Anyone But You: A Young Adult Romance Novel

Adrian Hastings had all but ruled his high school.

He and his best mate Taylor Stratton, who was a jackass of earth-shattering proportions—although Adrian gave him tough competition—had been bequeathed a certain godlike status that had kept them content and popular for their entire high school years. They could do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever the hell they wanted, as obnoxiously as they wanted, with none of those pesky negative consequences most evil-doers had to bother with.

For those other attendees at Huntingdale High not fortunate enough to have the same privileges as Adrian, such as Noelle Preston, whose emotions during those years toggled between 'pathetically insecure' and 'passive aggressive', high school was not such a pleasurable experience.

She'd been an invisible, miserable, utterly forgettable student who's only claim to fame was her quirky best friend, Poppy—an easy target equipped with a sense of style that belonged in the 80's and stuck in a consistent state of spaced-out usually not achieved without heavy medication, and as such was one of Taylor's favourite victims.

She'd sat behind Adrian Hastings in homeroom for years, and had been given front row seats—or back-row seats, more accurately—to his growth from immature moron who disrespected teachers and only talked to the pretty girls, to loud-mouthed horny idiot who'd lost his virginity against the shelter shed at the back of the school, and finally developing into an arrogant party boy who couldn't spare anyone in the lower half of the social pyramid a second glance, let alone the courtesy of an "excuse me" as he shoved his way past.

Roughly translated—he was a dick. And when Noelle graduated, she vowed to never encounter him again.

Which was perhaps why she was so surprised five years past that vow, after a night of too many tequila shots following a year of too many virtually sexless months, to wake up in bed next to none other than Adrian Hastings…