Prologue
Lila Alanna. The name itself sounded beautiful—surely it belonged to a girl as radiant as her name.
Well… not exactly.
From head to toe, Lila looked like she’d wandered out of some dark, magical realm and accidentally landed in the real world. Thick black eyeliner framed her eyes, a plain T-shirt hid under a worn black leather jacket, and her faded black jeans matched the streaks of dyed black running through her naturally brown hair. If obsession with the color black were a sport, she’d be a gold medalist. At first glance, she was basically Avril Lavigne 2.0 from the Under My Skin era. No wonder her style stood out from the rest of the girls on campus.
People called her “the gothic girl”—unique, sure, but also a magnet for judgmental stares from certain classmates. Should she try dressing more feminine? More like everyone else? And for what—just to please people who didn’t understand her? No. She’d rather stay exactly who she was.
She hadn’t always been this way. Once upon a time, she’d been just like the other girls—soft-spoken, warm, even girly. But somewhere between her cold personality, her stubbornness, and her sharp tongue, her gentle side had faded. One by one, her friends drifted away. That was when she decided to reinvent herself—to build a style, a wall, and a world that kept everyone at arm’s length. In that quiet, lonely world, she felt safe.
Until he showed up.
Adrian Hayder.
Her peace shattered the moment he walked into her life, turning it upside down with one stupid, humiliating incident. In a single day, Lila went from being the “gothic girl” to the campus’s new “Barbie Girl”—all thanks to that annoyingly hot bad boy.
And ever since, the teasing hadn’t stopped. Yet somewhere between his jabs and smirks, even Adrian started to notice what others had overlooked—Lila was beautiful in her own messy, complicated way.
Could he actually be falling for the goth girl with a Barbie heart? God forbid.
“Barbie Girl…”
“I’m not a Barbie Girl!”
“But you’re mine now, Barbie Girl.”
