TadhgLynchsWife
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- Parts 25
Owen Price has never had an easy life. With an alcoholic mother, an absent father, and a childhood marked by things no boy should ever have to endure, Owen has learned to find happiness wherever he can. Funny. Bubbly. Sweet to a fault. He's the boy who makes everyone laugh, even when he's got nothing to smile about. But behind that sunshine is a boy who's spent his entire life trying to survive.
Bailey O'Connell has everything money can buy. Everything except the one thing he's always wanted: to be enough. With parents who are never home and a desperate need for approval, Bailey finds himself following the wrong people, becoming someone he barely recognises. Once Owen's closest childhood friend, he's now the boy who knows exactly how to hurt him.
They were eight when they met. Eleven when everything changed. And somewhere between childhood and the brutal reality of growing up, friendship became something neither of them could understand, let alone admit.
Owen knows he loves Bailey. He just doesn't know how to accept it. Not when everything he's endured has left him questioning what love is supposed to feel like. And Bailey? He's too busy drowning in resentment, anger, and his own need to be wanted to realise just how much he's destroying the one person who ever made him feel good enough.
But love isn't always gentle. Sometimes it's messy, painful, and wrapped in so much hatred that neither person knows how to find their way back.
And when alcohol, denial, and years of hurt begin to tear them apart, Owen and Bailey are left facing a question neither is ready to answer.
How do you love someone when you've spent your whole life learning to hate yourself?
Hating 17.
Is a story about first love, broken childhoods, impossible choices, and two boys who might love each other more than they know how to survive.