Mara & Luca
A first love shaped by silence, imbalance, and everything learned too early.
Meet Mara & Luca
Mara is young, observant, and deeply earnest, wanting to be chosen without fully understanding what that might cost her. She carries an early tenderness shaped by hope, loyalty, and a need to believe that love can be enough.
Luca is quiet, self-contained, and already learning how to leave before he is left. He carries inherited silence, unspoken expectations, and the pull between intimacy and freedom.
Together, they form a connection built on first love and unequal knowing—one learning how to stay, the other learning how to go.
For more information on the characters and their stories before the books are released, check out my social media!
Their Story
Mara and Luca’s story begins in the Riverton project, The Things We Never Said, and is first explored in the origin novella Before I Knew Better: First Love and Learning (coming soon).
Their relationship lays the emotional groundwork for the main novel, revealing how silence is learned, repeated, and passed on.