He Kissed Me First

Stefan Rodriguez is eighteen, gay, and tired of being the one who holds everything together. When his mother’s new job drags the family three hundred miles from home, he leaves behind his best friend, his old life, and any hope of an easy senior year.

The new school has the same hierarchies and the same cruelty, and a golden boy in a letterman jacket who makes sure Stefan knows exactly where he stands. Then Bia sits across from him at lunch, loud, warm, and wonderfully unhinged, and decides they are best friends.

The problem with Bia is her brother.

Nicolas Bennett is dark-eyed, sharp-tongued, and rumored to be straight. He is also rude, guarded, and impossible to ignore. Stefan knows trouble when he sees it. Somehow he keeps ending up in the same room.

But Nic is carrying more than anyone at North Point knows: a grief he won’t name, a secret he can’t say out loud, and a fear of wanting something he can’t take back. And when he finally breaks, it’s Nic who closes the distance first.

Now Stefan has a boyfriend nobody can know about, a school full of people waiting for him to fail, and someone who wants to see them both destroyed.

He Kissed Me First is a YA romance about the families we don’t choose, the friends who find us when we stop looking, and the courage it takes to say I love you out loud.