Heat Hazard
by Octavia Love
Hazel Prescott survives a school shooting with a head trauma, leaving her emotionally numb. Three years later, she arrives at Rosewater University, a psychology major with perfect grades and zero feelings. James Phoenix Westbrook—street fighter, troublemaker, campus legend—is both fascinated and frustrated by Hazel's unshakable composure. As their paths collide, Phoenix finds himself drawn to the enigmatic girl who refuses to fear him. But Hazel's carefully constructed walls hide trauma deeper than anyone realizes. When Phoenix's dangerous world threatens to pull her in, Hazel must decide: remain safely numb, or risk feeling again—pain, fear, and possibly love—for a boy who breaks every rule she lives by.
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Book details & editions
Chapters: 49
First published:
About the author
Octavia Love
The rumors are true: I write all my love scenes during thunderstorms. Everything else comes from eavesdropping in coffee shops and public transportation. If you've had an interesting conversation in Chicago in the last five years, check my books care...
Watershed
Prologue:
Hazel's P.O.V
There are moments that divide your life into before and after.
I watched Owen's finger tighten on the trigger, the tendons in his wrist standing out like steel cables. His lips—the same ones that had once brushed my ear in the darkened auditorium during junior year, whispering secrets we'd both regret—now trembled as violently as the gun barrel. The memory of his hands sliding up my thigh under the bleachers flashed unbidden, a cruel counterpoint to this nightmare. Back then, I'd laughed it off to my friends, called him "Stage Five Clinger" loud enough for the whole cafeteria to hear.
"You think I wanted this?" Owen's voice cracked, his gaze dropping to the hollow of my throat where his teeth had left a bruise I'd hidden for days. "You made me into this... this fucking joke." The gun jerked toward my best friend, Lila, whose mascara-streaked face twisted in a sneer.
"Like you didn't beg for it," she spat, her designer blouse gaping where Owen had grabbed her. "Always sniffing around Hazel like some pathetic—"
"Shut up! Both of you!" The raw hunger in his eyes when they locked on mine sent a primal shiver through me—not fear, but recognition. We'd played this scene before in parked cars and empty classrooms, power shifting like sand between us. His thumb stroked the trigger with disturbing tenderness. "You loved watching me crawl. Now watch me rise."
The scent of gunpowder and his cheap cologne flooded my senses as I lunged. My breasts smashed against his chest, the impact jarring a gasp from us both. For one suspended heartbeat, our bodies remembered older collisions—the fevered grind behind the gym, his choked confession of love against my collarbone, my derisive laughter echoing through the locker room after.
The gunshot tore through more than flesh. It shattered the brittle armor of who I'd been—the girl who collected hearts like trophies and broke them for sport. As darkness swallowed me, I clung to the truth hotter than the blood soaking my shirt: if I lived, I'd spend every breath burning away that girl in the fire of this moment. Let the senator's daughter die here. Let something stronger rise from her ashes.