LaNora carries pain in her fists like other children carry toys. At four years old, she learns that tears are inconvenient, that vulnerability costs too much, and that love might not be something she deserves. Her mother’s voice cuts like glass. Her father exists only as a ghost, haunting every corner of her childhood through his absence.

By fifteen, LaNora has mastered the art of disappearing inside herself. She walks through school hallways where whispers follow her name and returns home to a mother too consumed by her own storms to notice her daughter drowning. When Bryan enters her life with promises and gentle touches, LaNora believes she has found someone who sees her. But love, she discovers, can bruise deeper than fists.

Pregnant and abandoned, betrayed by the boy who once traced her palm as if he were mapping their future, LaNora faces a choice that will define her forever. She can repeat the cycle of abandonment that shaped her, or she can break the chains that have bound her family for generations.