The Hearts I Hold
Aria never believed love was meant to be permanent but she never imagined it could be weaponized.
A quiet, observant young woman navigating school, friendship, and ambition, Aria has learned to protect her heart by keeping her expectations low. Love, to her, is fragile easily broken, easily misunderstood. When Liam Hart enters her life, charming, attentive, and seemingly different from every boy before him, Aria allows herself to feel again. What she doesn’t know is that their relationship didn’t begin with fate or chance but with a bet.
Liam never planned to fall in love. What started as a cruel game slowly becomes real, complicated by jealousy, secrets, and a girlfriend Aria never knew existed. When the truth finally unravels, Aria’s world shatters publicly and privately. Betrayal doesn’t just break her heart it reshapes her. As rumors spread and judgment replaces empathy, Aria is forced to confront not only the pain Liam caused, but the way society so easily blames a girl for loving too deeply.
This is not a story about choosing love it’s about surviving it.
As Aria retreats into herself, balancing heartbreak with academic pressure and fractured trust, she makes a quiet decision: she will never again be the girl who loves blindly. Strength becomes her armor. Caution becomes her language. And every boy who comes after will meet a version of her shaped by loss, not hope.
Raw, intimate, and emotionally grounded, this novel is a coming-of-age story inspired by real experiences exploring betrayal, reputation, female resilience, and the painful moment when innocence gives way to self-preservation. It is a story for anyone who has ever loved honestly in a dishonest world and learned the cost of it.