Undertow

Nora Reyes came to Merrick College with a five-year plan and a notebook full of a life that couldn't leave her. She has one rule: nothing goes unearned, and nothing gets close enough to hurt. Then a townie with grease on his hands and a marina going under crosses a crowded room and sits down across from her, and for the first time the plan starts to feel like a cage instead of a wall.
Eli Kane is drowning quietly. His father's marina is one missed payment from the wrecking ball, his brother is in a wheelchair Eli blames himself for, and a developer's daughter has offered him a way to save it all - if he gets close to the new scholarship girl and keeps her talking about her estranged father. He says yes when it's survival. Then he falls in love, and never finds the moment to tell her the ground she's standing on is rented.
When the truth surfaces - dated, initialed, impossible to unsee - Nora has to decide what a person is worth once you've seen all the way to the bottom of them. What follows isn't a rescue. It's a girl learning that the water always moves, that there's no flat safe life on offer, and that the only love worth trusting is the kind that has already survived the truth.
A sweeping, emotional new-adult romance about class and control, found family, and the difference between a life that happens to you and one you finally choose.