Ruin Me

Lillian Sinclair is no stranger to loss. After the death of her single mother, she's uprooted from everything familiar and taken in by the Mercers—her best friend Cassie’s family. To the outside world, it looks like a fresh start. But for Lillian, it’s a quiet descent into grief, displacement, and a haunting sense of not belonging.
Life in the Mercer household is colder than expected, and no one embodies that chill more than Tobias Mercer—Cassie’s older brother. At twenty-five, Tobias is distant, calculating, and emotionally impenetrable. He seems to resent Lillian’s presence from the start. But beneath his icy exterior is something darker and more complicated—something Lillian can't help but be drawn to, even as it threatens to unravel her.
As she tries to survive high school, navigate her grief, and stay invisible under the Mercer roof, Lillian finds herself slowly entangled in Tobias’s world. His cold protectiveness, his push-and-pull behavior, and the secrets he carries become impossible to ignore. What begins as tension soon blurs into something forbidden—and dangerously addictive.
But Tobias is not just guarded—he’s hiding something that could destroy them both. When Lillian’s eighteenth birthday approaches, tensions in the house begin to rise. Boundaries are crossed. Loyalties are tested. And Lillian must confront the truth: is she falling in love, or simply desperate to be seen?
As her relationship with Tobias deepens, Lillian must decide if the pain she’s endured has made her reckless—or if she’s finally found someone just as broken as she is.
Ruin Me is a dark, emotionally charged coming-of-age romance that explores grief, obsession, and the dangerous beauty of feeling too much.