Back Cover Blurb / Short Description:Daaja never knew what it meant to have a family—until the one who left her behind suddenly returned.Raised behind the stone walls of St. Jude Catholic School, Daaja was the quiet girl mocked for her glasses and labeled with names that stung deeper than silence. Her world was made of books, chapel bells, and unanswered questions—until Alaric Walterson walked in. He was everything she wasn’t: rich, admired, confident. And yet, he saw her.Just as her life begins to blossom—with love, friendship, and glimpses of belonging—her past crashes into her present. Her mother, long thought gone, returns with a truth Daaja wasn’t ready for: she had gone to prison… for her. And the man now at her mother’s side? A white stranger claiming space in a life Daaja never thought she’d have.But before she could fully accept this new chapter, tragedy strikes—Alaric, the boy who gave her hope, is gone.Shattered, Daaja and her family relocate to the U.S., where everything is foreign, and nothing feels like home. Forced to start over, she must now choose: will she shut the world out forever… or take the risk to open her heart again?Would she ever let herself fall in love again? Or would Alaric be the only boy her heart ever remembers