FOUR FOR A BOY : Domestic Thriller ((The Survivor Series #10 stand-alone stories) Book 4)

It’s Too Hard To Live & Too Easy To Die…
After losing his mother to cancer and watching alcohol transform his father into a violent monster, nineteen‑year‑old Dax learns that “home” can be the most dangerous place of all. Forced onto the streets with nothing but a worn rucksack, his grief, and memories that refuse to loosen their grip, he finds regular shelter beneath a bridge on the edge of Gravenmere Town. Convinced the world no longer sees him, Dax drifts through Gravenmere Town’s forgotten shadowy corners where hunger bites, memories sting, and hope feels like a cruel joke. Each day becomes a battle against the despair slowly consuming him from within.
But in the stillness of survival between cold nights, his empty stomach, and the ghosts that trail him, small acts of kindness begin to pierce the darkness. Mia, twenty, who is quietly battling her own struggles, works in the local café that he visits when his pocket carries a little change. She notices him. There is no judgement, just quiet unspoken acts of kindness. Her warmth slips past his defences, even as her unhinged ex circles unseen at the edges of Dax’s fragile new world, eager to destroy what little he has left.
As Dax hovers in that hollow space between existing and living, he must decide whether he deserves a second chance at life or whether Hollowmere Lake will claim him like so many before. Can Zak, a local legend, earn his trust and pull him back from the edge? Can Mia thaw the ice around his heart? And might his favourite band help him reclaim a dream he thought he’d buried forever?
Or will a sudden, unsuspecting attack shatter his spirit and drive him toward the lake’s shadowed rim, where the darkness awaits?