In a world where Jacks of the Hollow wasn’t an immortal fate with deadly kisses, a non-beating heart or cried blood, Jacks Hollow was a normal seventeen year old guy. Well, normal, he had the beauty of an angel and the traumas no one should.

From five to fifteen, little Jacks had his body sold by his junkie mother’s drugs, men and women came in, sexually abused or raped him and then paid money to his mom.

When he was about to turn sixteen, Jacks’ mom overdosed, Jacks was adopted by a rich Irish family and moved to Dublin, there he was inscribed in a private school that he didn’t attend until he was seventeen.

Seventeen now, Jacks still wasn’t used to the marble floors, the polished chandeliers, the house where silence meant safety instead of danger. His new family—the O’Haras—treated him kindly, sometimes too kindly. They didn’t ask questions about the years before, not directly, but their eyes lingered too long when he flinched at sudden sounds or froze at the brush of a hand.

At school, he was an enigma. The kind of beautiful that made people stare but never approach for long. Some whispered that he was arrogant, others that he was shy.

The O’Haras’ son, Finn, was the only one who came close to breaking through. Finn was loud where Jacks was quiet, messy where Jacks was meticulous. He treated Jacks like he wasn’t a porcelain doll, like he wasn’t someone to tiptoe around.

“Skipping class again?” Finn grinned one morning, catching Jacks in the courtyard, cigarette dangling from his lips.

Jacks shrugged, leaning back against the stone wall. “Not like anyone’ll miss me in there.”

Finn rolled his eyes. “You say that like you’re invisible. Newsflash, Hollow—you’re the opposite.”

Jacks hated that. Hated being seen. He had rugby. He was good at that.

“Come on, lad, be a teenager, have some fun, get drunk, get pussy”