Alice Kim has everything she could possibly want: money, friends, and a secure position at her family's magazine when she comes of age.

But despite all of that, Alice was incredibly lonely. She knew that all of her friends were incredibly fake and as for her parents, they didn't love her at all. They only pretended to be the perfect parents whenever eyes were on them but behind closed doors, they let it be known that Alice was nothing more than a mistake. And no matter how hard she tried, she'd never be good enough. No one truly knew Alice, seeing as the girl wore a facade the entire time. And no one bothered to try and learn who she was behind the mask. Alice feared that she'd be alone for the rest of her life.

But that was before she met Roman Roy.

Although their parents were already friends, they truly got to know each other through one of Alice's many boyfriends, Andrew King. He was a weirdo, a perverted one at that with maybe one friend. And yet, there was something about him that Alice actually... liked. They continued to hang out (all thanks to Roman blackmailing her friendship, that was a long story), and it was entirely in secret since Alice really didn't want people to know about them. With Roman, she didn't feel alone anymore. She felt... understood and seen and things with Roman weren't superficial or fake. He told her the blunt truth, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

Roman had issues of his own at home. A lot of them actually. He was his dad's favorite punching bag, and his siblings also loved to torture him. Fresh from military school, Roman gets dropped off at his third boarding school with no friends. Well, maybe one. Andrew King was one of the few people who tolerated Roman while everyone else at school hated him. Everyone except for Alice, his (hot) new secret best friend who was actually a lot sadder than the stone-cold bitch she pretended to be around school. Ok, maybe the stone-cold bitch persona was maybe 45% real but Alice was a lot nicer to Roman than anyone else had been. And seeing as they both had fucked up families, it just made the bond between them that much closer.

Alice never expected that the one person to help her feel human again would be a damaged boy with crippling daddy issues and a penchant for dirty jokes. But little did she know, that's exactly what would happen.

Im Jinah ✷ Alice Kim

Younger Kieran Culkin ✷ Roman Roy

younger kaya scodelario catherine roy / sadie sink shiv roy / younger jeremy strong kendall roy / charithra chandran nicole suri / madelaine petsch iris ravenwood / greta onieogou davina barclay / taylor zakhar perez andrew king / mason gooding preston vaughn / drew starkey vincent french / sydney sweeney talia french / song kang damian han

final notes...

✷ so the prequel is up!! i also have one planned for queen of hearts (ik it's been ages since i updated it, shush)

✷ i've been thinking about writing alice and roman's backstory for a while now but thanks to the user cruelfools for really inspiring me to finally post this! and after watching igby goes down for the hundredth time, i have so many ideas for this story and i'm very excited to write it!

✷ this story belongs to me and only me so please do not steal and plagiarize it or else i'll be very pissed but also very sad, so just be kind please.

✷ this story contains mentions of sexual content (there's not gonna be any smut whatsoever but it will be heavily mentioned), violence, drugs, alcohol, self harm, domestic violence, attempted assault, eating disorders, mentions of past grooming and child molestation, etc.