Also by Grace McGinty

Hell’s Redemption Series: The Redeemable/The Unrepentant/The Fallen

Damnation MC Duet: Serendipity/Providence

The Azar Nazemi Trilogy : Smoke and Smolder/Burn and Blaze/Rage and Ruin

Dark River Days Series: Newly Undead In Dark River/Happily Undead In Dark River/Pleasantly Undead in Dark River

Black Mountain Mates: Hunting Isla

Eden Academy Series: The Lost and the Hunted (Prequel)/Heart of the Hounded (Prequel)/ Rebels and Runaways (Book 1)/Sweethearts and Savages (Book 2)

Shadow Bred Series: Manix/Frenzy/Feral

Stand Alone Novels and Novellas: Bright Lights From A Hurricane/The Last Note/ Inside The Maelstrom Part 1 and 2/Sticks and Stone

Omega Lottery: Tryst In The Dark

Dedication

For Pascal, who patiently answered all my questions so the hockey scenes were authentic.

For Amy Jo and Robert, who heard my call out and didn’t hesitate to help.

For Raewyn, gold medalist in badassery during the Covid Olympics. Thank you for being the best damn tortoise in the editing game.

Chapter One

NOVA

It had taken me three months not to have an anxiety attack every time the front doorbell rang. I’d tried everything: therapy, deep breathing—hell, I’d even changed the doorbell tone, and later took it away altogether. My friends knew not to ring it; they just called when they were out the front. Even the food delivery guys didn’t ring anymore.

Maybe I should have tried desensitizing myself to the doorbell instead, because apparently, someone knocking had roughly the same effect anyway.

Breathing in and out, I walked toward the front door.

It hadn’t always been this way, obviously. No one is born with an aversion to doorbells. No, my brain—the wonderful and complex piece of equipment that it was—now associated the doorbell with the worst day of my life.

Even as I walked toward it now, the present was overlaid with memories of three months ago. Opening the door, smiling. Feeling the expression fall from my face as I took in the two policemen in front of me, their faces solemn. Collapsing on the ground, wailing, as they told me that my parents had crashed on the freeway and died instantly. Continuing to wail until one of the officers stood me up, holding me in his arms until the neighbors appeared.

Then Rita, my neighbor and one of my mother’s best friends, held me as I cried for the next six hours. Her daughter Chloe—my best friend—arrived hours later and took over, so her mother could properly grieve without trying to hold me together too.

Rita took care of the funeral arrangements. Oscar, her husband, ensured I ate, using that Dad tone that I’d never again hear from my own father to make sure I swallowed every single bite.

Since then, it’d been the worst twelve weeks of my life, but I was moving through life, existing. It was getting easier. Not better, but easier.