First published 2023
Scarlett Goodwin has built her college life around control. The math major at Southern University keeps a tight schedule: classes, shifts at the tutoring lab, and home to the apartment she shares with her friend Caroline. Social anxiety makes crowds hard and people harder, but the routine holds. Then Tucker Price walks in. The star soccer player is failing College Algebra, and the university chancellor offers the math department expensive new software if Scarlett agrees to tutor him privately. She says yes, reluctantly. Tucker's reputation precedes him: bad boy, womanizer, someone she would normally avoid entirely. But the Tucker she meets one-on-one is not the Tucker everyone talks about. He is carrying something heavy, a collection of secrets that seem to explain why he keeps burning his own life down. Scarlett keeps digging, trying to understand him, and the closer she gets to the source of his pain the further she drifts from the stable life she worked so hard to build. She grew up watching her mother struggle in a trailer park and swore she would take a different path. Tucker Price was never part of that plan.
Genres: fiction, romance, contemporary, contemporary-romance, new-adult, college-romance
Vibes: character-driven, emotional, intimate, introspective, slow-burn
Tropes: bad-boy-redemption, enemies-to-lovers, slow-burn, tutoring-romance
Setting: Southern University
Content warnings: anxiety, mental-illness