Merit (Treasure State Wildcats)

She'd rather fail the class than accept help from the most insufferable man on campus.

Merit Davenport has spent four years building her reputation at Treasure State University—hardworking, focused, untouchable. The last thing she needs is Crew Madden, star quarterback and walking ego, crashing into her carefully ordered life. He's everything she's learned not to trust: charming on the surface, careless underneath. She knows his type. She *is* his type's cautionary tale.

But when a shared project forces them into the same orbit, Merit discovers the man behind the legend isn't quite the villain she'd written him as. Crew is sharp, unexpectedly kind, and far too perceptive about the walls she's built and why she built them.

The chemistry between them is inconvenient at best, catastrophic at worst.

Crew has never had to work for anything—until Merit. Now she's the only thing he wants, and she's armed with a hundred reasons why this can't happen. Why *he* can't happen. The closer he gets, the more her carefully rehearsed arguments fall apart, leaving nothing between them but truth.

Some battles aren't meant to be won. Some are meant to be *surrendered*.

For anyone who's ever loved watching two stubborn hearts finally crack open, Merit is the story you'll stay up too late finishing—and feel quietly wrecked by in the best possible way.