disappear and Aaron to return to OakHill, a ghost of the boy he used to be.
Will they reach for each other again? Or will they fall off the edge with no one to catch them…?
