There are two kinds of prison sentence that try to break us: the ones served behind iron bars and the ones served through a lifetime of guilt. Some people are handed just one. The unfortunate are given both. Drew Tucker, despite his formidable reputation, was a man shrouded in darkness who had been dealt every kind of sentence known to man. His only path of survival was to fight and conquer. After five years of solitude, with nothing to keep him company but old ghosts and relentless demons, Drew was finally out, and he had a plan in mind to reign supreme once more. But everything had changed since he’d left the small town of Babylon, Texas, and where he once fit into the world around him, he now felt misguided, misplaced and misunderstood. Freedom wasn’t free anymore and it sure as hell didn’t come cheap. That only got worse when he crossed paths with Ayda Hanagan. Legal guardian of her teenage brother, over worked, underpaid and clinging onto sanity by the skin of her teeth, Ayda should have been easier for Drew to beat down and manipulate. She should have been easier to keep quiet. But, as with everything in his life since he got released, nothing seemed to make any damn sense, and the walls were caving in on Drew now more than ever before. Determined to stay on the road he was born to travel, he was willing to fight whoever got in his way or blocked his path to the top. Even the blue-eyed blonde who seemed to have more mouth than sense. His actions were about to shake up the whole town again, and Drew didn’t care whether that came with or without consequences, or what the hell that meant for the likes of Ayda Hanagan.

Seven breaths left in her chest, yet I looked back at him. He wasn’t meant to be there on the darkest night of my life, but the mysterious Alex Law continued to make a habit of showing up when I least expected him. With one look in his eyes, everything I’d ever been before him drifted away, and everything I was about to become revolved around him. Grief threatened to ruin me no matter how hard I fought, and Alex had demons of his own to deal with, yet we found a comfort in each other’s pain. We found ourselves alone, two people becoming one. Just us. Natalie and Alex. Natexus. As long as we had each other, we thought we could make it through anything. We didn't know there were things out there waiting to destroy us: people we couldn’t escape, fates we couldn’t outrun and regrets we couldn’t avoid. Not all love stories go the same way, and ours was about to take a turn neither one of us could have foreseen. All I could do was stand by and watch as my world fell apart for a second time. I knew there had been life before Alex Law. I just had to figure out if there was life after him… That beautiful, tragic first love of mine. - Natalie Vincent.