Samantha Rue is an international and USA Today bestselling romance fiction author of young adult and adult fiction novels. Both top swimmers, Bates and Adams spend an inordinate amount of time together despite him being a social titan and her being an antisocial outcast.

When secrets are revealed, Slade and I realize that we are more connected than we could have ever known. I actually didn't appreciate the relationship Gwen has with the Adams either, I could not fully understand, and what I did see I didn't think it was well portrayed. She made him work for weeks for her forgiveness for something that he wasn’t responsible for, and that he had already done the right thing with.Like lowering myself to walking through puddles of beer and wafts of smoke, wading through kids whose tongues are shoved down one another’s throats, and worst of all, forcing myself to talk to the Devil. Never in all the years he’s said cruel things to me, about my family, the vicious jabs day-to-day, the unending spew of his disdain, would I have ever thought Hamilton Bates of something so monstrous. Their story has you at the edge of your seat, filled with dread over knowing that at some point everything will be revealed.

Everyone knows Gwendolyn and Hamilton are enemies… what happens when the whole school finds out their secret? I’m sure if I hadn’t spilled beer all over him and gave a subtle suggestion of where he could shove his best friend’s dick, perhaps we would have started out on a better note.Because even the smallest inkling of vulnerability in this place is like blood in the water, and I won’t let them. I’ve always said that my life is about surviving, but I didn’t realize how true that was until the devil sent me soaring off a bridge with the love of my life and lodged a bullet through my thigh. However, the events of that night were not her biggest secret and she had run away for entirely something else. Of course,” he continues in a rich southern drawl, ignoring the fact a girl, some junior, is sucking on his earlobe as he speaks, “someone had already let the trash in. They had championed for her, bled for her, and fought for her, and even though she went through the gauntlet she had become a Lady and came out the other side stronger.